NanDiscus
01-13-2013, 05:58 PM
Hi all,
I came across a phenomenon the other day which occured in the tank of one of my friend's. He recently started a new tank with 10 young adult-ish discus. As he is kind of an experienced discus keeper, so he prepared the tank awaiting the arrival of the fresh stock as best as possible. Everything was fine for about a month until a few days ago when roughly 30 mins after a water change and a feeding with mussels one of his Red Turqs started to behave strangely, darted around the tank, injuring himself quite badly. Soon after the fish was losing its balance, went on its side afloat at the top of the water, then sunk to the bottom. Of the 10 fish only one was affected. He removed the fish from the tank into a hospital barrel, gave it some salt, but the following morning he could have followed up with some onions and pepper, as the fish died.
Two days later another w/c, another feeding and another specimen produced the exact same symptoms, only not in such an extreme way as the one fish earlier. Meanwhile there has been massive guesswork going on over at the Hungarian discus forum and the most experienced members put their coins down at almost each and every one possible reason listed in the various whirling-dashing-dying on here and everywhere. We tried to come up with a series of things to do for him to find out the possible cause of the death of one fish and the agony of the other until one of our members, who is a vet btw. posted a link to a Hungarian webpage talking about toxins present in seafood, especially shellfish and mussels.
I then went on the internet and found this:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5486e/y5486e0p.htm
Basically, the AZP toxin causes the paralysis of the neuro-transmission system thus paralyzing the fish itself.
As Hungary is 'badly landlocked' we almost only get frozen seastuff of generally unknown source through the supermarkets. Also, they are of the lowest quality possible, otherwise even less people would buy them.
If anybody ever had one unresolved case similar to the one above, this may be the answer.
Hope this helps someone!
Nandi
ps.: Happy 2013 everyone! :)
I came across a phenomenon the other day which occured in the tank of one of my friend's. He recently started a new tank with 10 young adult-ish discus. As he is kind of an experienced discus keeper, so he prepared the tank awaiting the arrival of the fresh stock as best as possible. Everything was fine for about a month until a few days ago when roughly 30 mins after a water change and a feeding with mussels one of his Red Turqs started to behave strangely, darted around the tank, injuring himself quite badly. Soon after the fish was losing its balance, went on its side afloat at the top of the water, then sunk to the bottom. Of the 10 fish only one was affected. He removed the fish from the tank into a hospital barrel, gave it some salt, but the following morning he could have followed up with some onions and pepper, as the fish died.
Two days later another w/c, another feeding and another specimen produced the exact same symptoms, only not in such an extreme way as the one fish earlier. Meanwhile there has been massive guesswork going on over at the Hungarian discus forum and the most experienced members put their coins down at almost each and every one possible reason listed in the various whirling-dashing-dying on here and everywhere. We tried to come up with a series of things to do for him to find out the possible cause of the death of one fish and the agony of the other until one of our members, who is a vet btw. posted a link to a Hungarian webpage talking about toxins present in seafood, especially shellfish and mussels.
I then went on the internet and found this:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5486e/y5486e0p.htm
Basically, the AZP toxin causes the paralysis of the neuro-transmission system thus paralyzing the fish itself.
As Hungary is 'badly landlocked' we almost only get frozen seastuff of generally unknown source through the supermarkets. Also, they are of the lowest quality possible, otherwise even less people would buy them.
If anybody ever had one unresolved case similar to the one above, this may be the answer.
Hope this helps someone!
Nandi
ps.: Happy 2013 everyone! :)