Novice discus keeper with a few bad experiences.

[kris2341]

Hey guys, my name is Kris and I am new here and am looking for some general advice on discus.


I bought some discus from a local importer and have had some very mixed feelings due to what appears to be a lack of disease resistance.

Started with 10 discus, and after several battles with bizarre symptoms, and some jumpers, I now have only 4 in my grow out tank. One day they're eating like pigs, next day they stop eating, go dark, and have cloudy eyes, and the next day, said discus is dead.

Holding tank is a 60 gallon acrylic tank.

Filtration was a Rena Filstar XP3, eventually upgraded to an Aquatop CF-500 canister with the 9w UV and most recently, added a 55w Jebao UV sterilizer, both using proper low pressure UV bulbs from Americanquariumproducts

The system has daily 50% water changes and my API test kit cannot detect any ammonia, nitrite, or nitrate.

Tank has a PH of about 7.5 and kept at 89-90F by a jager heater.

If it makes a difference, my water changes utilize dechlorinated tap water treated with seachem safe in a food grade brute trash can.

According to the guy i got them from, the discus came from Vietnam and while he has a very nice looking assortment, you can tell that they don't travel well since there's a number of losses every shipment. The upside to the discus was the price as i got the 10 of them(3 inch turquoise discus) for 20 dollars each.

Once I noticed some of the fish stop eating, I first treated with metronidazole and epsom salt, I kept tropheus before so I had alot of the stuff around and this worked out nicely with the discus as well, they released flagellates and went back to eating, for food they ate live blackworms, and I eventually got them on the Cobalt discus flakes which grew them well.

After about a month, one discus suddenly stopped eating and died, body showed cloudy eyes, I treated with Praziquaintel (Prazi pro) since i thought only a parasitic infection could kill that fast upon showing symptoms and the cloudy eyes were just an opportunistic affliction like fungus. Some individuals that were already eating put out some white/clear feces and became more active but a few weeks later another fish suddenly died in the same manner. After a few weeks of monitoring them, I noticed a decrease in activity and darkening of some discus so I dosed cephalexin (antibiotic i had on hand) and pimafix, not sure if this worked but after the antibiotic treatment i got a UV sterilizer for the grow out tank.

Now, I recently hooked up a 55w Jebao UV sterilizer and put a proper low pressure UV bulb in there and things pretty much stopped in their tracks.... the fish became more active and all that good stuff with this installed.

Started with 10 discus,

1 died shortly after acclimation, figured it was just too much stress.
1 jumped out a 3 weeks later, covered the top.
1 startled itself and crashed into the heater and then the tank corner and started swimming funny with a dented eye, it eventually just died.
2 died of the mysterious infections described
the last death either got beat up by the other discus, as it had these dark sores on its side one day or it somehow got burned by the heater(I think this one slept next to the heater), this one eventually jumped out a small hole in the back of the tank that was partly uncovered but couldnt swim upright and was erratic so it may not have been thinking clearly.

The 4 that remain are my nicest ones but the biggest one is an overly aggressive one that makes me nervous, 2 nicely sized ones, and a runt that gets picked on.

The last death is one of my current concerns as I couldn't tell whether or not it was a victim of aggression or it was just stupid and cooked itself or if it was some kind of disease, the sores resembled this: http://www.simplydiscus.com/library/disease_medications/external/costia_parasite.shtml but were circular. I thought it was HLLE but the water quality and lack of carbon, and the regular treatments of metro should make that impossible, this also appeared literally overnight.

I pretty much ruled my experience as bad luck and potentially poor discus with weak immunities.

While the discus are doing good now, I am concerned that they might start declining once the UV turns off or when i transfer them to my planted tank that is a completely natural setup with refugium sump and miracle mud. While the water in there is very good and the tank holds several cardinals, cories, and blue rams, theres no disease prevention measure like a UV lamp

How many other people have had such an experience with discus? Are they all really this sensitive to disease or will I have better luck with discus from someone like Hans?

I live in LA, in the San Fernando valley so if there happens to be any locally bred discus that are of good bloodlines, I will GLADLY buy from you. As nice as the Viet discus looked, I worry about inbreeding and the possible use of hormones etc. that may have led to my problem.

[kris2341]

Just thought I'd add, upon the addition of the UV sterilizer and the completion of all treatments in the tank 2 weeks ago, I lowered the temperature of the tank back to 86F and plan to lower it to 84F and 82F by the time i transfer them to my planted tank.

