Long Jelly Like Poo - This topic again.

[blue diamond Pete]

Some of my discus have a little bit from time to time, but the last few days my blue turk (8-9cm) has gone off its food and pooing (twice so far) about 6cm long x 4mm diameter of almost clear jelly like stuff with no food bits in it. It's now in a hospital tank at 31 deg. I have not seen it this bad before and perhaps it the norm for 'this' condition. What is it and what do i do? It wants to eat, rushes to food then ignores it. Two fish stopped eating before this and just starved to death over the past month. Other 3 are fine with dark solid droppings.
Water has always been changed 50% twice a week with mostly rain water from my tank and adjusted with hot tap water and then chlorine remover. NH3, NO2 and NO3 all ok and always have been and temp 29.2 - 29.8 depending on the room temp and lights. pH 6.5 and always low with the tank water. Had them for about 8 months, treated with prazi and sterazin twice over this peroid in case of flukes or worms and not added any new fish since. Any help please. Sorry for the long post and I hope i've explained it all.

[Merrilyn]

This is something we see all too often in discus.

Not sure why they are so prone to it, but the treatment remains the same. Have a read of this post
http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2475

which goes into detail about the dosing of metro. This dose may see high, but it has been confirmed by two qualified vets and seems to be the best.

You may need to do a second course of treatment if there is no improvement after the first course.

Others have used Octozin (by "Waterlife" and available from most aquarium shops) with a great deal of success.

Good luck. Early intervention is terribly important with fish. The sooner you can treat the symptoms, the better.

[blue diamond Pete]

Thankyou Merrilyn
Its booked in at my local vet at 5.00 today. Let you know how it goes.

Update:
The vet listened to the info I told him from this site looked at photos of my fish and jelly droppings and then did his own checks. He gave me 4 x 200 mg metro tabs to use in my 26 l hospital tank. Dose over the next week with 30% w/c every 2 days and redosing. Dose rate 5-10 mg/l. My calcs 200mg/26 l = 7.7 mg/l. Hope it is strong enough but it's all I have. Consult + drugs $14 so can't complain. Wants email of photos and sample of jelly droppings to examine so seems genuinely interested/concerned.
Keeping the tank dark to help the metro.
See how it goes.
Thanks, Peter

[blue diamond Pete]

Well it's been just over two weeks since treatment with metro and the fish died today. Just starved to death. For a while it started bossing a smaller turk around but never ate. It kept its good colour and fins out to the end, never dark and never had its fins down. The smaller one kept eating a little, and was returned into the main tank yesterday. Seems ok, just a bit thin.
Don't know what to make of this and if metro the correct treatment for whatever it had.
Cleaned and sterilized the hospital tank and now recycling. Going to remove the gravel and plants from the main tank and have a clean bottom with a few plants on wood and some in shallow trays with gravel.
Still 4 to look after so trying something different.

[Merrilyn]

So sorry to hear that Pete. Sometimes Metro just doesn't work. Sadly, there are lots of things that our fish get that we have no cure for. All we can do is try.

Just know that you did everything possible to help the fish. No one could have tried harder.