Discus doesn`t eat ( and I force it)

[sicicop]

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?
One of my discus fish stopped eating almost 4 weeks ago.

2. Symptoms (i.e. turning dark, excess slime, not eating, clamped fins, flashing, darting, clamped gills, white/yellow/green poop, hiding, headstanding or tailstanding, white on tips of fins, rotting or fungus, blisters/white zits on fish, bloated, cloudy eyes, wounds).
-normal colour
- Not eating at all (except some piece of mussel that I gave it yesterday)
-Hiding first two weeks, now he is not scared or fleeing
-Blur on tips of caudal fin
-a little aggressive especially when the other fish are eating from the bottom, he bites them

3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
-Last week I started tube feeding him. I take it out of the water and add 0.5-0.7 ml of flake food to the porridge. It sounds harsh, but after 3 weeks without food I thought It was going to starve. This served as an example for me:
https://youtu.be/ePdmAS9JokE?si=-ScasygULIpHLZGC
I feed it this method only once every 1 or 2 days.
It looks good, has good behavior and is not harassed
-I have added 1 gram of salt for every liter of water to make life easier

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
350 litre tank plus 100 litre sump.
There are nine discus in total and they are all approximately a year and a half old. The size is about 5 inch

5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
-I change 75 liters every day which is 16% and daily siphon of the base

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
-The tank has been running for a year and a half. It has a thin layer of white silica sand (1.5 cm thick)

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
No, it is tap water.

8. What type/brand water conditioner do you use? Do you add it to the tank or aging barrel? How much do you use?
I use Seachem Prime

9. Parameters and water source;

Note: Water Parameters are important in diagnosing problems within a tank. If you don't own test kits for the following information, you can purchase them, test your parameters and post this info as soon as possible.
- temp 28.5ºC
- ph 6.8
- ammonia reading 0
- nitrite reading 0.035
- nitrate reading 4
- KH 2
- TDS 112 w/o salt and 1400 with salt

What type of water or combinations of water sources do you use? If it is an RO/tap/well water mix, please list percentages in the mix.
- All tap water

10. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.
- None

11. Please tell us what you feed your fish and how often. This can be critical information for solving the problem so be as specific as you can.
- Sera Discus Granulat once a day
- Tropical Discus Gran D-50 Plus once a day
- Tropical D-50 PLUS flakes three times a day
- Frozen Beefheart once a day
- Frozen brine shrimp every two or three days
- mussel once a week

12. Include any pictures or videos you have which shows the symptoms. If you can't add them to this post, please provide a link to them.IMG_0095.jpg

[brewmaster15]

The fish has some fin damage..probably from handling and nets.

So if I understand this. The wasnt eating for several weeks so you started to force feed it... yesterday it ate a little. Thats encouraging.. I would separate the fish and let it eat as much mussel as it wants then intro other foods.

I would stop force feeding at this point.

You want the fish isolated so you can be sure its eating and doesnt pass off colored feces.

[danotaylor]

The presence of nitrite, even though low, indicates your filter is not fully cycled. The fringe of the caudal fin could be damaged, as Al mentioned, from handling & netting, but also looks a little like ammonia burns. How old is your test kit? Is it out of date?

The salt will help to prevent nitrite absorption, but 1g per liter is a very high dose , equiv to 4g per US gallon; 1g per US gallon is plenty of salt to deal with bacterial loads, nitrite poisoning etc.