discus

So how old is he? What are you feeding and how much? Filtration rate, and tank mates? Tank dimensions please?

What is this "3 days" business?

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

err,i bought him recently 3 days ago ,freshly hatched brine shrimp ,tetra prima ,blood worms ,tetra teblets aka tabimin,not to sure about that beef heart mixture so never tried it

121 46 62 but its bowed so it gets narrow to wide

 

600 liters per hour standard all time running ,,soon to get new canister

tank mates well there is a lot but reducing like -2 silver dollars -3 gouramis ,the placo has not done anything stuipid yet so keep an eye on him ,other wise lots or neons 30 ,6 widow ,1 siamese fighter ,leoperds and zebras ???, guppies and some tetras ,4 angels

 

prof im gonna sleep now reply to you tomorrow

 

Shakes;

What temperature are you running that tank at?

I'm going to leave the answers for the Professor to answer, but with those tankmates, I'm am pretty sure he is going to ask the temp.

Also, what type of filtration material is in the filter. It's no good telling us it's the standard juwel stuff, because most often no-one knows what that is in any case.

 

28 degrees ,2 poly pads ,then nitrate sponge then ,course sponge, then cirax 9like your standrd ceramic rings but more porous ,then 2fine sponges

 

Hi Shakester,

and thanks for stepping in Zoom to ask the temp question which is absolutely crucial.

28C is too low, it should be a minimum of 29C throughout the tank. If you do not have good circulation in your tank watch out that you do not have cooler corners or pockets. If you are settling in a new discus, you should push the temp higher up to 30-32 C to stimulate the fish to eat. Is the discus jumpy at this stage, by that I mean does he dart away when you get to the tank? What colour is he most of the time?

BUT, then you have a problem with the others fishes. Neons should be kept at 21-22 C and not suitable tanks mates for discus, they will burn out within weeks. The silver dollars are much faster at eating food and will eat away all the good food intended for the discus so they must also go, and they must go rapidly. If your discus does not get fed aggresively he will go into reverse within a week and not recover. The tetras will also be a problem in the long run and most of the other fishes are also not from the same environment as discus and are therefore a problem with the exception of the angels. Seeing that you do not have another discus and angels occur where discus occur in nature they would be quite good tankmates, but if they grab all the food from in front of him then you also have a problem.

With regard to the filtration, what is the volume of the filter. Measure the dimensions. Say 20 cm x 20 cm x 5 cm or something like that, just so that I can get an idea of filter capacity please.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Sorry to go off topic a bit here but I would like to ask the prof a question if you guys don't mind...
Is it a good idea to have angels in with discuses, I know they come from the same area and so on but I heard that that an Angel can get a disease and not show any signs of it and sort it out with out meds and so on but the discus is much more sensitive to thing like that and the Angels can carry it over to the discus and the discus could die?
Is this at all true?

 

:congrats:you are correct ,4 points to the prof
,the dollar fisty lil animals ,but no prob with the neons il keep an eye on them but every one keeps discus with neons???

only when you look at him he, looks like some one braaied him [black lines] ,other wise healthy and fully coloured

 

No, nobody keeps neons with discus, they keep cardinals, who can cope with higher temps, but in actual fact they also prefer about 26C and not 29C and higher.

The vertical bars on the fish are called stress bars. A dominant discus will not show these bars but those fishes that are showing that they are submissive will show these bars. Also, if a discus is unsure of itself because it is on its own it will show these bars and this is typical of a discus kept on his own. He wants to be kept in a shoal at the size of 65 mm as this would give him security.

Gareth, the comment about keeping angels with discus is certainly valid. Flagellate diseases from which discus can die, can be carried by angels, but newer research has shown that all discus carry these organisms in any case, regardless of whether they are kept with angels or not. Angels can get just as sick as discus can from these diseases. Flagellate organisms can cause hole-in-the-head disease in discus, in angels they just cause stringy faeces, which they also cause in discus as well. Flagellate organisms cause the damage, in other words, the holes, but there is another root cause for this and this is a shortage of vitamin C. If discus do not have enough vitamin C from green vegetables in their diet, their immune systems eventually do not function properly (like scurvy in humans) and then they will be prone to disease and because all discus carry this disease in any case, they then start having hole in the head symptoms. So, angels are not really so important in this whole issue, it is more a historic thing. What this tells us is that it is tremendously important to concentrate on the vitamin C in the discus diet (in angels also for that matter) and they must not just be fed with blood worms and Tetra bits. Many foods such as Tetra bits contain vitamin C, but the reason why vitamin C is added is to protect the food against oxidation and not to really feed vitamin C to the fishes. The amount of vitamin C is too low in most of these foods and needs to be supplemented with a vitamin C enriched beef heart mixture made by reputable manufacturers (not a home brew mix....). The amount of vitamin C in these foods, however, is just enough to stop the development of holes in the head, but the internal damage is still done and the fishes stop eating and eventually die from getting thinner and thinner.

Another interesting thing is that in Germany, there is now a tendency to get discus completely free of flagellate organisms. This can be achieved by taking the eggs away form the parents, incubating them in water containing metranidazole to kill the flagellates and then raising the fry artificially. The fry are then kept away from other discus entirely and therefore raised until they are adults completely without these organisms. After this adults can be used to raised the young normally again, but they then have no chance of getting a flagellate infection. In general they have found that such discus grow often to one and a half times the size of the parents because the ongoing effect of the flagellates is no longer there. Interesting hey?

