Cart before the horse

[Jerry]

I guess this is a story of old. I have had fish since I was little and even had discus along time ago. Although I had never had problems with them and had them for many years. Through time I have had many other fish and after twenty years I saw some Discus in a store. Yes I succumbed to buying store bought.

Anyway I sold all the fish that I had and bought eight discus. In the three inch range. Yes as you guess I got them when I was not ready. No RO setup. No age water setup, etc. Why I never had it years ago why should I need it now. You guessed it again. I have problems.

The fish looked great for the first two weeks the water test all good 6.0 ph – 50 ppm GH and KH. No ammo or nitrates all looks good. Temp at 86’. The fish will only eat worms. I assume they are black worms not tubes. The store wasn’t sure what kink they were.

Lately they are getting flighty and showing some darkening of color, but not black. Even though they are eating ravenously, I know this means they aren’t feeling well I was making vigilant watches for any changes in behavior. More and more they are becoming reclusive and some times darting through the tank only to be quivering upside down in the bottom of the tank. They seem to recover in a few hours. Tonight one just died.

Any suggestions on what I can do other than watch them die. I am setting up a bare tank with a sponge filter but only have straight tap to fill it with at 7.0 ph and 170 GH. HELP!!! ???

[Carol_Roberts]

A pH of 7.0 and moderately hard water are fine. Much better than lowering the pH with acid.

Ammonia and nitrIte are zero? How often are you changing water and how much? What is the pH of the new water and the tank water?

Do you have chloramines in your water?

[Jerry]

Hi Carol

i have a 150 gal tank and change 40 gal every other day with tap water the same temp as the tank. there are no detectable cloramines. like i say the test come out all good.

i now have two albino corys kick the bucket. i've never had this happen before.

jerry

[Jerry]

Oh ya. the ph of the tap is 7.0 and the tank is 6.0.

The tank has a gravel substrate and a lot of plants. I was wondering about too much TDS.

When I put the worms in the tank I put them in a bowl and lower it in the tank. The discus have been swimming up and pecking at my arm and then dashing into the bowl before I could set it down. Some still do but others are now very skittish. Also they have always fought and body slapped each other when feeding. Is this normal also? When I had discus before they never did this, at least to this extent.

Carol thanks for taking the time to answer my post. your cool.

[Ardan]

Hi and Welcome,
I think I would start aging the water overnight for wc's. use a rubbermaid garbage can with an airstone and a heater.
this will stabalize the ph.

I would also try another test kit for ammonia/nitrite, just to double check. Corys are very sensitive to ammonia/nitrite.


hth

[Carol_Roberts]

How are you making the tank pH 6.0?

[Jerry]

Carol.

i'm not doing anything to bring down the ph. thats just where it runs. when i use to be into Rainbows heavy i used coral in my tanks to keep the ph and hardness high.

[CARY_GLdiscus]

Nice ;)

[Jerry]

The tank has two 200 watt heaters and two aquaclear 500 filters.

also has 45 Cardinal tetras. in this picture he looks like he has big eyes but they are not realy that big. bad picture.

[Carol_Roberts]

If the cardinals are healthy probably not water quality. Your water must be soft for the pH to drop like that, so if tds is high it must be from salt or disolved food. Added any new fish or plants?

[Jerry]

The only thing added was three new discus. They seem the Healthiest of all. They are starting to act timid now.

I've been reading the posts on water quality and am planning on setting up a Ro sys. and storage tank beside the big one. I'll build it into a cabinet so I don't just have this garbage can setting in my livingroom. I'm also going to plum PVC through the floor into the basement so I don't have to carry any more buckets than I have to. Lazy I guess.

Now I was wondering if the worms I've been feeding are infact Tubes and not black if I could have gotten some funky bacterial thing going on since they are building up a colony in the gravel. I find them when I vac the gravel.

[Jerry]

I'm wondering what you think about doing a Metronidasole treatment

[Haywire]

Hmm,

I have similar problems I honestly think it's got something to do with the amount of hiding spaces. Every juvenile I've ever had came from bare tanks, put them into my planted tanks, even my semi-bare tanks and they go into hiding after a certian amount of time.

Cardinals are good indicator fish for my discus as well, however, I find that sometimes the cardinals are hardier than my discus, best I've found so far are cardinals and rummy nose in combo work like a continuous monitoring system.

[Ardan]

Its possible that the worms hide in the gravel and die and start to decompose and then the fish find them and eat them. Bacterial.
I use to have gravel with feeding worms and noticed this problem.

Now, no more gravel.
Maybe it is the type of worm too.

hth

[Carol_Roberts]

When did you add the three new discus? Did you quarantine them?

[Jerry]

TEXT
I thought about the hiding thing but the fish have been so nonchalant about my presence have always eagerly came to my hand and arm when feeding time.

I also thought the cardinals would be a good indicator that something is wrong.

TEXT

I think I fear the same thing has happened with the worms and gravel. When I had discus as a little kid, I had very little gravel in the tank. You know my allowance wasn’t much then, so I had to make do with what I could. Any way I think they could get to the worms better. I guess more is not always better.

TEXT

The new discus have been in the tank for a little over a week. That was after a two-week quarantine.
:-\

[Ardan]

A lot of folks quarantine for 6 wks.
Is it the new discus dying or the old discus?
Some discus can be immune to certain diseases while others can be infected from them.

[Tristanyyz]

Is anyone opposed to recommending the following?

Turn up your temperature to 33-34 Celcius, get a good quality 3-digit digital thermometer to be sure your water is exactly where it should be, temperature wise...also add salt, 2tbs/10 gallons...

High temperature will help lots of things...the salt may calm them down a bit.

Anyone have an objection to this advice?
Michael

[Carol_Roberts]

IF bacterial problem high heat may make worse. IF parasite high heat and salt are very good.

[Jerry]

I usually don’t ad much salt to my tanks but I did try this at 2 tbs per 10 gal. The discus that were looking great started getting skittish and the ones that were slightly on the dark side (with in ten minutes) started darting around the tank. Then turned real pale and were quivering nose down at the bottom of the tank. i thought that this is it and they would be dead but after about 20 min they would be still alive and back to hiding.

[Carol_Roberts]

Do you have a whole house water softener?

[Jerry]

Hi carol.

No water softener.

I set up a tank and kept it bare. Moved one of the fish I have that looks stunted. This fish looks somewhat beat up from darting around the tank. At least I think so. It has some wounds on the head reminiscent of HITH. Although I’m not sure that’s what it is. It came on so suddenly. Water was straight from the tap and aged in the tank for a day. Did not monkey with water chemistry at all.

At present I am setting up a can in the corner of the room to age water as suggested and can pump it into tanks for WC’s

jerry

[Carol_Roberts]

I've just reread this thread and can't think of any thing else to check. If they continue to get sick and cardinals are healthy then it isn't the water, but something specific to the discus.