Melafix and Pimafix

[CrossboneVanguard]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to the forum and new to discus. I have kept other freshwater fishes for sometime. I have read that Melafix is not that good for discus. What about Pimfix?

One of my discus has a tiny chip on one of its pectoral fins. I think it was damage during netting at the store or fighting. I don't think it has infection on it or fungus but it does has some slime on it making it look a little white under light.

Normally I am not concerned for other fishes but people keep telling me discus get sick easily so I'm a little scared lol. I'm doing 10% daily water change. Fish are eating.

Thanks in advance.
Jon

[Merrilyn]

Welcome to the forum Jon.

A lot of the members have tried Melafix and Primafix for a variety of conditions. Whilst it works very well on other breeds of fish, it's not so successful on discus. Seems to be something to do with their unique slime coat. Discus are the only fish that produce a body slime to feed their fry on during the first weeks of life, and this seems to negate the effects of melafix.

For torn fins caused by netting, the best and simplest cure is to add salt to the water (cooking salt or rock salt, not table salt) at the rate of 1 heap teaspoon per 40 litres of water, and maintain that level of salt till the injury is healed. In severe cases, you can double the dose of salt, but at that strength it will affect your plants.

[CrossboneVanguard]

Thank you very much. I will try that. Should I only do 1 salt treatment and if not when should I do a second treatment? I change 10% of water everyday. Also, will the fish lose appetite from the salt?

Sorry these are probably annoying questions but I really want to get things right. I have ordered a book on Discus health but it won't arrive for a few weeks.

Thanks again.
Jon

[Merrilyn]

No problems Jon. We were all new once, so feel free to ask away. We're a friendly bunch here.

You add salt to the change water, at the same rate as the tank water. Say, for instance if you change 20 litres of water, you would add half a teaspoon of salt to that. If you change 40 litres of water, then you would add one heaped teaspoon to the fresh water.

Salt doesn't go away, it stays in the water till you remove it with water changes using fresh water, so there's no need to do a second dose.

Just keep up the salt treatment until the fin has recovered, then your usual water changes should be done with plain water, and gradually, over a period of time, you will have replaced the salt water with fresh water.

It won't hurt their appetite at all. If you taste some of the water before adding to the tank, you'll notice it's a very mild salt solution.

Dissolve the salt in a bucket of tank water, before adding it to the tank. You dont want undissolved grains of salt on the bottom of the tank.

[Hearthemchainsdiscus]

Hello Jon and welcome to the forum.

Merrilyn, will it hurt my discus to use them both at the same time. I do not have any fry in my tank. The reason is I just bought 5 new discus and I wanted to dose them as a general tonic. They aren't showing any signs of sickness, I just wanted to make sure they get a good start.

Pluse the small solid red fire I bought has a manky looking pectoral fin. I think he might have gotten hurt when the heavy handed LFS employee bagged him. I wish they would let the customer catch the fish instead.

If you still recommend not using mela and pima fix. What is a good brand of aquarium salts to get?

[Crocky]

Pimafix was the only thing that stop me losing all my 6 month old juvies.Spend alot of money at the vet on meds and getting fish sent away.Found out they had a thing like t.b and was told there was nothing i could do but start again.That meant 180 fish in total down the drain.I thought I would try pimafix. lost 2 more fish which made 100 but in the last 4 month not one fish had died,now I have 5 pairs from this group of fish.

Brad.c

[ILLUSN]

I like to use a half dose of melafix with a full dose of pimafix as a tonic, it never seems to do my discus any harm and a few times it's triggered a spawn.