Discus quarantine necessary with medicines or not

[ganesan]

Is it necessary to use meds like tetracycline and pp bath for fin rot and gill flukes and crushed metronidazole tablet for intestinal parasites even if your new bought discus dont show any signs of sickness or we need to treat them whether they show signs or not.
Secondly suppose we feed discus only flakes, tetra bits,hikari biogold and never feed them with live worms or heart mix do we still have to deworm them every 4 months or so as some say..
What seachem medications and api medications including seachem prime, stabilty, trace, api stress coat, api stress zyme and another medicine called prazipro are available in lfs near my home. Are these good. Also melafix and primafix,api general cure,furan and maracyn are available. Which of these are handy and necessary and highly valuable for discus keepers. Another question is in marine fish keeping there are external uv gadgets fixed close to the aquarium through which aquarium water is circulated which kills germs,bacteria. Will this kind of external uv setup help discus from getting ill with white spots,fin rots,gill flukes etc
any answers...

[jeep]

The only meds I use during the initial QT is Prazi for flukes or tapeworm, and levamisole for roundworms or capillaria. Once done successfully you should not have to worm them again unless you expose them to parasites. Companies that suggest worming every month or 4 months are just targeting repeat sales because worms don't spontaneously appear out of nowhere.

Melafix and Pimafix are a waste of money. Prime is not a med, it's a water conditioner and is excellent for detoxifying heavy metals and neutralizing chloramines if present in your water supply. It also neutralizes chlorine. General Cure is ok if you can't find pure meds, as well as Furan 2 and Maracyn and Prazipro. Pure meds are preferable but becoming hard to find these days, and almost impossible outside the USA. The rest of what you mention isn't really needed. The best med is lots of clean aged water!

You can determine the need for the rest of the gadgets as you become familiar with the basics of discus keeping - Clean water and stabile PH!!

[ganesan]

Thanks for your reply, more and more clean water is the best way to go