Lonely Discus

[DPB]

I once had 5 discus in a 55 gallon tank, but after a fairly good run of 5 years, they had begun to die off one by one. I'm down to the last one. He appears to have the longevity have survived the others and seems healthy as ever now.

I know that Discus are a social fish. Heres the problem. My future intentions are to convert to saltwater after he passes. Please do not read this as I'm wishing him along! I continue to do my best to take good care of him!. But I do not want to add more discuss, but I want to try to make the tank a little less lonely for both the fish and and for my own enjoyment. I had tried a school of about 10 cardinal tetra twice. They just seem to drop dead one by one. They are not being eaten because eventually I was able to find the bodies and account for each of them. Something is killing them. Could there be some disease in the tank that my discus has become immune to but that killed off any other new fish? Also a couple of clown loaches I had added to deal with a snail problem died shortly after adding them too. Any advice would be appreciated. Or should I just leave the tank alone?

[kcooley]

i had 5 discus and all but one died in one weekend, one a day. the last one i have is all by himself. i have had him in a QT tank for months now and his only other tankmate was a 1 1/2" redempress cichlid which was terrified of the discus.

are you using filtered or r/o water? it may be something in your water. i found out after the deaths that it was because of my water softener and my r/o not being able to filter out all of the heavy metals. heavy metals are toxic to fish at even a 2% concentration. aluminum sulfate is pne in particular that i found directly related in terms of time to be the cause opf death with my discus and SAE.

if you can try to use distilled water from teh store, or r/o water. see how that helps, but maintain a hardness of no less than 3-4

[onepawnup]

maybe you could get a schooling fish that could keep him company until he dies and then move them to a smaller tank ?
just an idea

[VTwinFanatic]

well considering that discus can live upwards of 15 years and you've said you had him for 5 years....you could have 10+ years before you can convert that tank. If it was me and I wanted to convert my discus tank into saltwater....(why ppl do this we shall never know) I would try to find him a good home with a friend that has discus or someone who is passionate about them and go ahead and convert to saltwater. But thats just my 2 pennies.

[wesleydnunder]

A run of five years with these fish is not a good one. Discus usually die one after another like that due to water quality issues. As stated they can live upwards of 15 years. I agree with the above. Find him a new home.

Mark

[DPB]

A run of five years with these fish is not a good one. Discus usually die one after another like that due to water quality issues. As stated they can live upwards of 15 years. I agree with the above. Find him a new home.

Mark

Finding a new home has unfortunately been difficult. I have attempted to go this route. The only taker I had knew nothing about discus (I know from reading some of the responses here that some of you may think I'm fairly ignorant myself--but I really did do my best) and was going to put him in with another fish. I asked what kind of fish it was. They said they didn't know, but it attacked all the other fish that were in with it. That told me everything I needed to know right there.

Thank you all for the advice. I just want to say that I did take as good care of them as I could. I did water changes daily until I read that this was absolutely unnecessary unless I was breeding them. I may have bucked certain conventions with regard to that. I attempted to find out as much information as possible, and weeding through the conflicting advice. I found that by keeping to the 10 gallon per fish rule and employing two penguin biowheel filters and a 40% water change once a week was fine. They grew pretty large. Two of them were even mating. The tank seemed very healthy. It was a discus only tank and it was thriving. I rarely if ever saw any vertical bars, and the colors were brilliant. The fry never survived, but it had never been my goal to breed them. That just happened. I got completely into discus though during the time I had them. I bought books about them. I was even told once by someone on another forum a few years ago when I asked if I should be increasing my water changes that I shouldn't change anything about my routine--if they are breeding, then they are happy. I guess when I say I had a good run, I mean that considering I was a beginner and never kept fish before, there were nearly 5 years of health whereas I'd heard of people losing them within days or weeks. If I had to guess, I think the problems started when I moved with them last year. I put them in a 20 gallon tank with the biowheel filter for a day and set up the 55 at the new apartment. After the waters were of equal temperature and pH, I transported them over in a styrofoam cooler. Since that, one of them, the female of the breeding pair got a dark spot on her side which eventually went away. Around this time, I also bought new plants. Now this is my bad, but I did not know to take precautions for snails, and an infestation broke out. Soon after, the first one died. Then a few months later, the next. Each began to die within a few months of each other. I'm not trying to say I didn't make mistakes, but that during the time before I began to really make mistakes, the fish were thriving. You Jack Wattley folks out there will probably slap me on the wrists for not doing more frequent water changes, but my routine seemed to work until it all fell apart, due mostly I think to the move, the introduction of the snails and my inability to deal with that problem. I loved the discus while I had them, but I want to experience the saltwater thing. My wife has alot of primary colors in our living room and we thought some yellow tangs and blue tangs with some clowns would look nice.

That said, I will continue to look for a suitable home for him. In the meantime, I'll just leave it as is.

[DPB]

maybe you could get a schooling fish that could keep him company until he dies and then move them to a smaller tank ?
just an idea

I did try that, but as I said, they seemed to die one by one. I'll try again, maybe. I thought cardinal tetra would be fine, but they died. I think until I can get the snails under control, which will probably mean putting the fish in another tank for a brief time and breaking down the 55, using chemicals (I can't remember what they are now, but I remember reading something about this) to get rid of the snail eggs, then starting over. I think the snails just make it too dirty as they reproduce quickly, die and decompose.

