Discus not doing well and hiding

[Tbrenna7]

Hello good afternoon.

I’m a new member as I’ve just found this forum through a recommendation on Reddit.

I’ve had my discus now for about 4 months and my first 4 one of them did poorly and I brought him back to the lfs I got him from and got 4 more. Pecking order was established with my current 7 discus I have.

The bully has been hiding nonstop and hasn’t eaten now for 2 days. After the first day I dosed wormer plus unsure of what the actual issue is.

We’re at the end of the dosing period for wormer plus 4 days. So we’re at 6 days with my guy not eating and not improving it seems.

He doesn’t have any stress markings and looks relatively normal all things considered besides his/her hiding a bunch. Albeit he does come out.

Starting noticing sliming forehead but he isn’t skinny. So I ordered 500g of metronidazole from jehmco.com as I’ve been recommended that but I’m not an expert.

Tank parameters
Pro star 150 planted
RO water change system 4g per day with weekly 30%
Temperature 85
Ph 6.7-7.2 hard to tell with the api test (my digital ph reading is 6.72)
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 0-10ppm hard to tell

Tank is heavily planted

Stocking
7 discus
2 Congo tetras
8 sterbai Cory
2 apistogramma caucatoudies
25-30 rummynose tetras
10 khuli loaches
4 Siamese algae eaters
4 otocinclus

Well stocked but very powerful filtration pump rated at 15,000 gallons per hour if used at max (it’s not it’s set to roughly 40%) not insanely powerful flow just enough to get the plants moving a touch.

Any recommendations that some of the better discus keepers have would be great! It’s my show tank or one of my show tanks!

P.s. I do not have a quarantine tank and quite honestly I want to dose the entire tank as something in my tank has caused this which means all fish are likely to have whatever is nothing my discus

[Iminit]

Pictures will help. I think your problem may be water quality. Your not changing enough water per week. Being a planted tank it will need more water changes and vacuuming of the substrate. I change 50% twice a week. Main thing with these fish is clean new water.

[Tbrenna7]

Pictures will help. I think your problem may be water quality. Your not changing enough water per week. Being a planted tank it will need more water changes and vacuuming of the substrate. I change 50% twice a week. Main thing with these fish is clean new water.

So it’s roughly a 40g water change and another 28g (RO) broken up over 7 days so I can keep my ph nice and stable. Close to 50% a week. Do you think I need more volume removed then that? I figured that would be plenty but I’m unsure

As far as parameters go they are all in ideal ranges. Does water quality get worse even with good parameters overtime? Idk how that works I usually just read the meter and for my non discus tanks if the parameters are solid I usually just top off the water.

My discus tank is done no matter what as I have an RO water change system and that water isn’t amazing for plants so I replenish the minerals with tap

[Tbrenna7]

F8AB971D-8EA8-4B88-8630-38FBC9C3A0C9.jpg

Top center is the discus in question


I’ll add more pictures when I get back home

There’s one corner that’s heavily planted that I don’t interfere with much but 70% of the tank including the sump gets syphon cleanings weekly.

Just the planted corner is pretty much left uninterrupted as my khulis cories and apistos take care of a ton of cleanings there in addition to all the snails I have in that corner.

[Tbrenna7]

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This is most of the squad. One of the focused discus Marlboro was the reason I picked up metronidazole

[Iminit]

Ok you’ve got what looks like anubias plants buried in the sand. Anubias should have there roots (rymizomes) above the substrate. Most people tie them to wood or rocks.

Still hard to tell what’s up. They are showing stress bars and look small. How big were they when you bought them? Color wise they look fine. Look a little lean how often do you feed? What type of substrate. It’s not heavily planted so I think that’s the problem. Any chance of getting the pics rotated?

[Tbrenna7]

I’ll take more pictures tomorrow.

I’m not an expert on planted tanks but I do have great growth etc. the rhyzhomes are above the substrate at least I think. They’ve been thriving though as is since being in the tank. A touch of green spot algae but they’ve almost doubled in size over the last 5 months. The pictures are from last week and I’ve added about 15 pogostemons and maybe 20-30 s repens and 12 crypts etc.

The substrate is sand and my densely planted area is a mix of ada aqua soil exocomplete and sand capped. I feed them 3 times a day. Tetra bites brine shrimp and beef heart. Truthfully I thought 6-7 are overweight. From an angle they got chunky little bellies and I typically overfeed to make sure the smaller one eats.

Size wise they are roughly 3-4” with the exception of 1 which is about 2.25” roughly. He’s slightly bullied but he’s eating well (honestly really well).

They were roughly 2” when I got them maybe 2.5”. They’ve grown pretty quickly from what I’ve noticed. But again this is my first time keeping discus so idk what’s normal and what isn’t.

I have the means to plant the tank entirely but the look as it is now is exactly what I desired before I even had any driftwood or substrate in the tank.

[Iminit]

Ok thing with juveniles is they should start in a bare bottom tank with daily water changes. They need new water not just clean water. You need to remove whatever the young fish are adding to the old water daily. This is how they grow and get stronger. Young 2-4” discus need to be fed about 6 times a day.

[Tbrenna7]

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The one I’m concerned with has the white stringy poop

[jeep]

Nice looking tank! Unfortunately, Tom is correct. Many times, simply doing water changes isn't enough in a planted tank with juvies. Extra care in eliminating all waste and byproducts is essential to grow out smaller discus to their potential. I would make it a ritual to increase water changes and clean everything, including the substrate and even tank walls. When one is falling behind or not eating, the first thing I do is to raise the temp to 90-93.

Here's a good read - http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...-Are-Important

[mleibowi]

Agree with what's been said. You've done what I've done and many others. Got small discus to watch them "grow out" when first keeping discus. I agree with bare bottom and religious daily water changes and feeding 6x/day. There's a nice thread on the grow out challenge on this site. It's not easy and requires a lot of patience and dedication. When first keeping discus, may recommend getting larger discus to start 4"+ as they require fewer feedings and less stringent water changes depending on the size and bioload of your tank. Many of us have been there. My advice is keep up the water changes, make sure you siphon the detritus on the bottom, and keep the ones you like. I also learned that buying high quality discus is critical as well. I bought local before I knew better and what a mistake. There are plenty of good discus suppliers on the site if you end up losing some. I kept a few stunted ones I initially bought and had to cull one. Best of luck.