slime falling off skin

[springer]

Just recently I have noticed when I do my water changes, my discus seem to lose alot of slime from their skin. My water has been aged and I also add nutrafin conditional to the water. It is about a 75% change. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[cjr8420]

only thing i can think of is ur not aging it correctly or not long enough.how do u age and for how long?

[springer]

I age it in a rubber barrel for 48 hrs. To heat it up I use approx. 5 gals of water straight from my water heater which does go through a water softener this will give me about 40 gal. of water at a temp of 82. I add some nutafin condition to compensate for the on aged water. Mix it well and then let it sit for 20 min. I have done it this way for years and only lately have this problem. It seems to really be bad in only one of my tanks. In that tank I have 4 adult discus which is a 50 gal. One time they lost so much slime that I almost lost the discus. Now I only change about 45% at a time. These 4 discus where in such bad shape they all turned very dark and where very stressed I thought I nwas going to loose them. I tried alot of different meds. and they never got better. As a last resort I gave them a salt bath and added salt to their water and in no time it cleared it and they are good now but I noticed last night with a smaller water change it started to happen a gain but not as bad. In another tank using the same water but from a different barrel in another tank their was no reaction. The barrels are clean.

[Eddie]

Whats your tank PH and tap PH? Also, why the use of the water softener?

[springer]

My ph of the tank is 7.8 the tap water is 6.9 so that is probably why the difference in the ph is causing it. But now I don't understand why the tank ph would increase from 6.9 to 7.8. The tank is a bare bottem, no plants just a sponge filter and a aquaclear. Our city water must of changed without me noticing it. Thank you.

[springer]

Oh yes forgot to mention I use the water softner because that is the way the house is plumbed the water to the water heater goes through the softner I suppose it must be done that way which makes sense and I use water right of the water heater to heat my water rather heat my storage tank.

[cjr8420]

u need to add air or pump to water for off gasing while u age it that should fix ur ph swing.make sure u are treating for chloramines as that could have been the change from water co. its cheaper so if they havent changedthey will be and dont tell u til after so call and check, online water quality reports are always from previous year i found out the hard way mini cycles and ammonia burns.hth

[Orange Crush]

Use Prime or Safe tap water conditioner. Nutrafin is not as good and costs a lot more since it is not as concentrated. Just add tap water conditioner to tank just before adding new water (for entire volume of tank, not volume of water being replaced), do not add to water storage barrel because it will allow bacteria to grow in storage barrel (due to neutralizing the chlorine/chloramines). Definately airate the water in the storage barrel, usually 24 hours is sufficient. Test to see how long it takes to match tank pH with airation.
Nutrafin Aqua Plus......5-10ml/10 gal
Prime........................1mL/10 gal

[Chicago Discus]

Nutrafin will give a mock slim-coat which is probably causing your discus to have a excess slim on them when you are doing your water change............Josie

[Tommy Saville]

I find that if I keep the tap water in my heated storage barrel for 48 hours before putting it in the tank, the pH goes up 1 degree from 7.4 to 8.4. If I reduce the storage time to 24 hours the pH change is very small. 7.4 to 7.6, which is acceptable, just. You have to remember that the pH figure is logarythmic, x10 !

[brady]

I have well water and Iv'e noticed that if I don't let my water gas out enough when I pump it in to the tank gas bubbles form on the glass and the discus and that is when they start losing their slime. Now I run the pump with the hose in the barrel for good circulation for about a 1/2 hr and no more problems.

[plecocicho]

Commercial water softeners usually exchange ca and mg for sodium atoms. So, if your source water is really hard, you wind up with slihgtly salted water. Low salt baths are used to for slime shedining of getting rid of skin parasites.