In spite of all this, I do keep angels with my discus, and although I do not have flagellate problems I will treat all my fishes, angels and discus, with metranidazole ever so often to reduce the flagellates in my recirculating system.

I hope this answers your question.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

That is very interesting Prof thanks for the info.
were can I get the metranidazole and the beef heart that is enriched with vitamin C because here in Potch you can't find anything like that (Beef heart that is).

 

That is very interesting! I read something similar, think it is the Stendtker Discus guys that started with that? I assume you have a lot of knowledge Dirk. I have a question. How do you administer the Metro? This is gonna freak you out but thus far i havent trusted the 'leave food in it' option, so I have opted for the 'highly stressfull' syringe in mouth method. Not ideal!

 

Metranidazole can be bought over the counter at any pharmacy, either as Flagyl or as a generic, I have used both. I will have to check on the dosage that I use because I have that at home. I crush the tablets and put this into the tanks directly. It causes a white cloud initially, but does dissolve completely as long as it does not lie as a thick layer in places on the bottom of the tank (my tanks are bare bottom and can be controlled very well).

Marco, this method was developed by a guy called Günther Rahn and everyone else then starting using it. Stendtker discus definitely were not the ones who developed it. As I explained I administer it to the water. The direct syringe method is highly stressful to the fishes, just reading this freaks me out because the amount of stress you cause the fishes has a greater chance of killing them than the flagellates themselves. The method was proposed by Degen in the early 1990s but belongs onto the museum shelf and is very cruel and completely unnecessary as it is dubious as to how much of the metranidazole actually goes into the gut and how much leaks out of the gills.

Gareth, the beefheart that I import from Germany contains vitamin C and also garlic which is good against parasitic worms. You may be surprised at the prices that I sell this at (also my other frozen foods) if I see the prices that are quoted for Gauteng and it would be well worth it if you and some of your friends ordered a shipment from me which I would have to airfreight to JNB. Send me a PM with your private email address so that I can send you a price list.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

thank you, and yes i feel the same as you, yet i never thought just to dissolve it in the tank water. Some suggest allowing the food to sit in it for a while then feeding it, yet i have always thought that to be a little 'unguaranteed'. Will try your method from now on. I'd also like some of your food. What is "pm"?

 

ok ,i bought 2 blue diamonds for him ,but one has a definate hole in his head he is so going back tommorow

his bars never show until he is spooked

 

Marco,

I have said this on this forum before and I will say it again. Buy a decent discus book (see the sticky thread with reading recommendations on my forum) and it is all written there with regard to dosing of water or feeding of food soaked in medication. Soaking dried granulates does also work, but water treatments are more effective. Discus are so expensive that I do not know why folks do not want invest in one decent discus book. If you save one discus using the book, the book is just about paid in any case. A pm is a private mail which you can send by clicking on one of the links at the top of this page.

Shakester,

You must be very careful not to get confused with the nose holes of discus and hole-in-the-head symptoms. Hole-in-the-head "holes" normally start above the eyes and not on the lower face where the nose openings are and there are not only two openings there. Maybe you are unnecessarily worried. Compare the nose openings on all of your discus to get an idea of what are the nose openings, they should be at the same places on all of the fishes, hole-in-the-head holes can be anywhere, but particularly above the eyes.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Dirk, I will definetly look into buying some of the books you suggested. It is as you say more than worth it. I think most of us make the commen mistake that the Internet is a good source, yet, just like the cheaper books, I have found it full of contradictions. I dont seem able to send you pm. I have to get my post up it seems. I only joined today. I am talking to you yet we havent greeted (lol) As you know,my name is Marco, good to meet you. I find it really hard to get some "1st hand advise" from Discus experts. I dont know any in PTA. You seem to have that. Thank you. Hope you dont mind if I pick your brain ever so often. I actually wrote a question somewhere in my greeting that I need some advise on. This thread seem to be about someone elses question, and I dont want to impose. I dont mean to waste your time, but I also dont want to be making mistake that costs me in the end.

 

you still to cleva, yes 2 pionts, i saw the sessory holes but this thing got a dent on one side of its face and is showing weird signs

you are free listen in on my conversation with the prof ,,this guy should go down in history

 

Shakester,

I would be careful about this dent on the one side of the discus, it may have nothing to do with hole-in-the-head at all. One of the most important things that decide whether a discus is an A grade discus is whether the gill covers are slightly too short on one or both sides and whether the discus has facial abnormalities. These can be that the face is just slightly skew in some instances. As soon as this happens a discus is downgraded. Many discus that are imported into South Africa are not top grade discus and I think that your fish may be one of these. That does not mean that the fish is diseased or may not actually become adult. Many of these abnormalities are not even genetic and cannot be inherited (as opposed to bulldogs which are really terrible as half of their offspring die because they have abnormal heads).

So what I am saying is that this fish is OK for your purposes where you are starting off. If you did not pay a high price for these fishes then this may explain things.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

i payed 215 for him ,and the next batch of discus will come this week ,the dent is below the eye and looks like a open wound