One fin suddenly -not working?

[RichVic]

Hi, just noticed 2 blue diamond discus are holding one fin against the body mostof the time, There is a milky "streak" or patch on the sick fin and one of them also has a tear with milky streak on the tail.
They are in a 6foot x 2foot x 2 foot planted tank with ten other discus, a school of tetra neons and 2 pleco's. I've only had them about 12 days, so am not sure what to look for or what to do about it? They are 8cm, Know sure what else I need to say? Never had Discus before so I dont know if I've missed soemthing crucial and havent observed them long enough to know what normal behaviour is for them. They all seemed to hide to begin with, but now they're getting more curious about humans and follow me when Imove from one end of the tank to the other etc, not shy at feeding they come to the surface and take food etc
All help appreciated.
I've been told a salt bath is a bit of a cure all??
Cheers
Vicki

[Merrilyn]

Hi Vicki and welcome to the forum. Your discus must look lovely in that big tank.

Now, few questions. Was the tank fully cycled before you added the fish. Twelve discus is a pretty big bio load, and I'm wondering if your bio filter is coping with the extra waste produced by so many fish.

Is it planted, or bare bottom?

How often, and how much do you change at each water change?

Have you seen the pelcos sucking on the sides of the discus. Some of them develop a real taste for discus slime, and annoy the discus day and night.

First thing to do is test your water for pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, and post the results here. That will tell me a lot about your tank.

Don't add anything to your tank just yet. It could simply be transport damage and the fins will regrow fully.:P

[RichVic]

Hi Merrilyn and thanks for your support, I'd like to answer your questions
as best I can.
Background, new to discus keeping, have a total of 10 discus in the tank
There's 4 around 8cm, 4 x 6cm and 2x 4-5cm. They went into our tank almost a fortnight ago. havent been able to ascertain their approx ages,
but the biggest are nudging each other etc and there's an Alpha male bully emerging. Not sure what fully cycled means but the tank/plants were set up
for 6-7? weeks before I added the discus. We have a fluval 405 canister filter
which came with 4 compartments 2 had these big"pellets" & the other two had activated carbon. The carbon was recently replaced with peat moss to lower the ph which was 7 - 7.2 and we read that discus prefer 6.4. its 6.8
today. UMM... have nothing to read the level of nitrates/ nitrites/ammonia.
dH is 8.96 (my husband is testing as I type)
The tank is densely planted, it has about 10 x 10kg bags Coarser gravel in the rear, there's an underground filter with 4 bubble making things along the back as well. The front has finer gravel and sand? or sand like.
We started off doing 25% change almost a week after we settled them in
then decided to do smaller changes more often. So mid week, the second week we did a 10% change & then today, SORRY - I have added medication and did the recommended 25% change required for that
The condition seemed to be getting worse (the white streaks started to look fluffy and a third one started doing the one-fin swim on me.
The only product locally available was this "Fungus Cure" for tropical freshwater fish by aqua master.
I did the half dose ie 5ml per 40 Litres, which it stated was correct for baby fish,scaleless fish and i think discus fall into this category??
Actives are 2.00mg acriflavine & .40mg malachite green. I Have to repeat in 3 days.
Happy to hear your views -
feel free to email me direct wildseed@bigpond.com I can call you if you wish to leave a number! Thanks
Vicki

[RichVic]

Hi Merrilyn
got my new test kits today and testing this evening.

The Nitrate Test was closest to the 0.3mg/l after the wait - 5 minutes, not a frim reading a bit on the yellow side which was less then 0.3mg/l
The Nitrate Test was 12.5mg/l after 10mins
The Ammonia was 0.1ppm after 10mins

Look forward to hearing what this means for the one-fin swimmers
Cheers
Vicki

[Merrilyn]

Hi Vicki, I've been laid low with the flu so sorry for the late reply.

Any reading of ammonia is not good, so start doing some bigger water changes, also the nitrite test shows that your bio filter is struggling to catch up with the added fish load, so help it out by doing water changes every two days or so. Nitrate of 12 is fine.

Keep an eye on your ammonia test, and if it shows any reading of ammonia, then do a water change immediately. Ammonia seems like s pretty harmless thing, but actually it can cause irrepairable damage to gills, that's why we want to deal with it immediately.

Has the Fungus Cure made any difference? Discus can tolerate the full dose rate, they are not classed as scaleless fish. I know they can look like it, but really the scales are just very fine.

Keep me posted Vicki.

