Discus Laying Down

[maxtcee]

Hi maxtcee and welcome.

If your discus arent settling, just leave the light off for a good while, so that their only light is natural daylight, and set up a timer for your actual light for just a couple of hours at night time for a few days, and gradually increase the time on the timer so your discus get used to it.

Thats what I done with mine and there all ok now, and I still do this if/when I get new aditions to the tank.

Hope this has helped some.

And good luck, keep us posted

G

Beside the point really. It's not that they are not settling in his problems stem from the fact that he hasn't cycled his filter.

@maxtcee You can not cycle a filter in 1 week. Getting some wool from your pond does not to begin to address the issue. You need to have a large colony of bacs in your filter should you wish to keep discus. Ammonia burns (literally burns like acid) your fish from the outside. Nitrite damages their internal organs and at any measure above 0.00ppm can and will damage your fish.

You need to cycle your filter or the fish, if not already deceased, soon will be.

so far ive been montoring the water and doing 15% daily water changes keeping all levels @0 only the nitrite has been staying around .10
havnt seen the fish laying down again although some are still not eating they are however keeping active and swimming even schooling they seem to do alot better with the lights off so i guess ill just continue what im doing and hope for the best
i read here some lady hung her neighbors pond floss in a stocking and put it in her tank i was thinking of maybe doing the same to speed things up
also i noticed last night that the bulbs im using in the head are 10,000k that were from my african tank gonna switch that back to my 30w aquas see if that make a difference

thanks for everyones input

 

[maxtcee]

 

[Primous]

The light will make no difference whatsoever. The lady who hung filter floss in the tank was doing it wrong as the floss would need to be inside the filter to make a difference. In short you need to do a cycle if not you're basically setting yourself up for a financial loss and a lot of headache as discus don't come cheap. And until you get your bacs colony to sufficient numbers you're going to go through a lot of them. In this hobby there simply is no way to avoid doing a cycle.

 

[DevotedToDiscus]

They don't look at all sick. They will turn very dark if they are not well, and hold their fins down. Keep up with the water changes, increase to 30% per day if you can. Watch the their poop colour, if it is nice and dark all is well, but if it looks thin and white or grey it indicates a problem. Discus are very susceptible to internal parasites. They carry them without problem most of their lives, but stress or sickness can trigger these parasites to multiply and their immune systems are not strong enough to fight them off. This is a very common problem and puts them off their food. It can be treated with metronidazole, but they need to ingest it, so a bit of a catch 22 if they are off their food! I do find that certain foods, such as live brine shrimp and blood worms seem irresistible to them, even when they are sick. I have some tricks to getting them to take Metro if you think they need it? Good luck

 

[maxtcee]

I have been feeding them black worms but only some are eating others just swim right by

 

[DevotedToDiscus]

I have been feeding them black worms but only some are eating others just swim right by

Are they live Black worms? If so, I would recommend not feeding them to many, and vary the diet. Black worms can give some fast growth, but also carry bad bacteria. See if you can get them onto frozen Blood worms, and use a feeding cone so that you don't have uneaten food drifting around. Getting them used to a feeding cone also helps with varying their diet(as they always associate the cone with food) and also help if you need to feed them medication.

 

[maxtcee]

Ok here's and update
Did a 30% water change yesterday afternoon
Check just now
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate0
Temp 86
Ph 7.0
Almost all fish are eating now also blowing in the sand
There are 2 however that are darkening the same 2 who wont eat there just staying at the bottom corner