pop eye nighmare

[discusluver]

hi all its been a few weeks since i have had a chance to get on the forum i have just had a tragedy of epic proportions in my 8x2x2ft adult breeding stock tank with 16 various adults,

i went away last week end for 3 days b4 i went made sure i tended my 9 discus tanks before i left feeding water changing and routine water tests etc, all fish in all tanks seemed to be good and were all feeding happily from my hand before i left for weekend.

long story short had a gr8 weekendand arrived home on sunday night to find the main adult discus tank was in lots of trouble they all had catarac eyes!!!!!!!!!

After some quick diagnosis i rang the VET to get flagyl ASAP as i knew it was pop eye that i was looking at,the vet wrote me a script and i had to go to the Chemist first thing monday and sure enough i dropped 500 litres of water quicksmart and medicated the tank str8 away at this stage monday lunchtime i was already losing fish by the hour and by monday night there were only 4 left alive and i was devistated.

tuesday rolled around and 3 more were cactus and i still have 1 spotted leopard alive out of 16 VERY nice fish that i had nurtured since there young days and had trained to hand feed!

i am so lucky that in 15 yrs of fish keeping i have never had to deal with this dreaded disease and i tell every discus keeper out there it is ghastly disease that can rear its ugly head with no notice at all it took 48 hours to wipe my 8 footer out! so all i can do is pray i never get it again in any of my 9 tanks!

On a good note the problem seems to be isolated to that tank

PHEWWWWW and my breeding pairs have been left intact and i have babies that i have breed aswell I guess replace the losses.

AND Sorry to all those people who were waiting for my babies to grow out they are not going to be able to be sold due to this tradgedy ! i will let yas all know when i have some new babies availible AGAIN SORRY to those who were patiently waiting for the batch of babies that i now need to restock my own tanks :? :(
regards

[Hollowman]

I am sorry to hear of the loss of your fish, you sound pretty upset.

But looking back, (hindesight is a great thing) would it not have been wise to stop feeding for 3-4 days before you left for your break, so that any water change before you left, would remove any rubbish left in the tank and leave a 'cleaner' water column over the time where you couldn't change the water.
People often ask about going on holiday, and panic about their fish, and I have found that this is a good method for reducing a build up of waste over a few days away.

Hopefully your remaining stock will raise some more fry and you can replenish what you have lost. :)

Hollowman

[jasonmomm]

Really sorry to hear about your massive losses.
That's really terrible :(

[discusluver]

thankx for your sympathy it was certainly a shock and as a devoted discus fanatic i will certainly bounce back from this tradgedy and be a better fish keeper in the long run for my shocking experience once again thanks for your comments guys

[waitaki]

wow that is terrible, I can't believe how in such a short time you lost so many fish. I would have thought 16 discus in an 8 x 2 x 2 the water conditions wouldn't have got that bad :o mmm it was interesting to read in Andrew Soh book how to work up to going on holiday and leaving your tanks. Worth a read for those planning to go away and leaving your discus.
sympathies again :cry:

[ILLUSN]

this exactly why I dont go on holidays anymore.

so sorry to hear your loss mate, its terrible

[TW]

So sorry for your losses. That's shocking news. How is the survivor, is he looking like recoverying.

[BigDaddyAdo]

Maybe someone should make a sticky on what to do if your going on holidays...


Ado

[Hollowman]

I am sure we could ask Andrew if we could use his method for reference. I used his method as the basis for what I did.

[discusluver]

hi all thanx for the responses, the last fish is still going and he is starting to look a lot better and im slowly gaining confidence in him making a full recovery all i need him to do know is start feeding again.I have followed up with a secondary treatment with flagyl last night, and should hopefully start getting the tank back to some sort of normalness in next few days but in saying that i will be monitoring the tank very very closly for a few weeks before i add more stock as i never want to see a discus suffer that fate again!!!!!!!!!In finishing i will say water quality in my tank is good as i have a fluval fx5 and a ehiem 2080 also 4 internal sponge filters and my ammonia nitrite nitrate are all 0 and ph is 5.0 water temp 30degC. the only remote cause of this infection could possibly be a very large piece of drift wood i bought about 6 weeks ago which was presoaked by me in the bath for 10 days changing bath water each day!
regards :)