Gill flukes on discus fry

I have been steadily loosing fry one or two a day until all my fry eventually succumb. I at first thought that it was because that my water changes were lacking, so i changed 50% morning and 50% night, this had no effect on the rate of deaths.

My next thought was that the sponge filter had been contaminated by dead bbs or something that was poisoning the tank so that was changed still no change in the deaths.

So far i had lost 3 batches of fry one being 50+ Prior to this my losses were minor.

I decided to treat for gill flukes with a salt dip. I placed the only 5 surviving fry including one that was looking emaciated and dark in a plastic jug filled with tank water and slowly added pre mixed marine salt, i did this until the fish were visibly distressed then moved them back to their tank.

They were not happy for about 15mins then came back to themselves, the first thing i noticed was that the very sick discus was no longer gasping at the top of the tank and was schooling with the others, one hour later the same fish was eating.

It is 1 week since i treated them and they are all fine no deaths and seem to be growing at the normal rate.

I plan to treat them again prior adding them to the grow-out.

Any advice will be appreciated

Thanks
Richard

 

Hi Richard

At what size/age did you do the salt water dip?

Andrew

 

Fry were about 4 weeks old

 

Hi Richard

Now maybe reading this some people will understand why I persist in my pursuit of making all my Discus parasite free. It is no fun watching a batch of discus fry dying one after another and you seemingly incapable of treating it.

Its what is referred to as the "3 to 4 week stage"
I had similar problems with a batch some time back. Prof. Dirk helped me sort it out with Formalin. Its tricky as formalin destroys your filter, and it affects the fry badly, so certain precautions must be taken. I now know some other guys use a different product which is easier on the fish, but its impossible to get hold of.
Let us know if it happens again and we can sort out.

Even so, some deaths still do occur, but much less.

Rgds

Marco