How to help a young discus eat?

[iro11a]

I have a 550 litre tank at current with houses 5 discus 3 of large size and two med size,they are all fine eat well not much bullying

Three weeks ago i bought 3 new discus a little smaller than the med size ones in my 6 foot tank,i kept these 3 young discus in a quantine tank for 3 weeks showed no signs of illness so moved them all to my main tank.two of the discus was eating well in quantine but never seen one eat ever and waited all the time but never did.

Now all of them are in the 550l tank and they are all getting bullied preaty bad by the one that used to get bullied by the bigger guys,two of them are still eating well,but the yellow one staying up top in the corner and wont even try to get any food.

My question is should i keep him in there and hope he eats or take him out back to quantine tank by himself and see if that helps,not sure on what to do in this case.

Thanks jono

[BigDaddyAdo]

If you saw a problem with him while in your Q tank why did you put him into general population?

Have you seen it poo? Describe it.

Whater parameters would be helpful as would a pic of the fish in question.

Did you worm them? Any other meds? What food have you tried. Have you attempted to hand feed him?

[Hollowman]

Yes, I picked up that you never qt'd properly. Observing for 3 weeks is fine, but that does not mean that they are ok to put with the rest of the population. Maybe you have given this fish a 'cold'

You have probably heard some of us talking about a 'sacrificial lamb' this is a healthy, but not so desirable fish you introduce to you new fish, not the other way around, to see if there is any reaction. (another 3 weeks)

I think you need to carefully observe all the fish, feed in different parts of the tank, lots for good aged water.

H

[tha_krust]

i de-worm my fish regularly , this generally fixes the problem, some will just never come back and eventually cack it

[Merrilyn]

If you follow the guidelines of the successful asian breeders, they never have fish of different sizes in their grow out tanks tank. They are so strict on this, that they will go through their tanks weekly and move any odd size fish (larger or smaller than the rest) into an appropriate tank of similar size tankmates.

From experience they know that they get the best growth rates when similar size fish are housed together. You will never seen them put a juvenile fish in a tank with adults. They know that the juvenile fish will be intimidated, refuse to feed, constantly hide, and eventually die.

The only time I have ever seen anyone get away with mixing sizes, is when an adult is added to an established tank of juvenile fish. Still not ideal, but definitely better than the other way around.

If you want to try to save your young fish, I'd suggest you put him back in the quarantine tank with another fish the same size or even smaller, but even then it may be too late. Sorry.