Help! Dark color, white spots etc.

[IrieDiscus]

Help guys, i've got a discus thats not looking too well at all.

Here are the symtoms:

Darkened color, disfunctional left gill, white spots on body and fin, loss of appetite.

Water Parameters:
Ph=6.0
GH=300
KH=53
Nitrite=0
Ammonia=6ppm (shot way up, obvious prob, here have started a daily 25% WC)


Tank Parameters:
60 gallons
82 Degrees F
gravel substrate
mixture of a few live and plastic plants

Filter Type
Aquaclear Hanging box
air stone

Lighting:
2 x 40Watt flourescent


Diet:
Beef Heart
Flakes
Freeze dried blood worms
type of food rotated, fed twice per day

No other occupants but discus
8 Discus in tank
Approx 1 1/2 yars old, have had them more than a year.

Fish only started showing minor symtoms yesterday, but has really looked a lot worse this evening. Just noticed that the left gill is hardly being used and that the white spots seem to have increased. Have also noticed him spasm (contact all fins rapidly) occassionally. None of the other 7 fish show any signs of problems.

[brewmaster15]

Hi,
First thought for you... 6ppm ammonia alone will cause much of what you are seeing. 25% daily won't help that..Ammonia should always be 0ppm if your biofilter is working. Have you recently cleaned it?

My advise...75-80% 1-2 a day to remove the ammonia. MY guess is there rotting beef heart in the gravel.

Alleviate the stress on the fish by improving the water quality. You can also add 2 Tablespoons salt.10 gal to the tank to ease the stress.

Then you'll be sure that the cause is not water quality. Some discus deal with water quality poorly.


also bring your tank temp up to high 80's to stimluate eating.

hth,
al

[Carol_Roberts]

Al is right. You need to do water changes until the ammonia is at zero. You may have to change 50% water 2 or 3 times per day until your filter kicks back in. Do you have a way to heat and age (circulate) 4o gallons of water for water changes?

Feed very sparingly during this time.

Do you know what happened to your bio filter?

[IrieDiscus]

Thatnks for the advice. I've done one 50% water change so far and also added an ammonia absorber to the filter. Living in Jamaica has advantage in terms of water temperature, 82 degrees is about normal for the water in the pipes here. Ammonia concentration has not dropped that significantly yet, but i will do another 50% change later and see. i've also added one tablespoon of salt per 10 gallons. Using a heater to bring the temp up to about 86.

The cause of the ammonia surge, well i'd forgotten that i had a couple of pretty large snails in the tank. Had not seen them in a while, now i know now, they were quite dead and decomposing! Added to this was the fact that the sponge used in the filter was filthy (did not suspect this before as water was flowing quite well through the filter, just not through the sponge but over it).

The particular fish in question still looks prety sick, but once i get the water condition under control then we'll see how it goes.

[sumptnfshy]

Just a thought but your water may already have ammonia in it, which is ok but when you use an ammonia absorber your water will still test for it at the same levels. Even though the ammonia is now bound and harmless it will still show up. :)

[CARY_GLdiscus]

Good Advise from Brew,

I would also check all Your filters and maybe clean them out a little to lower Your bioload. It may be to High and will only leak back into Your clean water.

HTH
TakeCare,
Cary Gld!