Fish might not be getting enough food

[cc_woman]

Currently I have 6 3-4" discus in a 90 gallon tank. I feed them flakes in the morning, pellets when I get home from work, and I normally try to squeeze in 1 or 2 more feedings before bed. I feed them at least one type of frozen food a day of either brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, bloodworms, sanfransisco bay brand cichlid delight, or ocean nutrition discus formula.

The problem I am facing is a couple of my discus are getting skinny, and when I feed them the dominant 2 discus of the tank seem to chase all the others away from the food. I even try to drop food in different areas of the tank, but the dom one chases them to the top of the tank. I am worried my other discus might not be getting enough to eat. What can I do about this?

[Mike_Murry]

How long have they be in the tank together???
Mike

[cc_woman]

The most dom one which I think could be a male, he seems to like the largest discus I have in there and won't chase her. I have had my red turquoise (bully) for about 10 mths now, and I have 4 wild caught rio puru "blues", and one small hybrid whos not doing so great. The wild caughts I got back in october, and the littlest one a friend brought me in December. There are 4 of them that still have great thickness to them, but one wild and the littlest guy seem to be getting fairly skinny and are being chased away (and quite aggressively). I see them eat, flakes since they float down slower, but most other foods sink straight to the bottom where the dom fish won't let them go.

[Mike_Murry]

You may try moving those two to a different tank... Just in case it's not the other fish keeping them from eating... If that's all it is they should fatten back up... If not they my be getting sick... In witch case you would wat them away from the others anyway...

I'm still very new a keeping these guys so If I'm off on this someone else please jump in...
Mike

[cc_woman]

Thanks Mike, unfortunately the only spare tank I have is a 20 long which is going to be used as of sunday for a QT tank for 2 new discus I am getting. All my other spare tanks have fry or juvies I am trying to get rid of.

[hedut]

the easy one add more food:D cause each discus have deferent appetite:D

[ShinShin]

If you move the other fish away from the dominat , a new pecking order will take form, and again you'll have a discus getting harrassed.

Am I redaing this right, you have discus for 10 months and they are 3-4' long? How large are the wilds? How long have you had them?

Mat

[rickztahone]

i agree with Hedut. alsk if you have any deco in your tank you might want to move it around to see if this changes the pecking order. last resort what you can do is section the bully off with a divider for a few hours to see if it helps at all

HTH

[ShinShin]

Rearranging decorations is a total myth in these situations. The strongest discus will be the dominant discus, no matter where the rocks or wood or plants are.

Mat

[Dutch dude]

One of my discus is also chased around most of the time. Normally not a real problem but during feeding he also receives a smaller part of the foods becouse he is chased away. I compensate by feeding this particular fish by hand. Not all the time becouse imo he should try to claim his spot in the tank, but I do hand feed him extra bloodworms once a day. Since I do the extra hand feed he stands up more often to the other fish and appears more active. This fish never have been skinny but his size is 1/2 inch smaller. I also divide the food along the front of the tank so every fish does have the chance to get a good amount of the food. I will stop the hand feeding when the fish are at full size in abouth 6 months or so.

[cc_woman]

If you move the other fish away from the dominat , a new pecking order will take form, and again you'll have a discus getting harrassed.

Am I redaing this right, you have discus for 10 months and they are 3-4' long? How large are the wilds? How long have you had them?

Mat

I figured so, and since discus like to be in groups I guess if I cut that group to 4 it could cause even more problems. I get what you're saying. I think it's been about 10 mths since I got him, maybe less. I got him when he was shy of 2", sometime in the spring. He doesn't seem to be stunted, so I don't know if he is growing slowly or if that's normal. He is the only discus that had survived my first rough 6 mths of keeping discus, and I used to only feed them 2x a day, which could be why he hadn't grown as quickly. I will get a picture of him and you can tell me if he looks stunted or not.

The other discus I have are 4 wc and I have had them since the end of october, they were at least 1/2" smaller when I got them, so they have grown. My smallest discus I got at the end of December, he has also grown maybe 1/4-1/2" since I got him. I am having difficulties mostly with my smallest discus and one of my wc. I do try to spread the food across the tank, the filter outtakes seem to push it to more of a central location, and even when the dom fish sees the others on the other side of the tank, he will actually swim over to the other side and chase them into the plants. He really bullies all of them but 1, which I am thinking they are forming a pair. Even not at feeding time he gets pretty aggressive with the others. I am hoping once I get 2 more, after they are in QT and go into the main tank, it will help decrease any aggression.

[cc_woman]

I got pics of my dominant red turquoise discus, and the wc that he seems to be forming a pair with. I don't know if he is stunted at all, but if he is I wouldn't mind knowing if he is. Looking closer at them, he might be closer to 4.5" in size. If he is stunted, I don't mind as long as he's healthy thats all I care about.

