white feces

[enej]

Hi everyone!

Instead of a happy "hello world", I'm turning to you with a cry "please help me" as my first post on your excellent forum! :(

I have purchased an aquarium with discus fish (7 discus) from a colleague who seemed to have neglected them lately. The nitrite levels were extremely high! I have done repetitive water changes and seemed to have stabilised the nitrite back to near-zero level. However, the fish are still apathic and shy, keep to the corner, are slightly pale and breathe fast. One of them is having white feces (actualy, the »feces« looks more like white mucus coming from that opening) and does not have appetite. Others tend to eat just fine.
I have bread discus fish in the past but years ago, so I’m slightly out of practice. I’m not well informed of the most recent methods of treatment and trends ;) …I would guess fast breathing is still a shock from highly toxic levels of nitrite. Do you think they could have been damaged permanently or will high quality water regenerate them? The nitrite probably reduced their immune system and at least that one (if not some others as well) has probably succumbed to some internal parasite infection due to that (cryptobia, hexamita?) – white feces is clearly not a symptom of nitrite poisoning.

I would most kindly ask you to advise me on your technique:

1) Most importantly: should I remove the one most likely infected fish from the rest and put it into a hospital tank for separate treatment? Or treat the whole 400 L aquarium? Should I at all treat so soon after nitrite poisoning or should I wait for fish to recover? Should I expose all to metronidazole or just the ill fish?
2) Should I use Epsom salt to increase appetite?
3) I guess Metronidazole should be the best drug to treat with? I have been told to use 7mg/L, however some soak the food in metronidazole. What is better? What concentrations do you use to soak the food in?
4) How long should I continue the treatment, how often should I change the water, and should I switch off the filter?
5) Some suggest just using garlic – should I squeeze it and use liquid, or just cut cloves? How many per 400 L tank?

Thank you very much for your help.

Kind regards,
Enej

[sammigold]

Hi Enej,

Welcome to the forum.

These are my suggestions but there are definitely others on this forum that know much more about discus than I. But hopefully this will help out until one of them can help.

If only one is showing signs of Hex I would separate him as you suggest into hospital tank and treat with metro.(It will be very expensive to treat a 400 litre tank) Here is a great link in which one of our experts discusses Hex and its treatment.
http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2475

With your remaining discus who seem to be recovering from the nitrite poisoning I would continue with your w/c regime and add cooking or rock salt (not table) at a rate of 1 teaspoon per 40litres. Salt is known to help with the symptoms of nitrite poisoning. (it greatly helped with some guppies that I suspected were suffering from a nitrite spike) HTH

Im sure that you will find this forum very helpful. Good luck with your new discus!! and I hope you enjoy getting back into the hobby. (Im sure things havent changed too much since you used to keep them.) Just trust your instincts. :-)

[samir]

i suggest do the whole lot with metro. you could lower the tank level to about 80 litres or so. some people prefer 250 mg/ 40 litres, others including myself 400mg/ 40 litres. the lenght of treatment according to whom you ask varies from 3 to 5 to 7 to 10 days. i did 400/40 for 3 days and it worked wonders. hex can be controlled with good care but as soon as something goes wrong/moving fish/stress it crops up again and though most will pull through the weaker ones might not recover. its best to cover the tank and increase temperature to 92-94 degrees. do a 40% water change before you redose. if you can, redose every 8 hours, otherwise twice a day should get you through. ask your friendly neighbourhood gp if he will prescribe you some flagyl (most will :wink: ) that way it only costs $9 or so for a 400mg X 21. you could treat a swimming pool at that cost :lol: till you get your hands on some i suggest gradually increasing the temperature to 94 degrees F.