Help! Decaying fins and turning black!

[Cory21]

Ok, I have 5 discus. Three are just over a year old, and the other two are about 5 or 6 months. No new fish have been added in well over a month.

My large blue diamond has turned jet black, and has been for days.He stopped eating, and his fins are disintegrating! I do not believe its fin rot, because there is no fungus. They are fraying, then falling apart. I don't think he's going to make it another week, if a few days :(

Now my large Pigeon Bloods fins are starting to do the same, and the same is also happening to the two youngest discus.

Levels are all fine,
Ammo = 0
Nitrates = under 5
Nitrites = 0
ph = 7.1

I'm increasing the temperature from 84 to 90 over the past few days. I've added salt at 2 tablespoons per 10 gallons. I just began treating with melafix today. I've also been doing small 10-20% w/c's daily.

I'm lost, I don't know what to do. Any help? I don't want to lose any! :(

[Cory21]

Please delete this post..... I don't know how it got in here, when I was definitely in the emergency forum.....

[kalebjarrod]

Cory

you sound like you have the situation under control, i would be doing exactley what you are doing

are they still feeding well?

maybe try and keep the tan dark will treating, reduce the lighting a little. i have found that it reduces stress on sic fish

keep daily posts i would lie to now how you go,

[Proteus]

Cory, do you have access to Prazi & Metro at all???

keep the w/c's up, and the elevated temps as you are doing...

[Cory21]

Ok, lights reduced, about to do another waterchange. The blue diamond is still hanging in there, but I don't have high hopes for him :(

No, I do not have access to those meds at all......

And their poo is white and stringy.... All but the blue diamond are eating well.... I haven't been able to get the diamond to eat anything directly, but he does pick at food a little bit, very little however.

[milt master p]

get some metronidazole immediately

[DiscusMan]

Keep up the salt treatment.

It is cheap and works wonders. I am unsure as the dosage but i would use some good handfuls in a four footer for example. Then keep adding it with water changes etc.

Fish diseases are hard to diagnose without taking samples to a vet for analysis so i would suggest you steer off spending a lot of money on meds unless you know what it is as you may be treating the wrong thing in the end and still lose the fish/s.

Elevate temp add salt do wc's and give them time with lights off to reduce stress etc and minimise movement in front of tank. IF you want to med then find a vet that is fish savy adn take a sample. Cant remeber where you are from but a call to your local vet will tell you where a zoo / fish vet is that will eb able to tell you what the charges are. If oyu wish to make a guess as to what is wrong then go ahead as you might make the right choice and it will work.

If they are eating i would feed them some medicated food such as discus booster which is supposed to kill internal flagelytes hope, spelling ok and then the next day feed the discus monthly which is a wormer. then repeat after a couple fo days or week etc. These types of food i would 100% recommend to all keepers to feed on a fortnighlty basis to keep these problems that the food treat at bay.

I lost all of my first Discus's due to illness of many types so this is one thing i know about first hand, although i thankfully havent had the discus plague yet. Using these methods i haven't lost a fish since except when they bundgee out of the tank without the cord attached - DOH!.

Hope they pull through for ya mate.

Wayne

[Cory21]

The pigeon blood and red turq appear to be recovering.... however my favourite, Blue, my large blue diamond passed on today :(

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v381/Cory212/Discus/1c973e30.jpg

I just did a 50% w/c, I hope the others pull through :(

[tank]

Hi Cory
Sorry about your loss . Good luck with the others