Discuss Not Eating!?!?!?

[paul123]

Hello, my discuss has not eaten for 3 weeks now..
usually his color is a cream/white with red on the bottom of him.. but he is all brown now.
he is not eating for what reason i do not know... i have had him in the tank for about 3 weeks now...
he is swimming around perfectly with all the other fish.. but he sometimes has them moments where he just stops and stares at nothing for about 10 minutes ?

this has never happened to any of my other fish.. or fish experiences please help


thanks

 

[drobbyb]

What are your water paramaters? What's your temperature? What have you been feeding him? When was your last waterchange?

 

[paul123]

What are your water paramaters? What's your temperature? What have you been feeding him? When was your last waterchange?

i don't get what you mean by water paramaters ...
my temperature is 28 degrees...
i have been feeding him and all the rest of the fish JBL, GranoColor pellets.....
my last water change was about 2 days ago....
i just don't understand he was perfect about a week ago and one time decided not to eat.
usually he is a garbage guts ..

iunno

 

[blue acara]

Without a microscopic diagnosis its hard to tell weather this parasitic in nature or bacterial.

I would start with quick Cure.(formalin+malachite green). and treat as if it was a parasite first. Lots of water changes before doses and dose per the bottles instruction. Quick Cure is for external pathogens only, which is what your fish appear to have. i.e the darkening of the fish. It works on a number of parasites besides Ick.

If the fish get really bad and you've gone thru 3-4 quick cure baths, I would consider trying a course of furan 2 to deal with any bacterial issues.

 

[paul123]

alright well ill give that a try and just see how things pan out..
hopefull good =]




thanks alot for help

 

[petertr]

Water Parameters means Ammonio, Nitrite and Nitrate - and if you have them hardness as well.


Try some blood worm - Discus seem to love the stuff.


What else do you have in the tank? Could be that it is stressed?

 

[Corleone]

Is it the tank you mentioned the other day? Not knowing more, I'd suspect possible ammonia/nitrite in the water, get a test kit ASAP. Also, if it's that tank, possibly one of that indeterminate number of severums and "heaps more" discus is starting to reach maturity and trying to establish itself in the pecking order, and while the tank isn't immediately crowded, as soon as fish start doing this, that changes and I'd expect the discus to be on the losing end.

When discus are stressed, they'll happily starve themselves to death.

 

[petertr]

If they are stressed, they can sometimes loose their colouring, and take on black markings (often lines) - or so I've been told.

 

[drobbyb]

Good on the temp. That actually leaves a bit of room to go up if you need to.

 

[blue acara]

Reading the other replys I must add that if the water is not good(if it has ammonia or nitrite) or if the discus are being stressed by other tankmates then the first thing to do is to sort the water out and get the fish in a calm stressfree tank, without this they don't have much chance.
The bars on wild and some domestic discus will go dark when stressed, but the whole fish going dark is something to worry about and is more than just stress. Are they breathing heavily, are their fins not erect? And are they eating?- these are signs of a sick discus.

 

[minxfishy]

To get you some more help, Im gonna fill in some blanks on the tank and stocking. This is taken from a post you made yesterday, regarding severums.

i have a 200 liter tank (52.9gallons)
the fish i have are,13 large Tiger Barbs, 4 medium Discuss, 3 large Angels, 2 small Bristle Noses, 1 medium Whip Tail,and also the two Sevs,

Hopefully that will help members with a better guide on your tank.

 

[drobbyb]

That's overstocked. I bet there is ammonia in the tank. Ammonia will cause discus to not eat.

 

[freerunner416]

The discus could be getting stressed out by the angels. Watch to see if the discus is being bullied.

If i was you i would worm them with flubenol and would also do a daily water change for the next week. Anything up to about 25%. I know its a pain but if it saves the discus its worth it. discus should be wormed monthly.

I have 5 discus and have had a couple do this to me before. Some people suggested placing there food in garlic juice as this builds up there immune system and also seems to stimulate there hunger. I hav never tried this.

Hope it works

 

[rabbut]

I was going to tell you in the other thead all the potential issues I could see, but there were that many that it would have taken most of the night to type the reply, and it would be that long that I doubt anyone would have bothered reading it. If it was the tank you mentioned yesterday, the issue is stress The easiest way to fix it would be to re-home all the discus before they all stave themselves to death or get killed by their maturing tank mates, poor diet, poor waterquality or an combination of all of them... If you want to keep them, just ask, but be prepaired for a LONG list of things that have to change before long-term suscess will be possible with the discus. Once you see the list, if you want reasons, again please ask, but thats where the post gets very long, not just the list of required changes

All the best
Rabbut

 

[petertr]

Where does the OP live?

I'm after a few new discus ;-)