After doing some extra browsing here, it seems that the use of 90F temperature in non ich related treatment was not good advice and may have had a hand in my mysterious deaths? such a shame, heard that it was a good temperature to keep discus at for treatments and prevention from different sources that weren't from here.

For the entire duration of trying to treat different problems, the tank was 90F

When I first got the discus, they were put in 84F water, then 86, then 90 when i read it was supposedly optimal for young discus growing and disease prevention.

[nc0gnet0]

Started with 10 discus, and after several battles with bizarre symptoms, and some jumpers, I now have only 4 in my grow out tank.

The upside to the discus was the price as i got the 10 of them(3 inch turquoise discus) for 20 dollars each.


Suddenly it's not looking like such a great deal.......


According to the guy i got them from, the discus came from Vietnam

I have not had any discus that came from Vietnam, but I have heard a few horror stories...... I am sure others might add to this......


for food they ate live blackworms,

not good......


I noticed a decrease in activity and darkening of some discus so I dosed cephalexin (antibiotic i had on hand) and pimafix,


pimafix is useless, toss it.


I am concerned that they might start declining once the UV turns off or when i transfer them to my planted tank that is a completely natural setup with refugium sump and miracle mud.

Your main concern should be that adding sick/disease carrying discus to a planted tank could all but make that tank uninhabitable for future discus. Plnated tanks are extremely problematic when dealing with disease, and only fish that are known to be healthy should be added. Unless your convinced yours are (which I would not make that conclusion, not by any stretch based on what your describing), do not add them to a planted tank. also, you will find it much easier growing your fish out in a BB tank, and once they have reached adulthood, then transfer them over to the planted tank.

[nc0gnet0]

How many other people have had such an experience with discus? Are they all really this sensitive to disease or will I have better luck with discus from someone like Hans?

Getting discus from hans is a great idea. However, do yourself a favor, don't mix the two fish from different sources, and if your thinking of getting fish from Hans, I might be inclined to cull the ones you have now, bleach the tank and sterilize everything before adding new fish.

-Rick

[kris2341]

ahh so it really has to go that far in the end huh?

What i will probably do then will be to continue raising the discus i have in the holding tank as is, it is bare bottom too and i have been vacuuming daily. I will disable the UV sterilizers, and change water from the holding tank and replace it with water from my planted tank, probably add some plants to expose them to their potential home's conditions and continue raising them as is. If they decline in the holding tank and eventually pass on, that would be an inevitable outcome and that tank will be sterilized and reused for a new batch of fish.

If they remain healthy and grow, 4 fish in the display should be good enough for me to be satisfied and I would transfer them over with no plans to get more discus. I did buy them, so i feel bad about just culling them.

certainly is a shame but it is a good learning experience that with discus, it certainly is possible to get fish that are compromised so much that they cant live outside a sterile environment and are a risk to others. Poor breeding practices to capitalize on a popular fish.. oh well.

Thanks a lot Rick!

I wonder if anyone else has some stuff to share.

[Quintin]

If the fish traveled from viet to supplier to you then thier immune systems would be down to begin with fromm stress.I do believe uv steriliser will kill everything good and bad bacteria in your tank which would require things like seachem discuss trace to replace trace elements.Also trating fish before knowing the problem could have caused issues too.Could one of the experienced people using UV sterilisers please confirm what i stated.And they could have been low grade fish that should have been culled to begin with.Buy slightly larger fish from hans and i think things will improve.good luck

[kris2341]

Thanks for the input Quin

I figured stress would have been a potential issue, but they recovered nicely, and then experienced a slump. It is also possible the blackworms i got could have made them sick but people seemed to have good results with them (california blackworm co. is also a forum sponsor)

Whole lot of variables, and apparently a bit of googling shows Vietnamese discus to be raised on all sorts of live foods grown over there, including feeder guppies. Which means, they probably are harboring ALL sorts of things that may harm discus from other sources, even if these discus themselves happen to be immune.

when it comes down to it, I probably should just let nature do its thing for these last 4 and let that be the judge.

An unlikely but possible other route to go would be to get even more discus from my supplier and keep trying my luck. In the end only 3 actually died directly from disease and the others were just some kind of accident. But i will only consider that route if the 4 discus I have grow to be big and healthy, just going by what I experienced now, I definitely wont do that unless i see strong healthy growth.

