Discus Help

[Draal5]

3 is NOT a good number the other 2 will pick on the third till it dies.

 

[Sportsnutim]

I guess I have been lucky with two adults in one 55 gal tank (temporary), 6 neon tetra, 4 cardinals, and 2 Farlowellas. I would definetely checks the para's, do you have a good quality water pump? I keep my temp at 82-84, 40 percent water change weekly. Do you have live plants? Food: Discus granules?

 

[Hungriee]

Temp is at 84 degrees. There are live plants (mostly sunset hydros, rotola indicas). The fish were there before the discus. Im thinking they are afraid of light. When I turn on the light; they tend to hide in the corner of the tank and turn brown/black. When the light is off; they roam to the middle/top of the tank. There bodies are no longer black but still have black bars. However its been a week and still no sign of they eating. I turned down water flow from my xp2 nd the magnum i hav eit facing the glass.

Today I picked up a UV Light connected to my canister filter; to clear up the water even more. Right now its pretty clear, so clear I cant tell the water is in the tank. All other fish, doing very well. Only the two discus are stressed. I probably got a bad pair of discus =(

 

[pinkertd]

Unfortunately it takes young discus a very long time to feel comfortable in new surroundings. And the fewer you have (say 2 versus 8) the longer it will take. They have been thru a lot of stress by the time they reach the LFS and chances are really good that good care was not taken of them along the way. The fact that they hide when you turn on the lights is just a fact of all fish. To go from a dark environment and then be plunged into light frightens them until their eyes adjust. I do not turn my lights on until there is some daylight in the room where my tanks are and I also now have a room light that is a night light near the tank so that there is not such a brightness difference once the light is turned on. If you do turn lights on in the tank with adult discus and take them from darkness to light like that, chances are real good that they will run across the tank to hide from the shock of the brightness and run themselves right into the glass because momentarily they cannot see where they are going. So be gentle with the transition from darkness to tank lights on. The most critical thing also right now is to get them eating and eating well. To expect them to eat any kind of flake food or dry bits in this stressed stage at their young age is expecting too much. I have a pair of blue discus that I received in early May at 2.5" who would not touch flakes or bits....and this has generally been my experience every time I've gotten discus. But they will gladly gobble frozen bloodworms. So while they are young and growing, and still adjusting to their environment, I feed them all the FBW they can eat. They are now 3.5" and have thickened up. They were eating one cube 4X a day. I have now put them in my main discus tank, my other discus all learned to eat flakes and bits, but they still don't touch them. But they will when they are older. My discus would never touch tetra bits, so I feed a tiny discus pellet that they (the larger ones) readily take. None of mine touch brine shrimp or mysis shrimp or beefheart mixes. Get them eating FBW and do it quickly before they go backwards in health! Feed them at least 4X a day. Keep the water clean, bump your temp up to at least 86F. I would strongly suggest getting them more discus mates since they feel safer in larger numbers as a group. Once these babies are eating well for you and seem to be stable, you really should then treat them for internal parasites/worms. Chances are real good by the time you get them from the LFS that they are infected with some kind of parasite. If you can get a little bulk on their bodies they will tolerate the parasite meds much better.