How to increase appetite?

[nicholas]

Hi everyone,

Have a minor problem here and would like to get some good and useful help here.

Recently I bought some discus (3.5-4 inches) last friday from Singapore and they are healthy. But the problem is that they don't seemed to eat as much as they do right now compared to when they were quarantined during the first few days. I fed them twice for the first 2-3 days, and they devour the frozen bloodworms (2 cubes). I wouldn't say that they have poor appetite, but its just that they don't seemed to eat as much as they do. I feed them 3-4 times a day from Day 4 onwards.

When I founded out that some of them had gill flukes, I shifted them twice to from one tank to another (both tanks are more than 3 years old, clean (disinfected before) and with fresh water) to reduce the infection.
Here's a chronology of the event:

1)Day 3 : Quarantined them in tank A (they have been
there since Day 1)and 2 table spoon of salt
and 2ml of malachite green was added into the
water. (No malachite green on Day 1-2)
2)Day 4 : Move them to Tank B for a day (while I disinfect
Tank A). 2 table spoon of salt and 2 ml of
malachite green added too.
3)Day 5 : Move them to Tank A again, with the same
treatment. After this, no more tranferring.

Note : The breeder that sold the fishes to me instruct me to add 2-3 table spoon of salt only from Day 1 to Day 3.

It worked but was wondering if transfering them from one tank to another makes them timid, which directly decreases their appetite? I noticed that their appetite degraded after the 2nd shift back to Tank A. They still eat but not much.

The other thing was the water changes. I siphoned 90% of the water from the tank and the fishes seemed to get startled and started dashing around. I have a hunch they are not used to it. And these fishes are used to tap water (that's what they do in singapore) and I used tap water treated with Aquaplus, and let them age for at least a day.

Was wondering how long does it take for them to pick up their appetite again? They have been around for less than a week. Another breeder advised me to increase temperature to 32 degrees celsius (there's no heater in the tank from Day 1 to Day 6. Just installed a heater last night), and stop feeding them for a day. This is to increase their appetite. And once they start eating like mad, gradually increase their food intake.

Any great advice are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Nicholas

[BlueTurquoise]

Hi Nicholas! Welcome to Simply Discus!

Where do we start? lets see...

Firstly are your filters matured? if not you may have water perameter problems regarding ammonia and or nitrites etc. I would look into that first thing.

Secondly I would treat them for gill flukes if that is what it is. How did you come to the conclusion that they have gill flukes? breathing hard can be a combination of many things such as excitement/stress as well as fluctuating water perameters. If they are indeed gill fluke then this diminishes their appetite severely...

You say they are quite timid when moving from one tank to another, and after 90% water change. In my opinion 50% water change is sufficient. What happens is when you do large changes or move them from tank to tank they may be going through a PH shock (large change in PH).

Are you storing and aerating your water before using it to change water? I suggest you do. This allows the water stabilise in PH overnight and will be easier on them after a change.

How long have you had the fish? some fish after being taken home can get quite stressed and it may take them 2-3 weeks to get over it and be happy again. The key is stabilty. Change 40-50% water everyday with stable, aged water and continue this without a miss for 2-3 weeks, they should bounce back and be hungry again.

The other technique to increase appetite is introducing competition. Can I ask how many fish you have? The more fish there are the more competition there is for food. 6-8 minimum is a good number of fish. The technique involves feeding them very little food, often rather than lots of food, seldom. Feed them a small amount of blood worms or dry foods, enough so that they can finish it up in around 5-10 secs (or in a very short amount of time). Do this 8-20 times a day or as often as you can or until all their bellies are full and swolen. What happens is that this provokes their natural competative nature. When there is a small amount of food, they will be more competative for it and will really fight hard to get a mouthful of food. After awhile they will be used to competing over food and whatever you put into the tank will be wildly competed for and finished up in 10 secs flat! (or around 30secs or less). To do this you must feed them very little amounts, but do it often (20-30 mins between each feeding).

Small Tip: With Hikari Blood Worms I refer the plate version rather than the block version becuase you can control how small or how large or of a proportion to give them by breaking off a peice.

The other thing is to try to vary their diet as much as you can. I love KFC, but if ate it day in day out, every day of the week I would really lose my appetite!!! same with the fish. Try to introduce them slowly to different foods like flake foods (HBH, Ocean Nutrition Formula 1, Omega One) and pellets (Tetra Bits) as well as blood worms, frozen brine shrimp and ultimately deefheart mix (mmm :D ).

If you use the above technique, pretty soon what you will find is that any food that gets put into the tank will be gobbled up as they are too busy competing for the food to worry about what is being offered to them, well that is the theory anyway ;D . It is best to start when they are young, the older they get, the more picky they become.

I hope that helps out abit!

[BlueTurquoise]

One other things regarding salt: it is good for stress. Salt also neutralises Ammonia (of present in the water) and overall allows them to recover from stress and is also a mild anti-bacterial.

I have found salt to be totally useless against gill flukes, even at 10 tablespoons per 10 galon short term dip, that is my experience. Potassium dip has worked well for me though on very bad gill fluke cases.