jumpy and shy discus

[mykey01]

I just got a pair of discus. I put them in a 29G tank with one small bristlenose pleco. Compare to my other discus (3 of them) who are very shy and ocassionally jumpy and jittery these new ones are very mellow swimming slowly and not so afraid of me. I wonder if discus develop their behaviours when they grow up. My 'old' ones they grew up in 29G with a few siamese algae eaters which were occasionally jumpy and jittery. I thought the algae eaters will be fine with the discus but they often ate more discus food than algae. At the end, I decided to the algae eaters to other tanks about a couple months ago. The discus now are still jumpy, when I feed them I have to move my hand very slowly otherwise they would dash and hide. Water parameters are fine, no amonia, no nitrite, TDS=140ppm (result from mixing tap and RO water), pH=7.5. Nitrate is a bit tricky. I recently found out our tap water has nitrate about 10-20ppm according to my test kit. But I tried to keep the nitrate as low and I close to when coming off the tap. The newer ones are also in the same kind of water parameters and the discus show no sign of jumpy as old ones.

[mykey01]

Oops sorry, I press the submit button twice. Could the Administrator delete the other one. Thank you.

[the german]

hi mykey

whats your water temp?
specialy for juvenile discus its important to have 30oC,IMO you should never go under that,even with adults.

nitrates of 10-20 is ok,no problem with that,you should be concerned when they reach 50.
in the biological process of your filter nitrate readings have to be there,when they are not there something is wrong.
hope you understand what i mean,in some situations my english is just not good enough.

michael

[mykey01]

Thanks for the info Michael. The temperature is currently 86F (~30C). I had the discus for about 16 months now. In the warm season, the temperature got to 88F (31C), in the winter was 82-84F (28-29C). It was always a trade off for me if I increased temperature in the cold days then the evaporation was high (meaning I had to top off the tank water with more RO water).

[the german]

you should hold the temp. in winter on 30oC,there are different opinions from different poeple but like i said mine are never under 30,only when i change water it can go down to 28 but thats only for short time

[DiscusEden]

Hi Mykey01,

How long have you had them all? Has there been a change in behaviour since the new ones went in, or since you caught the algae eater?

Is the tank bare, or planted?

When you feed, do you stay near the tank?

[mykey01]

I probably did not mention clearly, all discus are not in the same tank. The new ones in a 29G bare tank with a couple of plastic plant for fish to hide under; the older ones are in different 29G with gravel at the bottom and a few plastic and live plants. When I feed, I usually stay a bout 2-3 feet away until all food is given to the fish. The new discus I got in the last two days.

[samir]

here's my 2 cents (just my opinion)

Discus are not at all shy fish.
if they are jumpy the usual suspects are ammonia, medications and internal parasites, so its either water quality or bugs.
in my case if they do not let me touch them, i begin to worry.
First I do a big water change add a double dose of prime, if that doesn't fix things, i filter with activated charcoal, if there is still no improvement then I lower ph to 5 and up the water changes. That usually fixes things.

if after all this the fish are the same then I mix 1gm of flagyl to 100gm beefheart and feed for about 5 days. I don't worm anymore because my slides do not show anything but in your case I'd suggest deworming all your fish.

they is no method of completely eradicating parasites, most meds bring the infestation down to a level where the fish can cope with it. once they get stressed by factors like ammonia, the parasites increase dramatically. So keep your tank clean, do regular water changes,quarantine new fish ,ensure that you do not get any ammonia spikes and your discus will spawn on your hand if you leave it in there long enough :lol: :lol: hth

[mykey01]

Thanks for the 2 cents Samir. I am always on top of water quality/water changes and test the water params very often. I got me thinking of deworming, especially after the person who sell me their discus pair, she always worm the fish every 6 weeks. As for lowering pH, I am just not comfortable doing it. In my experience, the pH can be lowered (such as using filter thru peat) but always swing back to original. I can easily lower the hardness but pH mostly stays ~7.5 because our water here is naturally hard.

[samir]

if you're confident about the water then give them the flagyl.