New Breeding Pair Sluggish, sometimes angled and not comfy.

[Primordius]

Just bought a 12cm pair of Brilliant Turquoise, setup in a 2 bare foot tank using a bio max sponge filter and Eheim 2217 filtration setup. The fish were bought through a fish shop, who sourced the discus through one of their various suppliers. As I understand it, they have been moved twice in the past two days to a final, slightly different climate. The tank has been cycling for a week in preparation for the discus. Before the arrival of the discus, I did a 50% water change and brought the pH up to around 7.2.

Apparently the pair were kept with a pH of 7.4, which was apparently identical to the fish shop. I managed to snag 4 bags of the water the pair were kept in, in order to blend the water environments to slowly acclimatise them to our tank water. After initially putting the fish in, they looked fine. They began to guard a corner and move up and down as if in preparation for laying eggs. Then went out for about 4 hours and returned to find them floating stiff-like unregularly. They often floated on an angle, sat on the floor of the tank and with their mouths on the floor. I've been freaking out about it since we got home - which was about 5 or 6 hours ago. I've been checking on them to see how they're doing every 20 mins or so.

Approx 1 hour ago, the larger of the two started swimming much better. About 20 mins ago, the other started looking better as well. It was during this time I came across an article on the discus swim bladder. Is this merely stress to do with acclimitisation or do they have swim bladder issues, or something completely different? I don't think they're gonner's now, but I'm still concerned and wonder if there's anything I can do to get them as healthy as possible.

Appreciate all the help I can get. If anyone needs further information to assist, please let me know. Thanks.

[Merrilyn]

That sounds very much like pH shock. For something to happen that quickly, it's definately a problem with the water.

Did you test the water in the bag before you added the fish to your tank?

Sounds like the pair have had a pretty rough time before you got them, with all the moves and different water.

You said you had your tank cycling for a week before you added the fish. How did you cycle it? Have you put in some used filter media from another tank? If you just added a new sponge filter and a new 2217 to the tank, there is nothing to cycle. A biological filter is a living breathing community of different types of bacteria, and it takes time to grow, like approximately 6 weeks. During that time you have to feed the colony, so they grow and reproduce, with some form of ammonia. You can use pure ammonia (if you can find it) or simply add an uncooked prawn (shrimp) to the water, and it will give off ammonia as it decomposes.

Once you have a thriving colony of bacteria, they need to be fed daily with ammonia. In an established fish tank, the waste and by products from feeding fish forms ammonia which in turn feeds the bio filter. Without some form of food, they simply die off, and you are back to square one.

What you need to do now, is keep a daily check on your ammonia and nitrite readings. Unfortunately the tank is going to have to cycle with the breeding pair in there, not an ideal situation for a pair of already stressed fish.

If you can get hold of a product called "Prime" by Seachem, add that to the water to neutralize the ammonia and nitrite until your bio filter establishes, and starts converting the ammonia and nitrite into nitrate.

Good luck, you've been thrown in at the deep end, but so long as you watch your water parameters, do daily water changes of around 20% and add Prime to the water each day, your fish should be okay.

If you can get some used filter media from a healthy, cycled, fish tank, you could add that to your tank to give the bio filter a boost, and considerably shorten your cycle time.

[benjohnson]

Adding something like cycle or bacterlife will help too , but you would definately be best getting hold of an already cycled piece of filter media