Dudley Eirich
08-02-2015, 12:51 PM
I had a bit of a scare yesterday evening with one of my juvenile fish that I want to share. I am a reasonably experienced discus fanatic, having kept discus off and on over a 40 year period of time, but I continue to make mistakes and learn from them. Over the 40 year period I have been growing out discus from quarter size to adulthood and enjoy doing so. I recently acquired some young discus to grow out and they are now about 3" in length. I have been feeding them frozen beef heart and alternating with with flake food. Along with the flake food I have have started to add some Tetrabits. I did so knowing that Tetrabits are notorious for causing bloat in certain susceptible discus. Knowing this fact, I have been watching for signs of bloat. Up until yesterday, there were no indications that the Tetrabits were a problem. Last night I fed the fish right before going to a movie and was gone for about three hours. When I returned, one of the juveniles was swimming erratically and looked like he had swallowed a marble, a sure sign of bloat. The erratic swimming was so bad that I seriously thought about euthanizing it. It was doing head standing, swimming sideways and even floated to the top one time and was upside down. However, I decided to give epsom salts a try. I have had fish with bloat on previous occasions, and treating with epsom salts worked well, but I never had a fish exhibiting such extreme symptoms. I added epsom salts at 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons and, since it was late, turned out the light, went to bed and prayed for the best for that fish. Amazingly when I woke up in the morning, all fish were alert, swimming upright, and waiting for their first meal of the day. Lessons learned: 1) I am removing Tetrabits from my feeding routine until they get closer to adult size. Even then, I am going to soak them for a bit before adding to the tank. 2) Don't give up on a fish just because they seem seriously distressed, especially with bloat. I have even rescued and resusitated a fish that had jumped out of a tank and found it laying on its side with the up-side dried to the touch. 3) Epsom salts does work wonders for bloat. If you find one of your fish that looks like it swallowed a marble, epsom salts is worth a try. It is a pretty safe treatment to use.