Hi there,

I have a juvenile discus in a hospital tank and he seems to be doing much worse than when he was in the main tank. I separated him due to a bad gill and treated him with Kusuri wormer plus for gill flukes. He seemed to be doing slightly better but now has fallen victim to fin rot, and is blacker than black.

My suspicion is the hospital tank is too small (30 something litres, I know, but the discus is also very small), I started off doing 100% water changes on the hospital tank daily, and have been adding melafix ( I know, it's useless, I've only recently realised this) and salt, plus salt baths when changing water. I've now moved down to 50% water changes on the hospital, but the discus is black, fins look terrible, and it's just awful to look at him. The gill looks better, still slightly red, but I am concerned that this hospital tank is doing it more harm than good.

I have a group of 8 discus in my main tank, tank is 520litres, water changes for main tank are 50% every three days, with HMA stored and aerated water. Ph is 7. Nitrite 0, Nitrate - unsure, 20something.. My discus in the main tank are healthy, large fish. The little one never really got a growth spurt on (stopped eating due to the inflamed gill). I've only had him since January.

I've kept discus for some years, I've had my fair share of ups and downs and I know about the clean water, clean water, clean water approach and find this is the best cure for anything for all my healthy discus, but this little sick one is driving me mad. Can I put him back in the main tank? Maybe he'll be do better in there with the group and stop being so black. But, of course, my fear, like every other discus owner, will he infect the others (particularly, with this fin rot?), I know it's stress related and water quality in the stupid little tank, what would you do? Any advice would be very very appreciated.

Also apologies if I have not completed the sickness questionaire properly, I couldn't find it

Steff