Is quarantine and prophylactic medication necessary in new discus

[ganesan]

Today I am going to get about 2.5 inch discus from a local fish store. He has had them for about 30 days in his shop. My aquarium size is 5x2x2 feet. I like to buy as much as this aquarium would hold. How many discus of this size 2.5inch can I put in this 5x2x2 aquarium and is it necessary to give them pp bath and deworm them with metrogyl in another quarantine aquarium before adding them to the main aquarium. I see some aquarists advocate saying unless the fish look sick do not medicate while some say medication is required.

[dagray]

You need to change your thinking.

The question is "how many seven inch Discus will my tank hold at one gallon of water to one inch fish length"

Quarantine is an individual choice, but choose wrong and you can bring a deviating disease to your tank

If you have the means I would quarantine and feet Ken's Metrozole flake for a few days to kill internal parasite and worms


That said I am not set up for quarantine, but I never put water from the vendor in my tank, and I am very careful where I buy my fish
Also a PP bath can hurt gills.

I am sure others will have better information for you

[Iminit]

You’re looking at a 150g tank so 15-16 discus. But at that size you’ll need to change a lot of water daily so. I wouldn’t start in the 150 I’d start in a 50-60 gal changing 50+% daily. This is how small fish grow. If not up for the water changing get bigger discus.
As to meds your choice. I wouldn’t use pp. Read Al’s thread on qt ing discus for the meds you should use.

[ganesan]

Thanks

[jeep]

If they're from a local fish store, I would treat them as imported. No matter how good the LFS is, most utilize a central filtration system that exposes the entire system to possible CC.

All discus should be QT'd no matter who the source is, even if it's the same source between shipments.

Prophylactic treatment during QT can help insure there are no issues later on...

[brewmaster15]

I quarantine all new fish a minimum of 6 weeks and I prophylactically deworm them. During Qt I will watch and determine if anything else is an issue. The reason for the prophylactic deworming is because often times a fish can have worms for months and not show symptoms, and by the time its an issue, the fish has started to lose weight or growth and development has been impacted. I do not treat with antibiotics prophylactically nor do I advise anyone do so...Thats just going to potentially make resistant Bacteria.

hth,
ak