STILL BEING BULLIED

[paulyer]

I wrote a short time ago about my discus being bullied. I followed the advice but a couple of weeks later and it's getting worse. The bully is following this one individual and it is unrelenting. I have had to net the bully because I have no other tank as an emergency method. The other one is close to dying. It lays on it's side in the corner of the tank. And as soon as it moves the bully attacks. Any idea's please.

[SusieQ]

Hi... I'm no expert but....
From my experience I can tell you sometimes you just get a bully discus. Yes discus have a pecking order and that is normal. But I had one that I had in a community tank before I switched to all discus and when I put the new discus in (4 of them) the old one bullied them to the point where he would not let them eat or move hardly. I removed the bully and gave him a time out in a plastic bin with the tank water and heater and sponge filter. Meanwhile I re arranged everything in the 72 gallon tank. I tried this three times and each time he went back to bullying. So I gave him to a friend to be the lone discus in her tank and he is a happy camper and so are the rest of my fish. I later added more discus with no problems.
Is your's bullying everyone or just the one fish???
If it's just the one fish, get that poor fish out of there and into a qt tank... it doesn't have to be a glass tank, it can be a plastic bin etc... it needs a stress free place to recoup with heat and clean water and either lots of water changes or a seeded sponge filter.. Someone more knowledgeable can tell you whether to add salt and about temps etc.
It could be weak/sick and the bully realized it or it could be how you added it to the tank. It is bad to add one fish at a time to any cichlid tank be it discus or africans... they are all very territorial and there is a definite pecking order. So maybe that was the problem... Was anyone else picking on this fish??? Hope you can try and save it... They are wonderful, beautiful fish and a joy to keep but it does require work and patience.
HTH Sue

[madasa]

The 'time out' bucket I would also recommend LATER.

Firstly, as said, remove the sick fish and hospitalize in a bucket with maintenance as above. I would keep the temp up at 30 and salt with raw salt at 1tbsp to 5G to promote recovery and prevent secondary infection form the wounds sustained.

Water changes 30% every day and replace salt removed.

Continue for 10/7

[Sparks]

Hi there,

I do not know what the exact circumstances for your fish are. But it might be good to check the following:
- Enough hiding spaces, so the discus do not always see eachother
- Enough space (at least 5 gallons per discus)
- Enough fish, low numbers can make the bullying worse, absolute minimum is 5

Good luck with it, it is normal that the fish fight, especially during feeding, but killing eachother is a bit too much.
Regards,

Erik