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View Full Version : Velvet? Ick? Please help!



mellysalz
05-06-2018, 02:00 PM
Hi everyone! I am new to this forum, and although I've been in the fish hobby for several years, I am new to keeping discus.

I recently received several discus via mail, and noticed that one of them appeared as though its body was literally made of velvet, which is why I immediately started looking up symptoms of velvet. I have no experience with this disease. However, after a lot of online research, none of the pictures I found were similar to my fish, so I am unsure of what to do. It is behaving normally and eating well... no shaking, scraping/scratching along tank items/decor, or hiding... but I want to treat ASAP if needed before he/she starts turning dark/gasping for air at the surface of the tank. None of the other fish look like this, but one other fish I saw has 3 spots on the tail fin and one on the dorsal fin which from my experience definitely appears to be ich... but he (or she) too is behaving normally.

I uploaded 2 pictures of the "velvety" discus. It is hard to capture the velvet appearance in a photo, but it definitely appears velvety while swimming. I also added a photo of the discus that appears to have ich. Please let me know what you think...

For now, I've decided to raise the temp. Temp was 84, I am gradually in the process of raising it up to 90... And water parameters all check out fine. PH is approx 6.4.

Thanks in advance for any info/advice!

mellysalz
05-06-2018, 02:13 PM
PS... In case you can't tell in the photo... that is a fake plant. I have a bare bottom tank for easy cleaning, but felt that the discus needed something in there to make it feel less bare/stark (and the discus actually all immediately responded positively to the fake plants!). Also they are both approx 4 inches... at least that's the size I paid for, but the one in the last photo is slightly larger than the blue "velvety" one.