[khooyang]

Are they big matured discus? Not sure if 60g is large enough? I did learn it the hard way when starting this discus hobby. First with gill fluke and then discus plague. But I did learn from all these disease. Now stored Prazi, Levamisole, Metro, Furan-2, Kanamycin, Kusuri, PP and Formalin for future use. Big water change and less stress environment is crucial, and proper QT is so important as well..... but don't give up, once you get through all these troubles, you will be enjoying the fish. They are real beauty. After the disease, I did throw away all my plants. Plants can only complexify the tank. Also, with low ph, most plants don't grow well. Also, more cleaning requited for dead leaves and so on with plant.

[John_Nicholson]

I kind of skimmed this but here is my thoughts.....I have seen this happen hundreds of times. Long story short.....you bought crappy discus that are carrying all sorts of nasty crap. You can spend a ton of money and try to cure them but some things cannot be cured. If you try you will probably spend 4 times the money to end up with some poor looking discus that you will not be happy with. I absolutely recommend killing these fish, bleaching everything, setting back up, and buying quality discus to start with. You will spend less money in the long run and will end up with healthy fish that could live for 10+ years instead of crap that will never make it past 2 or 4 at best. I make these recommendation because I like for people to be successful in the hobby. It is the only way we can grow it.

-john

[kris2341]

Are they big matured discus? Not sure if 60g is large enough? I did learn it the hard way when starting this discus hobby. First with gill fluke and then discus plague. But I did learn from all these disease. Now stored Prazi, Levamisole, Metro, Furan-2, Kanamycin, Kusuri, PP and Formalin for future use. Big water change and less stress environment is crucial, and proper QT is so important as well..... but don't give up, once you get through all these troubles, you will be enjoying the fish. They are real beauty. After the disease, I did throw away all my plants. Plants can only complexify the tank. Also, with low ph, most plants don't grow well. Also, more cleaning requited for dead leaves and so on with plant.

my discus are still fairly small, about 4 inches or so and are still young. the 60 gallon tank is merely a growout tank.


I kind of skimmed this but here is my thoughts.....I have seen this happen hundreds of times. Long story short.....you bought crappy discus that are carrying all sorts of nasty crap. You can spend a ton of money and try to cure them but some things cannot be cured. If you try you will probably spend 4 times the money to end up with some poor looking discus that you will not be happy with. I absolutely recommend killing these fish, bleaching everything, setting back up, and buying quality discus to start with. You will spend less money in the long run and will end up with healthy fish that could live for 10+ years instead of crap that will never make it past 2 or 4 at best. I make these recommendation because I like for people to be successful in the hobby. It is the only way we can grow it.

-john

Seems like a unanimous decision so far to get cull them or otherwise get them out of the loop.

The longevity aspect of it definitely does make sense, having bad fish typically means a weak immune system only gets worse with age. I personally cant stand the thought of putting down fish anymore so i tend to just setup smaller systems for them to do their own thing until they pass or live on their own, I do have extra tanks laying around at least so I will probably just isolate them as a group instead of flat out killing them.

Today I will first shut off the UV, and dump water into the tank from the planted aquarium and see how they fare, if they decline and are unable to cope with the environment, I will just let it continue down the decline. If they live, that means they can at least live on their own and i will keep them like that and put them in the 30 or 40 gallon i have and sterilize the 60 gallon for new discus.

[jds1990]

That temp is too high try lower that temp down. It shouldn't not be 89 or 90.

[jds1990]

82 is recommended I leave mine at about 83.

[nc0gnet0]

.I do believe uv steriliser will kill everything good and bad bacteria in your tank which would require things like seachem discuss trace to replace trace elements.

This is wrong.

[kris2341]

That temp is too high try lower that temp down. It shouldn't not be 89 or 90.

The temperature actually was dropped back down to 86F once i got done medicating 2 weeks ago. I plan to lower it to 84F then 82F since more people say this is a better temp for caring for discus.


82 is recommended I leave mine at about 83.

my planted display tank is around here actually, the heater keeps it between 82F and 83F


Now since I pretty much made up my mind to get Hans' discus or Kenny's discus, all that's left to do now is play the waiting game to see if my fish die since that will decide whether or not I set up a 3rd tank from the ones in storage. This is only because I am unwilling to kill my own fish by my own hands, so I let nature decide the rest.

