How to start

Hello everyone, am new at this forum, but read a lot of articles in this forum and another forums, but couldn’t find the right answer in to my problem
I have jewel aquarium 120l, original filter with upgraded 600l/h,runing CO2 system to help keep stable 7ph, ammonia is 0, cause doing daily water changes, nitrite is 0,i have around 20 neon tetra.
I really would like to keep discus or angelfish,
maybe month ago I got 3 beautiful black angels, at the beginning they been really happy fish until 2 of them died, don’t know reason ,the death was so fast in 12 hours they had swollen bellies, I didn’t had any medication, I thought reason in frozen bloodworms, cause one didn’t eat them and survive, my girlfriend both one more so I had 2 again, but they start fighting madly, so I bring them to the shop back, and got 2 discus instead, after few days one of them died maybe stress, hard to say, I really didn’t wanted to keep anymore discus, but the next morning my girl friend both one more discus really beautiful, and I tried to everything like in the books, he seems adopted even they so shy not really eaten, but I can see then is no movement in a room they happily swim around, until one morning the big discus swimed in to the corner and stand like this / head down, I did some research and found what could be problem in swim bladder, I didn’t wanted to loose him no matter what price, I drove to cork and got some hexamita, after treatment in the morning I found him dead, don’t know really what to do should I return one left discus to the shop or should I get one more,( sorry bout mistakes)

Firstly, Welcome to the forum.

That's not a great experience you've had so far with discus.
Trying to unravel what went wrong is one thing, but the best way forward from here is to start a new venture with discus and make sure certain key points are addressed.

Discus are not usually the sort of fish that drop dead within a day or so unless something extreme is wrong.

1. Make sure the water and filtration system is mature and stable enough to handle the fish.

2. Eye-up good quality captive bred discus for buying. Do not buy wild caught or very large or very small discus until you have more experience with discus.

3. Don't buy runts. Ignore ones with over-sized eyes, or any body defect, or ones that look somewhat elongated. If they have inflamed gills or are breathing rapidly then leave them in the shop.

4. Don't mess around with water chemistry unless absolutely necessary. It is rare that normal tapwater is totally wrong for captive bred discus fish. Messing around with the stability to attempt to 'perfect conditions' will kill discus.
Peat added to the filtration system will, however, be a good move no matter what.

5. Before adding discus to an existing established tank, do a large partial water change (30 to 50%) using well conditioned water (to be honest, Tetra AquaSafe is the best conditioner for discus but is not totally vital if you are careful with the introduction).
Do add some additional 'bacteria in a bottle' and increase aeration.

6. If you have an established tank, then I'd advise adding ammonia adsorbing zeolites to the filter (they are about 8 to 10 euro for 3 bags). That will add that little extra protection against an ammonia spike with the increased fish load.

7. Get the temperature to 86F (30 C). That will help with maintaining their immune system after being stressed on the move.

8. When introducing the fish, do it carefully and slowly but too slow as to stress them. Emptying the bag of water and fish into a non-toxic bucket and trickle siphoning the water from the tank into the bucket using an airline would be a good way to introduce them to their new water.

9. Check what pH and softness the shop keeps the discus in......if it is too acidic or soft then that may cause you problems when introducing them into your system.

10. After they are introduced, switch off all lights for a day or 2. Do not feed on the first day (missing a days food is not going to kill anything).

11. Add a little food on day 2 or 3. Watch to see if they go for it. Remove any un-eaten food pretty quickly........discus are graze feeders and they might come across a piece of food that has been hanging around for 15 minutes or so: that is enough time for food to build up microbes that produce toxins.
Many discus have died from fungal toxin poisoning after grazing on moldy food......those toxins bring rapid death.

12. When eating, feed a variety of good quality food. You won't get the best food for discus in shops, but a mix of defrosted frozen food and dried food will do the job very nicely.
Make sure that frozen food is fully defrosted before feeding.

13. Feeding un-defrosted frozen food will kill pretty quickly; feeding on only dried food will take a long time to cause gut problems.

14. Do regular partial water changes. Vacuum the gravel when taking out old water. When adding new water, be careful not to churn up muck in the gravel in case the discus start to eat it.

15. Do your normal testing of the water......ammonia needs to be zero.

16. Look out for cloudy eyes or fraying of the fins or uncontrolled darting around the tank..........they are signs of the water quality and general bio-load becoming poor.

17. I'm not going to write a book here on this as I'm enjoying my coffee and getting ready for the day.

I'm not too sure that the CO2 is actually making a stable pH7. That is not a normal value that I would associate with CO2 buffering.

