Originally Posted by
matt parsons
Hello Bernie.
First things first. There is a form you should fill out to help get a better idea of what thing/ things are going on here.
Please complete this questionnaire if your fish are sick (copy and paste). The more details you can provide, the better we are able to diagnose and help you treat your sick fish.
DISEASE QUESTIONNAIRE
Problem
1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?
The checkerboard discus stopped eating about 6 days ago
2. Symptoms (i.e. turning dark, excess slime, not eating, clamped fins, flashing, darting, clamped gills, white/yellow/green poop, hiding, headstanding or tailstanding, white on tips of fins, rotting or fungus, blisters/white zits on fish, bloated, cloudy eyes, wounds).
Stopped Eating
3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
Transferred her to the quarantine tank after 3 days of no eating. Added 4 tbls of aquarium salt one day later
Tank/Water municipal water treated with API dechloranizer
4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
Main tank is 65 gallons: Introduced six 4" stendkar discus on August 18th. Had 8 tetras and 4 siamese algae eaters and one 2" pleco
5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
30% water changes twice a week
6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
Tank has been established with plants, half gravel half sand on the bottom, using a penn Plax canister filter and UV filter
The QT tank is bare bottom with an internal filter
7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing. I do age the water for the main tank as it is connected to a manual/auto changing system.
8. What type/brand water conditioner do you use? Do you add it to the tank or aging barrel? How much do you use?
API
9. Parameters and water source;
Municipal water
Note: Water Parameters are important in diagnosing problems within a tank. If you don't own test kits for the following information, you can purchase them, test your parameters and post this info as soon as possible.
- temp __89___ the 20 gal QT 88 degrees
- ph __6.8___ QT 6.0
- ammonia reading __0__ QT 0.0
- nitrite reading __0__ QT 0
- nitrate reading ___5_ QT 20
What type of water or combinations of water sources do you use? If it is an RO/tap/well water mix, please list percentages in the mix.
- well water ____
- municipal water _X___
- RO water ____
10. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently. NO
11. Please tell us what you feed your fish and how often. This can be critical information for solving the problem so be as specific as you can.
Feed them twice a day with meaty blend sold to me from the breeder
12. Include any pictures or videos you have which shows the symptoms. If you can't add them to this post, please provide a link to them.
The black “ spots” seem to be peppering unless there are more I’m not seeing. That is a pigeon bloods equivalent of stress bars.
The white poo is likely hexamita. You want to use metro to treat for that ( assuming it is hex). Dosing amounts can be found in Disease/Sickness and Medication section and is usually with the medicine when purchased.
The higher temps will assist with treatment if it is hex. And yes, before adding any medication, you need to remove all carbon.
As for your ph dropping, the salt should have zero effect in falling levels or will cause PH to rise depending on the salt used. If you can fill out the form we can better help. If we know what your source water is and your water change schedule with amounts changed we can figure out why the PH is crashing. Monitor that closely as that can mess up the fish really bad really fast.
Thanks, Matt