[RichVic]

Thanks for that info, hope you feel better soon.
The one-fin guys seem to have picked up a bit and are using two fins again most of the time. I was doing 10% every other day but delayed on this occasion in order to go with the fungus cure instructions( wait 3 days and repeat procedure ie WC then treatment) two of them also have small white dots on them(1x on head near dorsal fin, Other has 1x on body and a dot on fin not working) The instructions said "reduce rate for scaless, tetra'a and babies so I erred on the safe side. I have this book "discus fish - a complete beginners manual" which has suggestions for set-up, suitable tanks mates and in a 75gallon planted tank it suggests 8-10 medium discus. I think we converted that to 350lt. As our tank is 650lt we didn't expect a bioload problem? I've prep'd a 4Ft tank by washing with cooking salt and drying in sunshine. I'm going to fill it and add the usual (water ager ACN) drops and the bio super concentrate (good bacteria) Then I plan to move the discuss into it when the second lot of 3days in the bright green tank ends this Sunday. I can treat just the discus with full dose if I have to. Waiting to see if things improve. PS I've been sneaking up on them at night but no evidence of pleco's interest in them at all.
All eating well and lively etc.
Cheers Vicki

[sharn]

is that bio super concentrate kept refridgerated? if not then it probably wont do much good in adding bacteria, it will more likely just feed the bacteria once they start multiplying. prodcuts like 'cycle' dont do much, im not sure if they come off the line with bacteria in it or not but they would soon die because they would have nothing to feed on and starve or would feed, produce waste and pollute their container. when they get refridgerated they lie dormant so dont need to eat, dont produce waste and dont multiply. we cant get anything like that where i come from but i know in the US that they have bio spira which works wonders im told.

just a heads up, dont want to add the product and then the fish only to have a normal cycle on your hand without knowing :wink:

[RichVic]

Hi Merrilyn,
I double checked the packaging to ensure there's no requirement for fridgeration,(unfortunately have mislaid the flyer that goes with it.) So I rang the manufacturer: biotech restoration P/Ltd, Granville NSW on their freecall
number 1800-688-950 and they confirmed there's no need to refridgerate it -
It's basically a long-life powder which can be stored at room temp. and just needs to be kept dry. It activates in water, how its kept in suspended animation was way over my head (wish I'd done a bit of chemistry in high school) but you should have no probs getting it in Melb, Its only $12.90 for 20g, you use 2g initially, then 1g every fortnight as maintenance etc.
If you like, I'll post off a bit if you want to trial it or call them if you can cope with the technical chatter. I'm on info overload
Vicki

[Merrilyn]

Hi Vicki, yes I know the stuff you're talking about, and it's really good. I've used it myself.

I think I may have confused you a little with the term 'bio load'. Perhaps I can explain a little better. You probably know most of this stuff, but I'll go through the basics of the nitrogen cycle.

Your bio filter is a living thing. It's composed of two different kinds of bacteria living in your tank, but mainly in your filter. The first kind uses ammonia as a food, and converts it to nitrites. A second type of bacteria converts nitrites into nitrates. This end product, the nitrate, is harmless to your fish in reasonable quantities, unlike ammonia and nitrite, which are both poisonous to your fish.

Now, the amount of ammonia and nitrite that your bio filter can handle, depends on the number of bacteria in the colony. Bacteria multiply at a fairly slow rate, so although you may have cycled your tank before adding your fish, you may still only have a fairly small bacteria colony, because there is a small amount of available food (ammonia) to feed the colony.

Once you add the fish, they begin producing waste, which is ammonia. Your bacteria colony will try to convert the ammonia, but until that colony grows larger, it won't be able to use all that available food. Hence when you do a water test, you'll see an ammonia reading, and probably a nitrite reading in your tank too. Once the colony has grown large enough to use all the ammonia (after a couple of weeks) you won't see any ammonia or nitrite reading at all, just a nitrate reading.

While your bio filter is growing, you can help out by doing frequent water changes, to manually remove some of the ammonia. An excess of ammonia will damage your fish, so you need to keep it at a safe level.

Your tank is certainly not overloaded with that number of fish. The rule of thumb is one adult fish per 40 litres of water and you're well under that limit.

While products like 'Cycle' and 'Bio Spira' can give your bio filter a boost, they are not the whole answer. The colony simply needs time to grow large enough to handle all the waste produced by your fish.

Hope I haven't bored you with this explanation, but sometimes it just helps to understand the big picture if you know how all the little things work. :P