Epsom Salts - the wonder drug (even though it isn't a drug)

I had a bit of a scare yesterday evening with one of my juvenile fish that I want to share. I am a reasonably experienced discus fanatic, having kept discus off and on over a 40 year period of time, but I continue to make mistakes and learn from them. Over the 40 year period I have been growing out discus from quarter size to adulthood and enjoy doing so. I recently acquired some young discus to grow out and they are now about 3" in length. I have been feeding them frozen beef heart and alternating with with flake food. Along with the flake food I have have started to add some Tetrabits. I did so knowing that Tetrabits are notorious for causing bloat in certain susceptible discus. Knowing this fact, I have been watching for signs of bloat. Up until yesterday, there were no indications that the Tetrabits were a problem. Last night I fed the fish right before going to a movie and was gone for about three hours. When I returned, one of the juveniles was swimming erratically and looked like he had swallowed a marble, a sure sign of bloat. The erratic swimming was so bad that I seriously thought about euthanizing it. It was doing head standing, swimming sideways and even floated to the top one time and was upside down. However, I decided to give epsom salts a try. I have had fish with bloat on previous occasions, and treating with epsom salts worked well, but I never had a fish exhibiting such extreme symptoms. I added epsom salts at 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons and, since it was late, turned out the light, went to bed and prayed for the best for that fish. Amazingly when I woke up in the morning, all fish were alert, swimming upright, and waiting for their first meal of the day. Lessons learned: 1) I am removing Tetrabits from my feeding routine until they get closer to adult size. Even then, I am going to soak them for a bit before adding to the tank. 2) Don't give up on a fish just because they seem seriously distressed, especially with bloat. I have even rescued and resusitated a fish that had jumped out of a tank and found it laying on its side with the up-side dried to the touch. 3) Epsom salts does work wonders for bloat. If you find one of your fish that looks like it swallowed a marble, epsom salts is worth a try. It is a pretty safe treatment to use.

Glad it worked out for you Dudley. I've had this issue from time to time and dealt with this the same way. I feed Tetra Bits to my young fish but generally crush it up a bit between my fingers before feeding though I haven't had this issue with it, mostly it's been with fish over consuming lower quality flake food.

Some strains, like Blue Diamonds, seem more prone to get this type of extreme constipation and I've lost one or two along the way before being turned onto Epsom salts as a treatment. When it's especially bad I will also use an internal antibiotic like Kanamycin Sulfate in conjunction with Epsom salts to prevent a possible secondary infection.

My one Blue Diamond is extremely healthy at this point but I did have to treat for internal infection at one time. Even when she's in good shape she seems to excrete in large, wide, circular volume in a way that is very different from all my other Discus. It does seem that there's something a little different about the plumbing in this strain than some of the other strains.

I soak mine for a minute or two before feeding it to them, never encountered bloating problem.

For smaller fish, I have soaked them also. They seems to swell up, this would happen in the fishes gut, possibly causing bloat/constipation/blockage. The blockage can affect the swim bladder and then they swim out of balance.

hth
Ardan

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dudley Eirich

I have even rescued and resusitated a fish that had jumped out of a tank and found it laying on its side with the up-side dried to the touch.

---

Can you tell me how you brought your jumper back to health? I rescued a jumper yesterday, he was only out for a few mins. Luckily I already had my hospital tank ready to go, so dropped him in. He is pretty beaten up, ripped fins etc. but seems to be swimming and eating ok.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jimstreet

Can you tell me how you brought your jumper back to health? I rescued a jumper yesterday, he was only out for a few mins. Luckily I already had my hospital tank ready to go, so dropped him in. He is pretty beaten up, ripped fins etc. but seems to be swimming and eating ok.

---

The fish that jumped was pretty dry on the one side facing up but his gills were still functioning. I grabbed him from the dorsal fin (top) side and moved him back and forth in the tank water, making sure to get a lot of water through his gills. I kept up that movement for about 5 minutes and let him go to see if he could swim on his own. He still wasn't swimming upright well, so I grabbed him again and kept up the "resusitation" process for a few more minutes. He finally was able to swim upright and pretty straight. By the next morning he was back to normal.