A Canary tank had saved all my fish.

Spring season is dangerous for discus keepers. This is the time our dearest water treatment plan put their chemical to clean the pipes and wipe out the bacteria. I had problems every year between April and May that usually cause my fish stop eating, clamp fins and the chemicals had killed the happy worms inside my discus that they normally co-exist and live happily together and sharing all their food. Very often it wipe out a few broods of my fry. The worse it that the water company will not warn us until we smell the chemical in our drinking water. It often too late to save your discus. Last year I set up a Canary tank which are the less desirable discus in a 30 gallon tank. They have the right to get their W/C as soon as I come home and the rest will be done at the end of the day before retiring to bed. The sad story was all my discus in the Canary tank were lying flat on the bottom after 2 hours of W/C last Tuesday. Even 100% W/C immediately were not able to get them back. Now they are black and passing out white jelly feces. There was no W/C for the last few days for all my tanks. A massive W/C is needed this week-end.
Jimmy.

[cartoon]

Jimmy,
THis is very disturbing. I have not had this problem, but it does not mean I won't. Will an RO system help prevent this from occuring? I'm thinking of doing all water changes in re-constituted RO for a while just in case. Peggy (cartoon).

[mikeos]

Yes an RO will prevent this, assuming its maintained correctly. It removes 95%+ of everything, just make sure you change the prefilters at the required interval.

[Willie]

I've not have this happen for 3 years now, but the "change" is basically the water company greatly increasing the level of chloramines to clean out their system. In most cases, doubling or tripling the level of AmQuel will solve the problem.

Willie