constipation

[Crocky]

Hi all just had a few 3 month old discus die after there bellies swelling up.I feed them some white the other day could this made them constipated and whats the best treatment if any.I have try epson salts before on other types of fish and it never help.

Crocky

[DiscusMan]

Crocky,

I tried epsom salt as well before on my bloated fish. I think the snswer is that if the blockage is food related then the epsom salt will cause the fish to spew it up. But if the bloating is parasite based then it is more intrenched in the fishes internals and no amount of vomiting is going to dislodge it without coughing up a lung so to speak.

Bloated fish is most commonly either worms of flagylytes. Both of those illnesses are talk about on this board so do a bit of hunting in some of the lower threads to find out more.

I also note that you are losing babies. Are these two problems related. Are you sharing nets, water changing tools or anything else between the baby tank and the adult tank.

I read that you are treating your babies for flukes which is one thing they could have but if you are also then throwing in a large volume of flaglytes into the tank with them on a net for example than the small frail babies wont take much to circum to this unless you also treat them for this.

There is a great article that was linked ot from another thread on this board which explains that the fish always carry flagyltes and that stress can bring on an attack so i would suggest you do a search and find all the information in the other threads and see if any of them match up to your problems.

Wayne