[Cathy G]

What about a good local fish store? Or, maybe there is an aquarium club nearby? Hmm, seems like there ought to be something you can do.

Cathy

[DPB]

Yes, I suppose a local fish store would do. I have asked. Several have been willing to accommodate. I guess that has just been a matter of not really knowing what would become of him next. But it is probably the best option given the situation, and certainly given that my enthusiasm has admittedly declined, probably the most responsible too.

[Cathy G]

I would think that a good size discus would sell for quite a pretty penny. Therefore, I would think that those who would pay that much for a fish, know what they are doing and would make him/her a good home. (I could be crazy but my dad was an economist and it seems to make sense to me...)
Cathy

[VTwinFanatic]

I dont know that your snail problem is the source of your overall problem w/ the discus croaking. You said that you moved...the stress of the move and then the water chemistry could have been somewhat different (ie minerals, addiatives, etc.) which caused the stress which in turn could possibly been killing the discus....just speculations. There are many things that could have happened. Personally I would have been doing atleast two w/c's a week of atleast 40%-50%, but thats my my opinion.

[DPB]

Thanks for all the advice. I decided to do a follow up post. Like Charlie Brown's tree, all it needed was a little love. I added some new plants, and I added 5 neon tetra. They have so far survived more than a week. That is longer than the cardinal tetra which, as I said, died one after the other. The tank looks great. With the added plants and the schooling neons, I have at once beautified the tank and actually have become interested in freshwater fish again. I'm going to add more tetra little by little until I have about 20. I might even be inspired to take on another discus. I would prefer one that is near the age of my current one or older. I will see if there is a breeder that might have an older one. Thanks all for the advice and some of the light scoldings.

As far as water changes go, I'm going to keep to my regimen. I have alot of filtration (2 Penguin biowheel 330s -- each is recommended for a 55 gallon tank so that is twice the recomendation) and I keep the tank understocked. I think you're right though. The stress of the move may have been a factor. They did survive a short time after, but I'm thinking that did it.

[dorris]

I'm thinking it would have been the water chemistry. I think you said you had the tank setup in your new appartment for 1 day. This would probably not realy be enough for starters. Almost a week would have been a bit better if it was broken in with your old uncleaned filters, old uncleaned gravel and plants. You may not have been able to do this but this is what I would have recommended. Also take as much old water with you as possible. Did you test the water paramaters of your old place and your new place? Because I'd say there would have been a difference. One more thing, if your new place is a newish building there can be a lot of metals, copper or other elements that would hurt the fish. I live out in the country and have our own underground spring that comes up on the property and also catch rainwater so I don't have problems with my water. My g/f however lives in town and the quality of the water is very undesirable. So much so that I can not let her use the water from her taps in her tank, even after treating it. I would prefer to lug huge containers of water from my house and do the water changes with it. The difference in the tank is huge! So if you can ever avoid it, I recommend never to use treated town water in any fish tank.

[DPB]

Hello all! I wanted to follow up on my current status and plans. I actually found out what the problem was--well, I narrowed it down to two things, both of which I have removed. The first was too stupid to mention, but here goes: I added styrofoam boards and poured the new substrate on top, which I thought would allow me to get away with using only one bag of the new substrate instead of the recommended amount and give height to plants and driftwood but that ended up allowing waste and dirt to accumulate on a large scale in a place that the siphon would never reach.

The second was that I discovered a bag of water softener and a bag of Diamond brand charcoal that I'd forgotten I'd put into the media slots of the power filter from I don't even remember when, maybe when I first got to the new place. Both things were stupid, not to mention costly.

But there is an upside: Having corrected the problems, I have had my interest in discus reinvigorated. Things are now going great in the tank. I bought a white-faced red melon from a breeder, which is doing great. All my tetra have survived more than a few days. I am no longer using any additional filter media, so I won't have to worry about forgetting and probably don't need anyway. My water is soft and good PH as is I found, so no need to reduce it. I've upped my water changes with a python to small (10-20%) every day or every other day. I got very discouraged after losing most of my discus, but now that I have learned some costly lessons, my fishkeeping skills have only benefitted. I will add two more discus to round it out. I found varieties that will go with the primary color scheme that my wife wants--the red mellon that I already have, a golden sunrise or some variety of solid yellow or gold (close to a saltwater yellow tang) and maybe either a solid white "snowflake" or one of those snakeskin types that are white with red net-like lines over it. My original from the first set who survived is brown on the body with an irridescent blue at the edges and on the fins and forehead. Unfortunately, he doesn't look great with rotted fins that were due not to poor fishkeeping, but because he was the runt that all the other fish beat up. Ironic that he was the sole survivor of my screw up. Once he had the entire tank to himself, he actually grew very big--about 6". I don't know if his fins will ever recover, but I'm hoping so. I will post pictures if I can, but I wanted to mention that so nobody wondered about the messed up fins.