velvet, flukes, the plague or something else??

[peppermint]

Hi,

I treated my discus for hex about a month ago and then went away for 3 days and forgot to turn my steriliser back on. When I got back nothing seemed wrong but then a couple of days later my marlborough red just suddenly dropped dead and there were no visible signs of disease before or on the body. So I started looking at the 4 remaining discus and noticed occasional flicking on plants and airlines so I treated for velvet with protozin and metronidazole. However instead of getting better they have gotten worse!! During this treatment the discus didn't get any better and my clown loach died. He had a white spot in the middle of each eye but no other discernible anomalies.

Since then the ocean green discus has gone dark and my mandarin passion has been kinda hanging out at the top of the tank. Then about 3 days ago they all developed clamped fins and then 2 days ago their fins started looking a bit cloudy. Now all of the remaining discus bar the mandarin have sort of like a white spiderweb over their eyes and the ocean green has one of the eyes a bit cloudy as well. The mandarin looks like it kinda has a white coating and the ocean green has some scrapes on its side and and in the right light has a sort of grey patch on one side but the bugger keeps hiding when I go over there so it is hard to tell. I did a 25% water change yesterday morning and put in praziquantal on the assumption that my intial diagnosis of velvet must have been wrong and maybe it is flukes? However they still don't look any better. I have also had the light off during both the velvet and prazi treatments and haven't been feeding them for about the last week or so. The others are now either hanging out at the top or swimming in the middle of the tank and having a scrape on the airline if they think I'm not looking but they are not gasping for air. If I go over to try to have a look at them they hide on the bottom of the tank behind the driftwood where I can't really see them.

This morning I put in 60 grams of aquarium salt in a 500L tank to help them a little if the hanging out at the top is symptomatic of a bit of respiratory distress.

The tank is well established (around 2 years) and I have not added anybody new for at least a year. The ammonia and nitrite are zero and the nitrate is about 20ppm. The pH is 6.8 and the temp is 30 degrees.

So I am understandably very worried about them and don't know what to do. Any ideas on what my poor (not so) little discus have?

I am kind of thinking it may be flukes but I can't see anything on them and have no experience with flukes so I don't really know what to look for. I am contemplating trying a trichlorfon dip or a salt dip or an increase in temperature.

Please help!! I've gone through most of the posts in the emergency room and illness and medication forums but can't find anything like this.

[Bill T.]

Did you check out if it's O.K. to treat with metro & protozin combined? Sometimes combining treatments can produce toxic by-prioducts & do more harm than good.
Your fish must have something brewing, or you have picked up a [pathogen.
Have you consulted a fish competent vet?

[taksan]

Mixing Protozin and Octozin (which is bascialy metro) is a big no no so I would not recommend mixing Protozin with Metro

[Merrilyn]

Combining medications is definately not to be recommended.

You now need to do a complete water change on your tank, 70% each day for the next three days. Do a gravel vac at the same time, to remove any leftover medication.

The first thing you should do when fish show signs of disease, is to do a big water change. Reaching for medications should be last on your list. If you provide very clean water, warmth and nutritious food, most discus will recover from problems by themselves.

The clouding of the eyes indicates a water problem. I would certainly attend to that first.

What is the pH in the tank at the moment. It's possible your tank had a pH crash, and that produced the symptoms you have seen in your fish.

[peppermint]

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I have learned my lesson about mixing meds and won't do it again unless I have consulted an appropriate authority on the subject.

I retested the water and still have no ammonia or nitrate and pH is still 6.8. My tds is 300ppm (I have an electronic meter so I don't measure Gh & Kh anymore - I use this as an indidcator for hardness). If you are unfamiliar with this tap water is about 90 - 100 on this meter. This is higher than I would like but more on that later.

To update you on the changes since my post, I was still really worried last night and this morning so I did a salt dip for 3 out of the 4 of the discus using a protocol from a UK discus site as I figured that would assist them without affecting the water or interacting with anything else. That seemed to make them look a little better. Then this morning I saw a light sprinkling of white dots on the mandarin only that were not visible last night so I put in a commercial formalin/malachite green solution before work this morning and left them with the light off and the blinds closed. When I got back from work, the white spots had gone and all of the discus seemed a little improved as their fins were back up where they should be but they are still a bit shy and hide from me when I switch the light on to try to assess their condition. The mandarin still has no white on it's eye unlike the other 3 and the white line on the eye of the pigeon and yellow seem to be a little better. The fin cloudiness also seems to have cleared up. The ocean green has it fins up now as well, but it's eyes don't seem worse, but don't seem better. The ocean green is making it very hard for me to examine him because he keeps hiding from me but he seems to have a white line across the middle of his eye I guess maybe looks like what happens when you fold a photocopier transparency for the office workers amongst you and a bit of cloudiness around that. None of the others have cloudy eyes nor do the plecos.

So other than the water being a bit harder than I would like I don't know what sort of water quality issues I could have. Now, I am loathe to do a water change with the ich treatment still in there and with the slight improvement in te other 3. I also would have a problem with doing such a large water change because I have an issue with my volume of aged water at the moment. Because I did a 30% change on saturday before I did the prazi, I have only about 50L of water left that has been aged for over a week that I have stored in a spare 100L tank. I refilled my approx 150L barrel about 36 hours ago, but I thought that the minimum ageing time was 72 hours. Remember that my tank is 500L so the most I could do until I get my new larger barrel set up (My second supersized barrel developed a major leak and I haven't set up my replacement barrel yet). This is my next job.

So...
1) What is the minimum water ageing time?
2) Should I use the 50L I have left of the week aged water and do a water change with that as a 'better than nothing' arrangement and then do the 150L on Wednesday when the other water hits 72hours?
3) If I do the above should I replace the white spot remedy for the volume of replaced water
4) Do you have any idea of what it actually could be that I'm dealing with because while I am confident of the whitespot diagnosis on the mandarin, the ocean green seems the sickest but has not had so much as one white spot and due to his darkening and colouration they would be more visible on him than anyone else. He is still dark and a bit grey/white looking in the right light as well as the eye issue but I have never heard of ich causing any issues in the eyes. I would like to know what I am dealing with so that I can accurately diagnose any issues in the future. I hate the feeling of helplessness!!!!

[Bill T]

I often wonderred about Octozin - so it is basically metro? They must have a slow release mechanism or something? Do you know if they put anything else in the Octozin?
In any case, Octozin has worked for me (well, for my fish at least)!