Tank bred discus and wild caught cardinals (or wild caught anything from the Amazon)

[kris2341]

Hey guys, a thought just came to mind as far as the fish I currently have.

In my display tank, a heavily planted 95 gallon hexagon tank, I have 20 GBRs, 8 sterbai cories, and around 20 cardinal tetras that were supposedly wild caught.

now, I quarantined them for a few weeks and ran them on seachem paraguard before i introduced them and all my tank inhabitants are doing well but is it possible that that have any pathogens that would be harmful to discus that come from a tank raised environment?

Is the risk exceedingly high?

[DISCUS STU]

I think most if not all the Cardinals may be wild caught. I've kept them with Discus for years, after quarantine, and haven't noticed any problems that I can trace back to them affecting my Discus. I treat with Praziquantal and Metronidazole in quarantine but it varies from person to person.

I don't know if certain disease issues are more specific to wild or domestic fish, I only know that everything has to go into quarantine, which for various reasons seems to be more common with Discus keepers than people keeping other types of fish. I've had too many wipeouts when I haven't done this or done it correctly. Wild or domestic, many of the fish go into wholesaler's group systems where everything can be transmitted between each other.

[John_Nicholson]

Any fish can give any other fish stuff. but with proper QT I would not worry about it to much. If I had a planted discus tank there would be cardinals in it.

On a side note....you can now get tank bred cardinals. One of my buddy owns a LFS and he has been getting them in. The only difference that I can see is the tank bred ones are far less likely to die. Of the 40 or so that we got I think only one has died.

-john

[kris2341]

Good to know! With all my troubles, I was concerned that wild cardinals might be carrying some potential killer of discus that tank bred fish had no exposure to.