vicious discus

[dazzman]

man I can't believe my discus can do this.

I bought three bristle noses and put them in my 6 ft community tank that's got 14 juvi discus. I noticed that they were kindda picking on them but I didn't give it much thought. the next day, the bristles were dead, all of them and the discus were still biting them. To the point that the bristles were like kindda shredded. Don't think they have lack of food. I feed them with BW in the morning and they get 3 serves of dry food in the day followed by BH at night. What gives?? Does anyone's fish behave like that?

cheers
daz

[Merrilyn]

Hmmmmm that got me thinking.

It's really unusual for discus to pick on anything, and even more unusual for the bristles to sit there and take it.

It sounds more like pH shock to me. Did you test the water the bristles came in before you put them in your tank. If they died from pH shock, I can uderstand that the discus would pick at the dead bodies, and even eat some of them, but I simply cannot see even a very large discus killing a catty.

[dazzman]

cheers ladyred,

yea, I didn't check the ph in the bristles water. But it shouldn't be that drastic.... can it?? my tanks at 7 so unless it was significantly lower than that could be the case. Think I'll got back to the ifs to check it out. Btw, what's the ph best for bristles?

daz

[Merrilyn]

Well, I've got normals, orange spot, and peppermints in a tank on their own, and I keep that at pH 8 and fairly hard with shellgrit in the tank.

But as you know, even a change from 8 to 7 is a huge difference, and enough to send them into shock.

Now dazzman, do I need to give you the quarantine lecture ???????? :?

You put your beautiful and expensive discus at risk by adding any fish that has not been thru a quarantine period. *end of lecture* :D

[weird]

I would not be too suprised to see BNs being picked off by some other fish in the aquarium ... do you only have Discus , as I have a pretty aggressive Bolvian in my tank that will have ago at his own shadow.

In my 4x2x2 I have a terrible record with keeping anything like BNs or Ottos ... no other tank except that one ... not sure if it is the company or something else.

[madaboutfish]

Hi Daz,

I had the same problem some 7 months back, I had a tank of about 40 baby discus which just chased the 4 BN and pecked them. I don't think its pH shock as all but 1 was pecked to death. The only reason why the last one survived was due to its ability to hide under my sponge filter. This last BN was finally killed 6 weeks later in the same way. IME if you have lots of juvenile discus in a tank and you introduce anything smaller than they are, the new tankmates will not live long. I find that larger discus are slower and have more difficulty in catching these small BN. Now I only add BN to tanks with the larger discus but never juv.

Nick

[dazzman]

Cheers guys,

agreed ladyred. should be doing quarantine. didn't have a quaratine tank ready which I should have before I got them :oops:

hey wierd, yeap I've only got discus and decided to get some BN so that they'll cut down on the slime on the walls.

cheers nick, think I may not get any for now at least till they have grown. Or maybe bigger BN could be ok in there. will see..

daz

[goldenpigeon]

how big were these bn?

[dazzman]

they are pretty small little buggers.