Leopard Needs Help

[fishwithoutwater]

Hello Board,

New guy here who I'm sure will annoy you in no time at all

I have always been into crazy hobbies and a friend of mine showed me some discus pictures(darn him.) So I am now knee deep in aquariums.

I got myself some Blue Turquoise at the local pet store but their stock leaved a little to be desired. I decided to get some fish online mainly because I only had two fish which I have come to learn is not something I wanted.

I ordered two leopard discus to be delivered Wednesday the 20th. To my bad luck I got an email the next night saying they would be here tomorrow. Wrong Wednesday they picked DOH!

I had to trust my roommates to get my fish in my quarantine tank which I know they did properly. Everything in that tank was perfect and identical to my other tank which my others are thriving in.

I came home to one already dead and one looking sicker then I could even imagine. I got on the boards and messaged a few people. I figured the first thing that I needed to do was get some high salt volumes in the water. I started by putting 4 tablespoons in my 10gallon. I then changed the water out daily with aged, heated, balanced water with 2 tablespoons of salt. It has now been 5 days and the fish has made an amazing recovery over the last couple days. His fins are no longer clamped.. and they have stopped rotting. The slime has stopped growing all over the poor guy. It looked to me like he had what some of you refer to as "discus plague" matched all the symptoms. You name it and it looked like the poor guy had it.

Despite the fact that he looks better and is swimming around he still wont really eat. Just today he started pecking at some food a little. I have tried several things.. freeze dried blood warms (what they were fed at the breeder), frozen blood worms.. and today some hikari discus pellets(this is what he actually pecked at.)

My question is from what I have been reading I wanted to treat him with salt first because it was possible he might die if I tried dosing with medication right away.

What's next? Since he is not eating but seems healthier on the outside I would imagine internal parasites. Should I dose the tank with some Epsom salts first to try to clean him out so he will eat? or should I dose with something to kill the internals? or both at the same time? It has been a rocky road and there is some light at the end of the tunnel I don't want to screw up now. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Temp: 86F
WC: 50% daily RO
PH: 6.7

[Barb Newell]

Hi, welcome to Simply!

Is he dark, have you seen any poop? He may not be eating because of the new surroundings. How big is he? He is alone in a 10Gal tank? and last question... are you using straight RO water? If yes, are you adding minerals back into it?

Barb

[fishwithoutwater]

Thanks for the reply!

He is darker then I would imagine he should be. Right now he is alone in a 10 gallon hospital tank.

I am using straight RO with seachem ph neutralizer, seachem discus buffer, and then adding some black water extract.

He looked even better today but I still see no fecal matter and he still is not eating. He will pick up food sometimes and spit it back out. From everything I have read on here seems like I needed to treat him with some metro.

I went to this neat local fish store we have and got into about a 20 minute conversation with the main fish guy there who keeps discus himself. He got me some 250mg metro tablets(which to my surprised dissolved pretty easily although you can still see lots of fine granules on the tank floor.) He also recommended I put in PimaFix everyday for 7 days.

So what I have done is raised the temp as high as I can get it 88F put in 250mg's of metro. I will do this every other day for 5 days total of 3 doses. I will also put in 1tsp of the PimaFix everyday for 7 days continuing my 50% daily water change and dose directly after that. Hopefully the little guy will start to show some interests in food soon. I have had him 7 days now and have yet to see him eat anything. I will continue with my 2tbps salt per 5 gallon change as well.

[Barb Newell]

copied from "Most Common Treatments"

Intestinal Flagellates:
Symptoms: Your discus may quit eating or spit out it's food. White, stringy, muscus-like feces will hang like a thread from the anus. He may be dark in color and stay in the back of the tank away from the other discus.
Treat with Metronidazole sold in pet stores as Hex-A-Mit or Metrozol. Can be purchased online from several sources. 400 - 500 mg per 10 gallons of water. Tank temperature 92 degrees +. Dose each day after a 50% water change for 3 to 5 days. Use 92 degree water for water changes. Feed sparingly of favorite foods. Keep water temperature elevated for a week after treatment ends. It may take a week or so for the discus to regain it's appetite. In severe cases of long standing you may need to dose every 8 hours for three days. May dose all fish in tank or remove affected fish to hospital tank. Should not hurt your biofilter.


Temp needs to be 92 for metro to work well, and needs to be dosed daily.

Why aren't you using aged tap water, all of those additives aren't good.

Barb

[fishwithoutwater]

I live in Phoenix. The tap water here would kill/stress the fish would be my guess.

The PH in the water here even aged is higher then I can read with a standard testing kit and the daily TDS is 550-600.

How do you guys get your tanks that hot? I must not have the correct type of heaters. I have a 200 Watt in that little tank and the best I can do is 88. I guess I will head back to the store today and see if I can find something that claims to heat further.


**EDIT**

Also yes I am testing the water after heavy aeration and aging overnight. I even waited 2 days at one point to test the PH. I cant imagine 8.0+ could be good for them. I would end up adding so much ph down that I figured 1/2 teaspoon of neutralizer and 1/2 of discus buffer would be much less additives then tap and ph down. Was I wrong?

[fishwithoutwater]

He is eating frozen blood worms now! Is it normal to see a big change in less then 24 hours from a med? or does it seem more likely that he has decided to calm down a bit and eat now?

[Carol_Roberts]

Warmer temperatures encourage them to eat. Could be he is settling in now and getting over the shipping stress.

You may not need RO for your discus unless you are getting ready to breed them.

Better to keep juveniles at a constant pH of 8.0 than have the pH swing trying to maintain a lower pH. My juveniles are in pH 7.8, GH 12 - if your water is fit to drink it's probably OK for discus. I would simply do water changes with aged tapwater and let the pH settle in the tank at 8.0. No need for blackwater extract.

[fishwithoutwater]

You can ignore my question about heat Apparently my IQ goes down when I get nervous about my fish. I took the one back that I had and got one that had a thermo that went up to 92F.

About the RO water and bounce, I was also worried about this as well. So before I started using it or had my fish I did some tests. I checked the water direct after mixing the buffer agents 6.6. I put the water in my tanks and let it ago for about 24 hours checked again 6.6. I let me tank cycle for about 2 weeks before putting my fish into the tanks and it was still 6.6. So I experience no change in the PH at all even with my WC's in my main tank. I also heat my water before it goes into the tanks so I would doubt even with WC's it fluctuates more than a degree in temp.

However I sure would like to get away from RO being that its a pain for me to get bottles filled up because I have no purchased my own unit next. Maybe once the fish are healthy I will start with 1/4 tap 3/4 RO continuing with my every other day WC's. But change the ratio 1/4 each week after that. I would imagine a gradual change over a few weeks would be better... right?

[Carol_Roberts]

Actually the fish can go up in pH quite easily. Just start doing your daily water changes with aged (aerated, circulated, agitated, pH stable) water. In just a few days they will be swimming in tap.

[fishwithoutwater]

This guy right before I left will now eat anything I throw at him

This is so great that he is doing better. I tell you what though this is the MOST expensive fish I have ever owned. He ended up costing me who knows how much to get everything setup for his arrival.. then all the changes I had to make when he was sick.

Im going to continue treatment as planned since its already started and I dont want to decide it was just because of stress them find out it was indeed something else.

Once he gets over this and I get him into my main tank im will start the aged tap conversion for them all.