Ian

Mars,
Sorry to hear about your problems.
You have a lovely setup there. How long is the tank established.
Daily water changes seems a bit excessive. How big a water change are you doing daily.
Discus should only be introduced into a well established tank ay least six months old.
You reading seem fine but I would look to very slowly lower the PH to around 6.5 this can be done by using a mixture of reverse osmosis and tap water 50/50 during water changes (Seahorse sell R/O water).
You could then later swop out your neons for cardinals which like soft more acid water. Discus do well in this this type of setup. You could initially introduce some rummy nose tetras and see how they get on.

Greg

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Just wanted to say big thanks to Greg and Ian for the good tips, for keeping discus.Wanted to wait o few weeks to see how everything will works out for me, and so far so good.
At the moment I have 5 discus about 3 inch and they look all happy and healthy, I do about 50% water changes every second day, don’t feed any more with blood worms, only giving special discus food, in a few months time thinking to get around 300 litre tank, I got CO2 controller to keep stable ph and atomic diffuser, I think works better then glass one. just attached few photos to share how everything looks now.

Double Post Deleted!!

Your photos are still not working if you would like to send them on to me i can upload them for you.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sean

igmillichip wrote:

Firstly, Welcome to the forum.

That's not a great experience you've had so far with discus.
Trying to unravel what went wrong is one thing, but the best way forward from here is to start a new venture with discus and make sure certain key points are addressed.

Discus are not usually the sort of fish that drop dead within a day or so unless something extreme is wrong.

1. Make sure the water and filtration system is mature and stable enough to handle the fish.

2. Eye-up good quality captive bred discus for buying. Do not buy wild caught or very large or very small discus until you have more experience with discus.

3. Don't buy runts. Ignore ones with over-sized eyes, or any body defect, or ones that look somewhat elongated. If they have inflamed gills or are breathing rapidly then leave them in the shop.

4. Don't mess around with water chemistry unless absolutely necessary. It is rare that normal tapwater is totally wrong for captive bred discus fish. Messing around with the stability to attempt to 'perfect conditions' will kill discus.
Peat added to the filtration system will, however, be a good move no matter what.

5. Before adding discus to an existing established tank, do a large partial water change (30 to 50%) using well conditioned water (to be honest, Tetra AquaSafe is the best conditioner for discus but is not totally vital if you are careful with the introduction).
Do add some additional 'bacteria in a bottle' and increase aeration.

6. If you have an established tank, then I'd advise adding ammonia adsorbing zeolites to the filter (they are about 8 to 10 euro for 3 bags). That will add that little extra protection against an ammonia spike with the increased fish load.

7. Get the temperature to 86F (30 C). That will help with maintaining their immune system after being stressed on the move.

8. When introducing the fish, do it carefully and slowly but too slow as to stress them. Emptying the bag of water and fish into a non-toxic bucket and trickle siphoning the water from the tank into the bucket using an airline would be a good way to introduce them to their new water.

9. Check what pH and softness the shop keeps the discus in......if it is too acidic or soft then that may cause you problems when introducing them into your system.

10. After they are introduced, switch off all lights for a day or 2. Do not feed on the first day (missing a days food is not going to kill anything).

11. Add a little food on day 2 or 3. Watch to see if they go for it. Remove any un-eaten food pretty quickly........discus are graze feeders and they might come across a piece of food that has been hanging around for 15 minutes or so: that is enough time for food to build up microbes that produce toxins.
Many discus have died from fungal toxin poisoning after grazing on moldy food......those toxins bring rapid death.

12. When eating, feed a variety of good quality food. You won't get the best food for discus in shops, but a mix of defrosted frozen food and dried food will do the job very nicely.
Make sure that frozen food is fully defrosted before feeding.

13. Feeding un-defrosted frozen food will kill pretty quickly; feeding on only dried food will take a long time to cause gut problems.

14. Do regular partial water changes. Vacuum the gravel when taking out old water. When adding new water, be careful not to churn up muck in the gravel in case the discus start to eat it.

15. Do your normal testing of the water......ammonia needs to be zero.

16. Look out for cloudy eyes or fraying of the fins or uncontrolled darting around the tank..........they are signs of the water quality and general bio-load becoming poor.

17. I'm not going to write a book here on this as I'm enjoying my coffee and getting ready for the day.

I'm not too sure that the CO2 is actually making a stable pH7. That is not a normal value that I would associate with CO2 buffering.

Ian

That was a wonderful reply Ian.

Kev.

There You Go Mate

Sean