Discus disease? Please HELP!

[mhdoufi]

Hello guys,
I have a few concerns I wanted to share about my discus. I currently have a 75gallon tank with 4 discus 5 angel fish(1 adult and 4 fingerling) and one terra and 6 small bottom feeders. My female discus has been sick for a few weeks now and I am really not sure why. I am doing consistent 40%water changes every 2 days and my water parameters are almost perfect. My female discus is looking very skinny recently and is very inactive. I know a lot of people have this problem as well, but my fish are constantly eating and they eat a lot. I keep my temperature at about 86f just to make sure that whatever they have gets treated. The fish always stays in one corner of the tank with clamped fins. The other discus are looking fine, but one of them had a white stringy poop that definitely looked like a parasitic infection. I could see the worms coming out of him and with no hesitation I suspected a parasite. The symptoms of the fish are all over the place so I will try to be as specific as possible.

Female discus symptoms:
1-clamped fins
2- skinny and lethargic
3- staying in one side of the tank(top right) and starring at the wall.
4-bloating right after eating.
5- One of the fins was rotting, but that might have been due to some of the fish picking on her.
6- Football shape and skinny head.
7- Black dots on the body(might be genetic) .
8- Facing down all the time.
9- Fish eating aggressively

The only symptom that I noticed in my other discus is the white stringy poop. I haven't seen that on the female though. I have been using aquarium salts (about a cup for my 75g) to help prevent anything that might be going on. I just purchased General cure from API, but I won't use it until I know exactly whats going on. I really want to know what is the best approach to take especially because I don't want to overwhelm or stress the fish if they don't have anything. I also want to avoid parasites becoming resistant to medication so I want to make sure that it works the first time I use it. I am really worried about my discus and would really appreciate all the help I can get.

 

[Grasmere Discus]

If your discus are eating but not gaining weight then most likely internal parasites is the culprit especially with white feces being expelled. Hopefully you have some matured sponge filters that you can use in a hospital tank, and isolate the one with the white poop. You made the right choice by buying General Cure. It has Metronidazole for internal flagellates and praziquantel for deworming, so this is the perfect combination medicine. I usually isolate and treat any fish at the first sign of illness, and they recover in a week or two. Use a smaller tank say a 5-gallon, then you just use have the dosage and save money. For the football shape fish, there's nothing you can do. That's genetic and the fish should not have been sold to you if it was from a reputable breeder. For the skinny head, it may be too late because it probably had internal parasites so long that the fish lost body mass. Black dots (peppering) is perfectly normal and healthy, but some consider peppering to be not a good quality fish, appearance wise. Other things to consider, clean/replace mechanical filter pads, vacuum your substrate regularly, and keep up with the water changes. Good luck.

 

[mhdoufi]

If your discus are eating but not gaining weight then most likely internal parasites is the culprit especially with white feces being expelled. Hopefully you have some matured sponge filters that you can use in a hospital tank, and isolate the one with the white poop. You made the right choice by buying General Cure. It has Metronidazole for internal flagellates and praziquantel for deworming, so this is the perfect combination medicine. I usually isolate and treat any fish at the first sign of illness, and they recover in a week or two. Use a smaller tank say a 5-gallon, then you just use have the dosage and save money. For the football shape fish, there's nothing you can do. That's genetic and the fish should not have been sold to you if it was from a reputable breeder. For the skinny head, it may be too late because it probably had internal parasites so long that the fish lost body mass. Black dots (peppering) is perfectly normal and healthy, but some consider peppering to be not a good quality fish, appearance wise. Other things to consider, clean/replace mechanical filter pads, vacuum your substrate regularly, and keep up with the water changes. Good luck.

Thanks for the reply. I just wanted to know whether I should treat the whole tank or the just the skinny fish. The other fish was the one who had the white stringy poop not the skinny female. I don't want to treat just one fish and then put it back in the same tank to get infected again. I also want to know if this will affect my biological filter at all( the parasite and the treatment). Should I feed the fish during this treatment or starve them? please let me know what you think.

 

[Grasmere Discus]

You'll go broke treating a 75 gallon tank. Chance are if one has intestinal bugs, the rest have them... some may have them but not show any signs. Only when they are stressed, the infection manifests itself through their behavior of hiding, not eating, and get skinny. In any closed aquatic system, there will always be populations of microscopic pathogens, parasites, bacteria, fungus. It impossible to get rid of them. The only option is to control those population levels by frequent water change, filter pad cleaning, and gravel cleaning if not bare bottom. I don't know how many fish you keep in the tank but I would move them to a hospital tank. I always have an active/matured air sponge filter on standby in case I need to isolate sick fish. So hopefully you have one also. Parasites need a host to survive, so if you vacate your show tank for a week or so, you can arrest the life-cycle of the parasite in the tank while not killing off the biofilter. In the mean time do water change and re-dose daily in the hospital tank during the treatment. What I also do is mix in medicine into my beefheart feed so it goes directly into their stomachs (if they eat). Another trick if you don't use beefheart, is to feed them a few minutes after you dose the tank with the powder. That way they'll suck in some medicine along with their food. If they don't eat, tempt them with live blackworms.