New discus headstands and doesnt eat

[jgassens]

Hello everyone,

I found two discus at a Petco about three weeks ago that had been abandoned by their former owners. Petco doesn't usually sell discus around here out of their shop, so they just gave them to me. They were very sick when i got them and both just laid on their sides in the gravel for a long time with large holes in their heads. After about 6 days of darkness, water changes and Tea tree oils (that stuff is GREAT) the holes are better and they are swimming around but they aren't eating...

They both appear to have very nice color, but one of them is head standing and has progressively gotten more 90 degrees over the course of the past week.

What do I do for a fish that refuses to eat but is head standing? Epsom salts followed by something?

Thanks!

[jgassens]

Oh... they one that ISNT head standing just ate some food off the bottom of the tank. But the headstanding guy... I dont think has eaten anything... but its hard to tell since it looks like it is always looking for food. (what with its head facing the bottom of the tank)

[Bill T]

I am sure you have these fish in strict quarantine.
Say, did you mention hole in the head?
Perhaps a dose of Octozin to start with?

Although, as JH recently said, we should prepare for bad news.

[samir]

I'd put them straight in the freezer
here's some info on treatment as you have not put up your location its a bit hard to tell you what med to use
http://article.discusnews.com/cat-02/swimblader.shtml

[Merrilyn]

Welcome to the forum jgassens.

It's great to know that you have rescued a couple of unwanted discus, but sadly it can mean a lot of expense and a lot of heartache.

Holes in the head are thought to be caused by incorrect feeding and lack of water quality. It's often associated with internal parasites as well, so they need to be treated for that too.

Typical symptoms would be holes in the head and along the lateral line, refusing to eat, turning dark and white jelly like droppings.

Clean water and good food will go a long way to helping the holes to heal, as you have noticed, but won't do anything to ease the internal parasites, if they are present.

The head standing discus could well have a swim bladder problem as well, and that would account for the unusual angle of the fish.

I think they would both benefit from a course of Flagyl (I gather from your post you are in the USA) and that is available over the counter at your local pet shop, or from an online supplier, like Drs. Smith and Foster.

Keep the water warm, around 89 degrees, very clean, and offer some live brine shrimp as food. With luck, they could both fully recover.

[jgassens]

The holes in their head are gone, actually. I saw both discus eating off the tank floor when I just dumped a bunch of food in there (I'll clean up the mess). So, the only problem is that one of them is head standing.

I don't think they're ready for the freezer. :roll:

I'm in northern Indiana in the US. Thanks for the help.

[Merrilyn]

It's good that they're eating again. That's a great start.

Now, headstanding can be caused by a number of different things. One of them is a bacterial infection in the gut which produces an abnormal amount of gas, and thus the fish us unable to regulate the swim bladder.

Another can be trauma for catching and transport. Was the fish headstanding when you saw it in the tank at Petco ?

Often a course of antibiotics like Flagyl will sort things out. Unfortunately some of them can take weeks to come right, and some of them never do.

I think the Flagyl is your best bet at this stage.

Try to mix some of medication with their food, and that will get it into the stomach, where it will do the most good.

[samir]

The holes in their head are gone, actually. I saw both discus eating off the tank floor when I just dumped a bunch of food in there (I'll clean up the mess). So, the only problem is that one of them is head standing.

I don't think they're ready for the freezer. :roll:

I'm in northern Indiana in the US. Thanks for the help.

don't mind me, I'm just rude :P

i hope the article helps with the headstanding,

you should go through with the Flagyl, with the head standing, the longer its been doing that the lesser chance there is of it getting better.
you should never rescue fish, it rarely turns out good.

[jgassens]

The head standing started about two weeks ago. It wasn't bad at first... the fish was just sitting at a 45 degree angle. I figured it was looking for food when I saw it in the tank, so I didn't think much about it. As the incline become greater, I started to wonder if something was up, since I had never seen head standing before.

I ordered some Flagyl, and I've dosed my tank with some Epsom salts to try to purge the fish. I figure that I can purge them until the Flagyl arrives (which shouldn't be more than a day) with large, frequent water changes and then does them up after incubating some brine shrimp with the Flagyl.

[jgassens]

My head standing discus looks like it gets better and then doesn't. I'm treating it with some sort of concoction I found at the store. It has praxiquantel, diflubenzuron, metronidazole and acriflacvine in it. It's a dissolving tablet. I'm not such a fan of throwing everything at fish, but it was the only thing that had metronidazole in it. I found some food with metronidazole in it today, but I doubt they'll eat it. It took them almost two weeks to start eating the food I'm giving them and it's crappy dry cichlid sticks that I can't roll anything into.

And by beef heart, do you mean go to a butcher and ask for some cubed cattle heart?

The fish had been head standing for about 5 days, so I didn't want to wait. What's the prognosis with these mysterious head standing fish? The color's fine, it's not eating a lot, but it's eating. There are some healing lesions on the head from hole in the head...

[the german]

you should look at the link samir gave you earlier ,its a good one.

i think he mean beef heart mix,you get it in most LFS

[Merrilyn]

Beef heart, cattle heart, it's all the same thing.

You could also use turkey heart.

We use it finely minced usually with shrimp and some kind of vegetable added, then you can mix in any medication. Freeze the whole thing, and feed as necessary.

There are a number of good recipes in the Foods and Nutrition forum.

The main thing is to try to get the medication into the stomach, where it will do the most good.

[jgassens]

I would like to report that, while the discus' have been treated with as many antibiotics and antifungals as possible, the headstanding has never improved. Nevertheless, the fish eats and has resumed dominance in the tank, so euthanizing would have served only to remove an aesthetically displeasing fish from my aquarium.

[fishgeek]

head standing may be due to a boutyancy issue, ie extra weight at the front or increased gas at the back
these aybe as simple as ingested stones(more a gold fish problem) to gas filled bacterial lesions
it can also be associated with neurological conditions


some bouyancy problems will totally resolve over a month as long as the fish is feed and relaxed

andrew