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View Full Version : My discus, or rather one at the moment, are poorly



shawn barker
Sun Oct 28, 2007, 07:53 PM
Anyway, as you can guess I have a problem with my discus.

I lost one a couple of weeks ago to what I put down to old age as I had had it for around 4-5 years, being one of my first discus.

Tonight it looks like another is suffering from the same fate.

Its symptoms have come on quickly through the course of the evening and none of the others seem affected at the moment. It has light coloured blotches on its sides and it is swimming irratically. It has been at the surface nose up for a while and is now half way down in the tank nose down resting against some plants. Its breathing seems to be laboured and its fins are clamped to its side.

The water conditions have not changed in ages and I haven't done anything out of what I would normally be doing, ie a couple of 20%ish water changes a week and general maintenance of pruning plants etc. The tank by the way is a 480litre planted tank set at 29C.

As I said it was fine earlier today eating like a horse with all the other fish. I shall be getting the small tank out of the shed when the little ones are in bed so shall isolate the sick one and observe the rest of them.

As for treatment, I have some Furanol (left over from my last bout of sick discus 6 months ago when I lost several to a mystery infection when I introduced some new fish) and was seriously thinking of treating it with some of that. Is this a good plan of action or just a knee jerk reaction and should I be doing some else?

Merrilyn
Mon Oct 29, 2007, 03:32 AM
It may be a parasite Shawn. Have you treated the fish for gill and body flukes in the last 12 months. If not, I'd do that first.

shawn barker
Mon Oct 29, 2007, 06:48 PM
A quick update,

it looks like I may have panicked for nothing as the affore mentioned discus seems to have perked up this morning without having to rush out to the shed and find the hospital tank last night (just as well as I had to go and rescue one of my drunken teenage sons from a welcome home party from the Barbados Hockey tour he was on with the school!).

I have no idea what it was but the fish is eating again today, and although a little unsteady is swimming more or less properly with its tank mates.

I have treated the tank with 'wormer +' today and invested in a Vectron V2 600 UV steriliser to rule out the parasites as a problem.

Shall monitor the discus closely for any other signs of distress.



Wonder what it was??? :?