jwcarlson
05-11-2022, 10:40 AM
I've been "fighting" a couple of discus that just don't seem to want to eat. There doesn't appear to be any appreciable bullying or anything going on. Following advice here and elsewhere, I've brought the temp up to 92 and that seemed to get the two major hold out eating. Over the course of the last 2 or 3 weeks I've brought it down to 87 as of a few days ago and now it seems like they're eating maybe half of what they were before. In their defense, they got levamisole on April 29th. It didn't seem to slow down their eating at the time, but it was still about 90 in the tank at that time. I bumped the controller back up to 89 this morning.
Their first chunk of beef heart is barely touched until some time later they'll start after it.
These have been growing out with me from 2.5" since February 15. Are they getting to a size where they're going to start slowing down on food consumption? I've not had discus before so I don't know what to expect in that regard. But they've been doing something like four or five beef cubes (roughly 3/4" cubes) per day and 2-3 black worm cubes per day. Now they're maybe eating most of two beef heart cubes and one worm cube and there is always worm left at nightly water change. They do get a little sprinkling of vibrabites and discus biogold after water change. The two runts are about 3". Six of the other 7 are >4" and one middle one that's probably 3.75".
Further... the smaller two simply do not eat unless it's 90. I really don't know what to do with them. They were both going OK, but then they dropped back out again. Trying to balance what I should do with water temp vs what is best for the greater number of fish. I know temperature shortens life overall for most fish. I've seen a bunch of you discus folks who say they keep them at 82 and I'm not sure mine would even move at that temperature. Or is there just a very long transition period that I'm not used to seeing. Seems like they pick up pretty quick at warmer temps, but as soon as it's a couple degrees below 90 they turn into lumps.
Any experiences to share based on what I'm seeing? I've been toying around with getting a little school of tetras to add. Any idea if that could help the two smaller ones start to eat more? Possibly spreading aggression to the dither fish vs the smaller discus, maybe? Sometimes I see the smaller ones "boss" around the biggest ones in the tank and very rarely ever see the smaller ones get messed with. They just kind of hang back.
Their first chunk of beef heart is barely touched until some time later they'll start after it.
These have been growing out with me from 2.5" since February 15. Are they getting to a size where they're going to start slowing down on food consumption? I've not had discus before so I don't know what to expect in that regard. But they've been doing something like four or five beef cubes (roughly 3/4" cubes) per day and 2-3 black worm cubes per day. Now they're maybe eating most of two beef heart cubes and one worm cube and there is always worm left at nightly water change. They do get a little sprinkling of vibrabites and discus biogold after water change. The two runts are about 3". Six of the other 7 are >4" and one middle one that's probably 3.75".
Further... the smaller two simply do not eat unless it's 90. I really don't know what to do with them. They were both going OK, but then they dropped back out again. Trying to balance what I should do with water temp vs what is best for the greater number of fish. I know temperature shortens life overall for most fish. I've seen a bunch of you discus folks who say they keep them at 82 and I'm not sure mine would even move at that temperature. Or is there just a very long transition period that I'm not used to seeing. Seems like they pick up pretty quick at warmer temps, but as soon as it's a couple degrees below 90 they turn into lumps.
Any experiences to share based on what I'm seeing? I've been toying around with getting a little school of tetras to add. Any idea if that could help the two smaller ones start to eat more? Possibly spreading aggression to the dither fish vs the smaller discus, maybe? Sometimes I see the smaller ones "boss" around the biggest ones in the tank and very rarely ever see the smaller ones get messed with. They just kind of hang back.