Water change after epsom salts treatment?

[discusdave]

Hi everyone, I went down to my fish room today and saw one of my beautiful, 5 inch young adult Red Leopard Snakeskins with bloat. Bloated belly, shaking, swimming at an angle, unable to go up and down as he pleased. His color was still good, but his swimming was affected. I quickly added 1.5 tablespoons/10 gallons epsom salts to the 75 gallon tank they are in.

Shortly after I added the salts, I actually saw him what looked to be vomiting, for lack of a better word. Several large air bubbles and a couple small chunks of what looked like my beefheart mix came out of his mouth. First time I ever saw this.

Anyways, shortly after that he sank to the bottom and just hovered, and a couple hours after that he started swimming normally and acted hungry.

Oh, and by the way, a BIG THANK YOU to Carol Roberts for the sticky thread she wrote about common treatments.

My question is: do I need to do a large water change on the 75 gallon now that he is better, I have an automatic system that does about 50% a day. Is this good enough?

[Kindredspirit]

Hey Dave~


Well I want to thank Carol as well... And you! I have Candy on the phone and she is upset due to the same issue you had! It is one of her 1" baby we got from Cliff~

I am glad yours is okay now. Hers, however, is not...After she fed cbws, apparently, this discus really puffed up and was pointing his head down a little...She called me and we decided to give Epsom Salt...45 min later, this discus started tossing his cookies, just like you said! We didnt know that they vomited, I thought they would actually fart!

Then the little thing started poohing everywhere...What we were trippin about was the fact that he is very dark as are all the others as well...two of them came up and started stratching on the heater~

Soooooooo.....finding your Thread was very cool, and now we know that they do vomit... not only fart!!

I was reading my notes to Candy, posted at one time by Carol, re Common Treatments too, in that to treat four hours later, after initial treatment...

I think what is against us is that these discus are so tiny....Also I think Carol's notes said that if not better w/in 24 hours, to consider a bacterial infection? We seem to have two types of symptoms here with Candy's....bloated and scratching...?



Thanks Dave~


Marie~

[discusdave]

Marie,
Guess what? I started feeding these guys CBWs a few days ago for the first time as well, but in all honesty I didn't slowly acclimated them to it as in retrospect I think I should have. Part of the fun of feeding CBWs is the way they tear after them, hehehe! I basically went from never feeding them CBWs to feeding them CBWs two times a day. I'm so ashamed!!:embarasse

Veterinarians call this type of behavior from pet owner's "Dietary Indiscretion," like the time I gave a few small pieces of cooked filet minion to my 6 month old puppy and she had the runs for three days. Never did that again.

From now on: CBWs no more than once a day and no more than they can eat in a couple minutes.

[candyl70]

Dave,
I didn't acclimate my fish either. His color is back to normal, and his stomach is alot less swollen. I had done 2 Tlbs of Epsom's and then decided to do a water change because the tank was filling up with everyones poos. So after the water change, everyone's color was back to normal. I then added some more salt after the water change. None of the babies are dark anymore. I also saw the little one with bloat farting out bubbles!!! I think that is the strangest thing that I have ever witnessed, aside from him coughing out little chunks of food!!

Thanks for the help tonight Marie!!! And Dave, thanks for posting your experience as it calmed me down. I thought I could also be looking at dropsy, and since he is so small, that I might not have much luck. So a big thank you!!!


Candy

[CAGE-RATTLER]

When my adult discus had bloat it did the same thing ..... vommiting. I have a post on here somewhere about it. I thought everyone was gonna think i was nutz ..... lol.

By the way .......... all of you said 1.5 tbls and 2 tbls ......... im assumming you meant tablespoons.

Carols post says 1 - 2 teaspoons!

1 tablespoon is equal to 3 teaspoons so if you gave 2 tablespoons ........ you actually gave them 6 teaspoons which is 3 times the reccomended dose.

Now when i did mine ..... i screwed up too and gave 1 table spoon and everything was OK .............. i think its amazing how fast that stuff worked.

But you may want to go ahead and do the WC since the dosage was so high.

Not sure if it will affect them or not.

When i found oput it had already been 8 hours and carol also said you could r-dose 8 hours later so there was no sense in mw doing a WC.

Im sure they will be fine but just wanted to let you know.

[Ardan]

Hi,
i have used 2 tablespoons per 10 gallons quite a few times, I didn't have any problems with that high a dose.
It should work within 2 days or less or you know something else is wrong.
Glad the fish are better
Just do normal wc's from now on and the levels will be fine


hth
Ardan

[discusdave]

When my adult discus had bloat it did the same thing ..... vommiting. I have a post on here somewhere about it. I thought everyone was gonna think i was nutz ..... lol.

By the way .......... all of you said 1.5 tbls and 2 tbls ......... im assumming you meant tablespoons.

Carols post says 1 - 2 teaspoons!

1 tablespoon is equal to 3 teaspoons so if you gave 2 tablespoons ........ you actually gave them 6 teaspoons which is 3 times the reccomended dose.

Now when i did mine ..... i screwed up too and gave 1 table spoon and everything was OK .............. i think its amazing how fast that stuff worked.

But you may want to go ahead and do the WC since the dosage was so high.

Not sure if it will affect them or not.

When i found oput it had already been 8 hours and carol also said you could r-dose 8 hours later so there was no sense in mw doing a WC.

Im sure they will be fine but just wanted to let you know.

You are right in that she says 1-2 teaspoons, but if you read the post further it says dosage of epsom salts can be taken up to 2 tablespoons/10 gallon without harming the fish. I decided to go strong in dosage because I have had and lost fish to bloat in the past. I have raised this guy from 2 inches to over five, and he is dear to me, besides being worth some money, hehehe!

[Carol_Roberts]

Epsom salt is pretty easy on the discus. REgular water changes will remove this mineral salt.