Discus Pretending dead? or sick?

[abishek]

i have four discus fishes. one died of the white sore after which i read up on it on this site. leading me to do a water change and add a heater at 32C with added salts and a over the counter white sore treatment i think called prozin seems to have saved the one other discus which was sick too. now the recovered discus has an uneven coat with bits of its blue coating incomplete will this heal.

2) out of the other two discus fishes which seem to be alright.One now is behaving funny. the moment it sees me it plays dead on the tank floor after i leave from a distance i can see it swimming fine. the problem seems to happen the moment it sees me. i don't know what to make of it?


its about 12 days since the white sore death occured. i geuss i m safe?

can any one help

[Merrilyn]

Welcome to the forum abishek.

Discus don't usually "play dead". There's usually a good reason for strange behaviour. In the case of your fish, it may be stress caused by water problems.

Can you tell us a little about your tank, the size and number of fish in there. We also need to know your tank maintenance routine, and the parameters of your water. All of these things may give us a clue as to why the fish is acting so strangely.

[abishek]

Welcome to the forum abishek.

Discus don't usually "play dead". There's usually a good reason for strange behaviour. In the case of your fish, it may be stress caused by water problems.

Can you tell us a little about your tank, the size and number of fish in there. We also need to know your tank maintenance routine, and the parameters of your water. All of these things may give us a clue as to why the fish is acting so strangely.


well my tank is a 75 liter tank with a filter. i have 1 tiny discus bought from the shop recently 1-normal discus 1-discus trying to play dead 1-discus apparently still living after getting the white sore. that totals to 3 big fully grown fishes almost 9 yrs old now and one tiny one.A heater set at 32c checked by thermometer. i change the water using mineral water every 15 days or so. i cant measure other parameters since i dont have a kit. fish still plays dead even when i use a hospital tank with new water. these fishes have been living in the tank for abt 8 months now without incident. before which they were in a tank about 800Liters capacity, i now have this smaller tank

[Merrilyn]

That's a lot of fish in a small tank. We like to allow grown discus 40 litres each with water changes of at least 30% of the capacity of the tank once, or ideally twice per week. The smaller the tank, the more often you need to do water changes.

Are you saying that the three large discus are each 9 years old. That's a good life for a fish, and he may simply be slowing down due to old age.

The temperature of 32 is what we use to help treat disease, but it's a bit too high for maintenance. I'd drop that back to 30 now.

I really do think that your main problem is due to the overcrowding in a small tank, lack of water changes and high heat.

Try changing those three things and see if there's any improvement in your fish.

Why are you using mineral water to do water changes. What's your tap water like. I'd get hold of some test kits, pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate at the very least. Successful fish keeping depends on the quality of the water, and you need to know what's in your water.