[DonMD]

Getting discus from hans is a great idea. However, do yourself a favor, don't mix the two fish from different sources, and if your thinking of getting fish from Hans, I might be inclined to cull the ones you have now, bleach the tank and sterilize everything before adding new fish.

-Rick


I kind of skimmed this but here is my thoughts.....I have seen this happen hundreds of times. Long story short.....you bought crappy discus that are carrying all sorts of nasty crap. You can spend a ton of money and try to cure them but some things cannot be cured. If you try you will probably spend 4 times the money to end up with some poor looking discus that you will not be happy with. I absolutely recommend killing these fish, bleaching everything, setting back up, and buying quality discus to start with. You will spend less money in the long run and will end up with healthy fish that could live for 10+ years instead of crap that will never make it past 2 or 4 at best. I make these recommendation because I like for people to be successful in the hobby. It is the only way we can grow it.

-john

These two comments are exactly right. I know because that has happened to me. I introduced sick fish into a planted tank, and after spending so much money and spending hours and hours reading and buying meds, I lost all the fish, plants, etc. Then I tore down everything, sterilized everything, threw away nets, sponges, filter media, etc. Expensive? Yes. But I was never going to save that situation. Now I have healthy fish, and I breed them and even sell them. Sometimes advice is hard to accept, especially if it's not what you want to hear, but there's no single pill you can put in your tank to fix things. Sorry for your problems. Good luck.

[kris2341]

These two comments are exactly right. I know because that has happened to me. I introduced sick fish into a planted tank, and after spending so much money and spending hours and hours reading and buying meds, I lost all the fish, plants, etc. Then I tore down everything, sterilized everything, threw away nets, sponges, filter media, etc. Expensive? Yes. But I was never going to save that situation. Now I have healthy fish, and I breed them and even sell them. Sometimes advice is hard to accept, especially if it's not what you want to hear, but there's no single pill you can put in your tank to fix things. Sorry for your problems. Good luck.

Yup, this is actually similar to a problem my dad had with Koi back when I was small, we had a large pond full of nice koi. An old man had a bunch of nice koi from a different supply and couldn't take care of them anymore, and asked my dad to take them off his hands; my dad took them and it all went downhill from there... some survived but others, not so much. The fish we have today are merely the survivors of that lot.

I just wish I had a sharper eye for discus as far as judging their health, but this place exists and does well in helping me compensate for that!

They LOOKED good, much better than the ones at local stores, but once i had them for awhile, things started happening.... oh well, time to start back at the beginning.

Actually, This isn't really starting back up from the beginning, i have more tank hardware, more meds, and a bit more knowledge so surely things will go better.

[jds1990]

Ask them to feed them. Look at the gills look at the color ask them to check the water quality to see what they're existing in as of then. Any signs of white feces is bad as well. Look at the eyes in the face and if they are large and take up a lot of space in their face they are stunted probably from being sick. Also check for the length of the bottom fins usually the longer they get vs the body the older the fish is. Also look for any kind of skin problems scales falling off etc. Good luck

[Quintin]

Hi mud.my mistake.could you clarify the uv steriliser issue for me as cant get strait answer regarding the good and bad bacteria.Thanx Q

[nc0gnet0]

Hi mud.my mistake.could you clarify the uv steriliser issue for me as cant get strait answer regarding the good and bad bacteria.Thanx Q


The only effect a UV sterilizer will have is on bacteria that is in the water column. In order for the UV to "sterilize" anything, it has to pass through the chamber to be exposed by the UV light. Seeing how good bacteria is residing in the filter, this will never happen.

[jds1990]

I run two uv sterilizers in my sump. Makes a big difference. Helps prevent some disease and I even noticed a decrease in algae growth which is great.

[doublediscusjack]

I kind of skimmed this but here is my thoughts.....I have seen this happen hundreds of times. Long story short.....you bought crappy discus that are carrying all sorts of nasty crap. You can spend a ton of money and try to cure them but some things cannot be cured. If you try you will probably spend 4 times the money to end up with some poor looking discus that you will not be happy with. I absolutely recommend killing these fish, bleaching everything, setting back up, and buying quality discus to start with. You will spend less money in the long run and will end up with healthy fish that could live for 10+ years instead of crap that will never make it past 2 or 4 at best. I make these recommendation because I like for people to be successful in the hobby. It is the only way we can grow it.
-john
__________________________________
I second this suggestion. When it comes to Discus, often a "good price" is not a good thing!