Still Two Sick Discus

[kebanos7cs]

Around the beginning of February.. I had noticed that many of the discus had cloudy eyes. I checked the water and found for some reason that the ammonia/nitrate level spiked up. I quickly did a large water change and within' a day or two, both of those levels had gone back to normal. I also immediatley began treating the tank with meds. I first started out with Furan-2 tablets. I full dosed the tank for almost 1 and a half to 2 weeks straight. After that time I did notice that a couple of them did get better.. but the two that had it the worse still had very cloudy looking eyes. I then switched over to Fungus-Clear tablets. I full dosed the tank for another week and found no improvements after that week. I have now taken the two out of the tank and moved them to a 20 gallon QT tank. I spoke to the LFS and he suggested using EM. I started them on that and it has now been about a week. I am now starting the second week of the EM and still see that their eyes are cloudy and discolored. Their eyes are not only cloudy now, but also have little blotches of red inside the lens. (I don't know if this is blood or not) They have looked this way for about three weeks now (since during the middle of the Furan-2 medication period)

At this point I am continuing the EM medication. One of them I know for sure is eating on his own... the other I haven't seen eat by himself yet.... and STILL their eyes still don't look like they are normal. It been over a month now of straight medicating and they still look like this...

Is this the way that they are going to look from now on?

If their eyes still look this way, are they still infected and moving them back into the main tank could spread the infection to the others?

I really miss these two guys in the big main tank... but not enough to possibly infect the whole tank again. Should I keep on this EM medication? Is it even possible for their eyes to return back to normal even after it being a little over a month now?

What should I do?

[kebanos7cs]

Update:

I just got home from work and I put in a cube of frozen bloodworms in their worm cup. I sat back and waited to see which of the two were eating. Turns out that BOTH are eating! Although it takes them a bit longer to find the food.. I guess because of thier impaired eye sight now. So moving them back into the main tank might not be the best idea because they may never get to the food in time before the others do. Anyone agree with that?

Anyways, the above post was my story as of last week and I am still medicating the tank with EM and altough they do seem much more active and like I said, they are both eating.. the Royal Blue has one eye that looks still bad.. and the Blue Diamond seems to have both eyes that don't seem good either...

Please anyone help me with this... it truly breaks my heart to see my fish like this.

[pcsb23]

My first question is why are you treating at all?? You identified that there was an ammonia spike, what caused that?? However water changes dealt with that and I would have left it there and observed for a few days whilst keeping up with the w/c's. I would stop the EM treatment (whatever EM is, I'm guessing Ethromycin (sp)) and do several large w/c over the next few days and see how they look then.

Water quality is the main cause of disease/illness in discus, keep the water quality high, by doing regular and frequent water changes.

[kebanos7cs]

My first question is why are you treating at all?? You identified that there was an ammonia spike, what caused that?? However water changes dealt with that and I would have left it there and observed for a few days whilst keeping up with the w/c's. I would stop the EM treatment (whatever EM is, I'm guessing Ethromycin (sp)) and do several large w/c over the next few days and see how they look then.

Water quality is the main cause of disease/illness in discus, keep the water quality high, by doing regular and frequent water changes.

I'm treating because they have what looks like to be a bacteria invasion in their eyes... (At least thats what I have been told by the LFS) at some point they also got "Pop Eye" which is starting to go down now.. but their eyes still look discolored and blotchy with red in them. I know that they have the red outlined around the eye, but now the red is blotched all over the eye.

I have heard that when it starts with cloudy eyes, the thing to do is start making a lot of water changes and that usually will help/cure the problem. After making a bunch of water changes, it did help with the cloudy eyes (and of course made the ammonia and nitrate spike no more) but the ones that went beyond just cloudy eyes already had some sort of infection, so thats what I'm trying to medicate for now.

[pcsb23]

mmm, I think I would still give them a break from the meds, you have been treating them for over a month with a variety of meds. The problem may not be bacterial at all and may be related to nematodes, which the anti-biotics won't deal with. I say "may" because I'm not certain and the water quality will be compromised with all the meds in. Give them 3 or 4 days without meds and just good clean water, do at least 50% w/c a day if you can and if possible use aged water, if not make sure you use a suitable dechlor. Feed lightly for this period.

[kebanos7cs]

I got some pictures of the Blue Diamond in question. The tankmate that is also sick is a royal blue.. (I couldn't get a good close-up picture of him but his eye is basically in the same shape.. only just one of his eyes looks like this) This is the way that their eyes have looked for quite sometime now.. i'm wondering if this is permanent.

Any thoughts?


Kevin

[pcsb23]

The damage to its eyes looks permanent to me, I have not seen damage that bad before.