[cc_woman]

I am new to this site, and need some good advice about my discus. I will give you as much current and back ground info possible.

I have been keeping discus now for about 6 months, so fairly new still. I have 2 WC discus and the other 4 are tank bred. They are all in a 90 gallon planted tank where I also use yeast methods for CO2 production. Just over a month ago, I had some bad disease wipe out all 4 of my german blue rams, 1 kribensis, and 1 discus, which I still think was fish TB. I treated them with mardel maracyn plus because one of the rams had shown signs of pop eye. I do weekly wc's of 25-50% using tap water.

For the past month or so it has looked like my discus have been shedding their slime coat, which comes off looking like strands of something hanging from their bodies. The WC discus have never eaten anything I have tried to feed them except bloodworms (NLS discus formula, tetra color, brine shrimp, beef heart, spirulina wafers) since I bought them a few months ago. I have tried using garlic guard and soaking the food in blood worm juice to get them to eat the dry foods, but they still won't accept it. All the discus go through periods where they look really healthy and swim around normally. The tank bred discus all usually eat fine, but I went on vacation for a week (brother fed them from baggies I pre made for him) now the tank bred discus are not eating well, look like they are getting skinnier, and all of them are darker in color. They also have odd twitching of the fins. I have not seen any other signs of illness, and don't know what could be affecting them. Parameters are fine and I have done 2 wc's in the past week, afraid to let the water quality go down.

I use prime water conditioner, and I used to use salt but have been weaning all my tanks from it. I fertilize the tank with seachem flourish excel and comprehensive ferts.

Tank mates are 3 angels, 2 bolivian rams, 5 small red hump geophagus, 1 kribensis, 1 pictus catfish, 1 blue acara, 1 BGK, 2 siamese algae eaters, 2 ghost shrimp, 1 ADF, and 5 small tetras 1 cardinal and others I don't know the names of. I will be removing the angels, BGK, kribensis, blue acara and putting them in a 40 gallon tank I just bought. I have heard that angels carry a natural parasite that can do serious damage to the discus, which is why I am moving them. But my problem is every single fish in the tank is fine except the discus. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to give everyone as much info as possible. Thanks for any help I can get

 

[cc_woman]

And to add to this, I keep the temperature of my tank at 84 degrees, the pH is 7.6, KH is around 130, unsure of GH, ammonia 0, nitrites 0, and nitrates 0. The tank has been running for about 7 months now. I use an aquaclear 500, and fluval 404 for filtration.

 

[cichlidaholic]

Thanks for being so thorough with the info! :thumb:

Were you having this problem with the slime coat prior to treating with the Mardel product?

Were the wild discus added later in the life of the tank, or were all introduced at once? Are all the discus "shedding"?

If you truly had TB in the tank, I can't imagine resolving it with an over the counter product. In fact, I've never heard of anyone having true fish TB and being able to treat it at all, so I'm wondering if the meds you used may have "masked" the problems and now the symptoms are showing up again.

 

[cc_woman]

Yes I was. Then after using mardel it went away for a bit and the fish all perked up. They were fine for a good few weeks, then I went away for a week, and I came back and some of their behaviors changed again. The wild discus were added in about the middle. I had 2 of them first, then we added the wild caughts. The wild caughts were QT'd for a few weeks before adding them into the 90. Then I got a couple more a month or so later, then a couple more. I have been limiting feeding bloodworms to once a week, unfortunately the WC don't really eat anything else. Fed some beef heart last night, all discus except one WC and the white skinny one ate it. Actually even an angel of mine has never been the same since an unknown cause of death has hit my tank. He doesn't really eat much either, and sometimes twitches, almost like torret syndrome or something. If they might be internal or external parasites, I can treat them for it if necessary. I will be starting a series of large daily wc's for a while, then start doing wc's twice a week. I was also advised to age the water first, if so, how will this be possible for a 90 gallon needing over 50% water changes? I have no place except outside to keep a large pail full of water.