Troubles Moving House with Discus

[Mitch]

Hi everyone. I moved house with my discus about 2 weeks ago. It was an extremely hard process but went off without a hitch. Its been 2 weeks now and the discus havent really settled. When ever you get close to the tank they go ballistic and smash them selves into just about everything. they are starting to show a few cut and one of them nearly knocked itself out. They used to follow me up and down the tank and eat out of my hand. The room is maybe a tiny bit more well lite, but they are in there own room now and dont get as many people walking past now. If any one has any ideas of what could be wrong with them i would greatly appreciate it.

[Merrilyn]

Hi Mitch, and a very warm welcome to the forum.

Possible cause is water quality. How did the bacteria in your filter cope with the move?

I've found that you can really only turn your filters off for about an hour, without causing massive die off of the bacteria colony. This results in your tank going through a cycle again when you turn the filter back on. Worse still if you cleaned everything out when you moved. No bacteria left on the gravel or glass of the tank to restock your filter.

Do some water tests, like pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, and let me know the results.

In the meantime, start with some massive water changes, and let us know how you get on.

[Mitch]

Ive been checking the water quality daily since the day we moved and all appears pretty good. We put up thicker curtins in the room and got a huge sword plant that spreads out over the top of the tank providing quite a bit of shade, which seems to have really settled them down. They are just about back to normal. Thanks for your advice and help.

[Merrilyn]

That's good news Mitch. Sometimes a tank move stresses our fish out more than we realize.

Glad to hear they are finally settling. Putting a plant in the tank was a good idea.