Discus losing colour

[Discusrite]

My orange discus (solid orange, no stress bar, a bit of peppering & slightly black on the fin) is losing colour. Last night it was only on the belly area, but this morning almost the whole of the fish is without it's colour. What could be wrong? It is my favourite fish, as it was the smallest when I bought the whole gang, but grew up nicely and by now bigger than most other fish.

[Carol_Roberts]

All other discus in the same tank are fine? Usually it's a poison like chlorine or fluke meds that make them lighter in color

[Discusrite]

Yeah all the others are fine. :(
I am not medicating them at all, and no problem with chlorine so far.
But I did remove all unnecessary things from my tank recently (4 days back). There was a driftwood, with crap and food trapped under it. Now the fish are more active and the tank is really clean. Everything seems to be better after that, except now the losing of colour part.

As a side note, I want to let others know that I have read and read and read a lot from this site and others, and I have concluded that the simplest discus tank is probably the best discus tank. Yet I cannot resist myself and set up all kinds of DIY filter. But daily mantainance is much much more difficult with all those crazy filters that I had. Now it's just a sponge filter and a sump, and a clean tank. I think it is a good advice, to keep your tank simple for daily mantainance. Harder to go wrong this way.

[discus_nw]

I've noted this in discus. It always ended in a dead discus. I suspect some sort of internal parasite, but have no idea what. I treated for internal bacterial infections as well as intestional worms. Never cured it in my fish in the 3 occurances I had over the years. They just continued to fade and wasted away. ???

[Beli]

Any suggestion im my case:
Discus (discus discus) turning totally black from time to time.

I have noticed he does that in following cases:
1. He is extremely happy, when taking food.
2. He is floating above and beside black driftwood (camoflage, I presume)

Is there some other cases? Why he goes black? His colour is light brown with turquese board on fins.

[Discusrite]

Maybe I was a bit over reacting last night....
The colouration of that particular discus is still the same, faded on the belly part. There was probably no increase in fading throughout the body as I reported yesterday. It still looks healthy though.

Beli, I know that discus do darken up when their surrounding is darker. Either they just change their colour or it is the light reflecting from them, I don't know. However, turning totally black, sounds like somthing is wrong.
I am just a beginner, the experts' opinions would be needed.

[Carol_Roberts]

Turning dark is only a good sign for adults with fry. When juveniles turn dark it usually means parasites or illness.

[M0oN]

Are you feeding the red base pigeon blood foods heavy in omega 3 fatty acids? Like shrimp, krill, colorbits etc.? Their colors can fade pretty heavily without some good color enhancing foods.

I've noticed from time to time one of my mandarin passions will fade out and shy away for a few hours of the day and then perk right back up and start eating again, I really can't figure it out for the life of me, but it's only happened once or twice.

Also one of my younger ocean green's will darken up for 5 or 10 minutes and then go light again when it's feeding time and stay that way for the rest of the day...

Maybe my fish are just drama queens?

[Discusrite]

They have Tetrabits 6 times a day. When I'm not working, beefheart mix and/or frozen bloodworms.