tail getting long

[Roger Huey]

anyoone else noticed discus all of a sudden over a month or so with discus growing tail that are long and almost like fantail.These are unrelated discus.Even in adults.If you look at it closely you can see where the original stopped.

[RickMay1]

Something like this?

[RickMay1]

I’m guessing your feeding beef heart. The short answer is its your beef heart. Throw our what you got because its loaded with crap that the cattle farmers feed their cows to get faster growth.

[RickMay1]

last one.

[Roger Huey]

thai is the exact same.It really throws off the overall effect of the fish visually.At first I thought it was just me until I looked at old photo of same fish.I will stop the beefheart.Any other suggestions.Will the tail resort back to original.I really want to trim the excess" just kidding"

[RickMay1]

Don’t stop the BH, just mix up a new batch, and get rid of the mix you have now. When I had these fish, in 2002, their was a lot of discussion going on simply or one of the forums about Hormones in the beef heart. I thought it was a bunch of hogwash so I set out to prove that the hormones in beef wasn’t a problem, The beef heart I used for the batch that these discus ate was Known to have been given hormones, straight from the farmers mouth. I disproved my theory that the hormones wouldn’t affect the fish…..

Up to the point of my experiment I had been getting my beef heart form a small packing plant that specialized in local grown beef. The heart that resulted in the fin growth was from cattle that were fed in a feed lot and sold to large retail chains, like wal-marts. I never had problems when the beef heart was coming form the smaller packing plant, only when the beef came from feedlots.

Hope this helps,

[kaceyo]

That is really wild. I've never seen that much extra growth on discus fins except on the "Bat" discus which, I assume, is bred into them and not injected. I wonder if it might be caused by a particuler type of growth hormone rather than all growth hormones, otherwise the abnormal fin growth would be much more widespread? Or perhaps it's caused by what amounts to overdosing the cattle on growth hormones.
Some people believe that "trailers" are caused by feeding hormoned beef to our fish.
Makes me wonder what that stuff is doing to us???

Kacey

[aquagal]

I would venture to say that most discus keepers out there ARE feeding beef with hormones since most of our country's beef supply is unfortunately from feedlots and therefore given hormones (and who knows what else). So hormone-free discus could really only apply to those breeders/keepers who go out of there way to find hormone-free beef. You would think more discus would develop this strange extra finnage since the prevailing trend seems to be to feed beef heart. I do NOT feed my fish beef products of any kind and they are growing out very nicely.

[RickMay1]

That’s the way I looked it also, but I tried to keep my process as “scientific” as I could. The Tank I didn’t feed this BH mix did not show any of the extra finage. Both tanks were getting the same water, same foods (other than the BH) so the only variable would be the BH. It could be that the Heart was “Very Fresh” IE I got it from the plant inspector, or it could be something else this particular cow had given to it. I don’t know, but I know when I switched back to the Normal BH mix, the extra finage began to fray and fall off and wasn’t replaced, this process did take about 3 months.

[kaceyo]

I do NOT feed my fish beef products of any kind and they are growing out very nicely.

Do your fish ever grow trailers?

Kacey

[RickMay1]

no, none of my fish have grown "trailers" "

[Roger Huey]

does stopping the beefheart lead to return of normal finnage?I think it really makes them look worse than the normal discus.

[tdr1919]

Wow, maybe one day we will have range free discus! LOL

Tom

[RickMay1]

does stopping the beefheart lead to return of normal finnage?I think it really makes them look worse than the normal discus.

Yes but it takes about three months, and the fins look horrible because the extra fin breaks up and look frayed.

[BSW]

Roger -
Have you seen this thread ?
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?t=27044&highlight=trimming+fins
I'd be about a chicken butt to do it, but obviously it worked.
I've had other fish, an Oscar to be specific, recover from fin damage, that did the samething. He looked like a Fantail Oscar the rest of his life.
B