Dom discus
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/039.jpg
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/037-2.jpg

Wc discus
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/033.jpg

[mikel]

The 2nd fish is definitely stunted, with huge eyes. The first is better, but I am not sure how old he is, so I dont know how much potential for growing out he has left. mike

[mikel]

Check down at the sponsor section for "midwest mike pair"....that is an excellent example of the look you want your fish to grow into...big, round, full and vibrant....thick circular body shape with small eyes. Good water, excellent food and high quality stock get you that final outcome. mike

[cc_woman]

If the wild caught is stunted then it can't be from anything I have done. I had been feeding 3-4x a day before I even got those ones, and I QT'd them for 4 weeks, treated them with anti worm and parasite meds, before adding them to the main tank. I was reading that wc's seem to have bigger eyes than domestics in one of the stickies.

The 1st fish is probably about a year old I assume. When I bought him he was probably around 2", and that was last spring. I don't know how long it takes to grow them out to 2", so I am guessing about a year. I have no idea how old the wc's would be, but he was about 3.75" when I first got them which is the largest discus of them all. He is now almost 4.5". I just took out my measuring tape lol.

[Eddie]

Both fish, definitely stunted.

Eddie

[cc_woman]

Ok, here is a picture the day I got the wild caughts, can you tell me if they look stunted here?

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03805-1.jpg

Sorry to ask all these questions about this, but I would like to find out what I could be doing wrong, or if it is just the stock I have gotten. Also here is a picture of the turquoise maybe a month after I got him, I can't remember that far back. Maybe you guys can help me in figuring things out for future discus I get, but I don't think I will ever buy any discus under 3" for a very long time.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03131.jpg

[Eddie]

Not too bad, but a little. WC fish tend to have a bigger eye to body ratio than Hybrids. IME wilds grow slower too.

Buying fish from a reputable source is a definite step to success.

The recipe for growing out young discus is like a chocolate chip cookie recipe, everybody has one. Are they all the same, no way. Do they all taste great, heck no. The process is something that gets perfected over time.

I can make some OUTSTANDING chocolate chip cookies. :D LOL

Eddie

[cc_woman]

Not too bad, but a little. WC fish tend to have a bigger eye to body ratio than Hybrids. IME wilds grow slower too.

Buying fish from a reputable source is a definite step to success.

The recipe for growing out young discus is like a chocolate chip cookie recipe, everybody has one. Are they all the same, no way. Do they all taste great, heck no. The process is something that gets perfected over time.

I can make some OUTSTANDING chocolate chip cookies. :D LOL

Eddie

Lol. Yeah I get what you are saying. My 2 discus I am getting from April on sunday should be good quality, I hear nothing but good things about them from people I look up to in this hobby. One is a 3-3.5"checkerboard pigeon, I believe that's the name (I might have gotten it wrong), and a 4"red spot green. I am def not putting them in the main tank until I have things dealt with in there. They are going into QT in a 20 long (bare bottom for sure) for at least a month, where I will be treating them for disease. I do know some things but seems something always goes wrong :mad:

I think one thing that will help me now I didn't know before, is how to tell what a good quality fish looks like. When it comes to african cichlids, no problem, some other new world cichlids to some degree, but discus I never really knew. I knew how to look out for a bad shape, I was mostly looking out for football shaped, enormous eyes, and skinny body. I guess my perception was slightly different. I took on quite a few bad looking discus, guess that's half of where problems occur. I am excited to be learning all of this great information from you guys ;)

[Eddie]

Sounds great, you definitely came to the right place.

Check out the sponsor section and you will see alot of updates on fish and the quality is second to none!

The photo gallery also hold some nice quality fish. You can see alot of what to look for in a quality discus by seeing others comments and pictures.

Wish you the best and April does have some excellent quality fish!

Eddie

[cc_woman]

Found this pic of one of my first discus. It was taken about 2 weeks after I got him. I think he was about 1.5" when he died. I don't think he ever did eat for me. But little did I know, I hadn't done enough research. I "thought" they could be kept almost the same as other cichlids.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh313/cc_woman/DSC03127.jpg

[Eddie]

Yeah, live and learn I guess.

I got a huge amount of knowledge from this site and from reading books. There is so much to learn but once you get the basics down, it's pretty easy.

clean water + nutritious food + quality discus = success


Eddie

[cc_woman]

I asked the librarian at my local fish club to bring some discus books to the next meeting. I tried a chapters location near me, but they didn't have anything on fish :( Most LFS around here sell books with not as thorough info as I probably need. I have been relying mostly on websites to give me info about things. I am glad I found this one :)

[Patr1ck]

Hello. I use these things to feed mine. http://www.aquariumguys.com/lees-worm-feeder.html . Put one at each end of the tank to see if that helps with the dominance. Also, you might want to quarantine your new fish for a minimum of 6 weeks. Sometimes it takes that long for anything to show up.:)

Pat