new discus won't eat

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C

cakemountain

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 12, 2007
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ohio
4 new 3 inchers. second day now One didn't stay with the other(and was dead when i got home from work) 3 but they seem to hide mostly, and here and there swim around. Their color looks good and they dont have anything obviously wrong with them, even the dead one had clear eyes. I just checked the water and the results were:

20ppm nitrate(mg/l)
0ppm nitrite(mg/l)
75 (GH)ppm hardness
40 (KH)ppm alkalinity
7.2 pH

recently pulled out the gravel, sucked up all the little particles off the bottom and did a 70% change 2 days before i got discus. Had angels, a couple eels and such.
Just checked the water.

Friend gave me some blue powder to put in which I added a couple hours before i added discus. couple min ago I added 4 capsels of some kind of anti bacterial that was recommended to me.

I have been maintaining a 110 gallon discus tank for my father(12 large discus) and figured I could handle a 50 gallon with babies.
any suggestions?
 
update, they are swimming around now that i have the light off, but they won't eat or even look at bloodworms or beefheart.
 
the blue powder, dunno, a general tonic my lfs uses in all their tanks, has salt and something else. temp is 82, has 2 sponge filters and a cannister filter that comes out on a biowheel. ordered the fish off the lfs's list, dunno what they were feeding them.
 
I am no expert but until someone else comes along.
I would assume the filters were cycled since water looks ok with cept maybe the nitrate is a bit on the high side but should not have killed one of them. also the temp just a tad on the low end.
Did your lfs qt them? or did you pick them up as soon as they got them?
I wonder where they ordered them from. Can you ask them to check supplier as to what they were fed?
If not for the one dying I would suggest just waiting and trying different foods first thing in the morn when they would be the hungriest.
 
update, another one died. I looked closely and i could tell he lost his slime coat. I checked the other 2 closely and they appear to still have theirs. They just stay near the glass looking at their reflections.

I will pick up another heater today and raise temp to 85. I dont know the company where the fish were ordered but i know they were raised in asia. I picked them direct from the lfs and floated them for about 5 min, netted them out of the bag so as not to introduce the smelly fish water that was in the bag.

The lfs and a couple other discus owners who i have spoken with do not bother using RO water unless they are breeding. I am thinking of picking one up and setting up an aging bin. Should I worry about playing with the water?
 
Update, somehow unplugged heater when I shut off the cannister filter(to prevent carbon from removing antibiotic) Added a second heater and heating back up. Hoping they will not die from the shock or a temp drop. 74 F I am dumb, i know.

I believe the second death was related to the temp drop.

Picked up an RO unit and setting up aging tanks for tap and RO water.

The fish came in from asia, distributer holds for a couple days and sends on to LFS. He does not use RO water.

Question: is it true that I should start with small quanitites of RO water per tap water?
:feedback: Want to save the 2 survivors, and sometime be able to keep others.
 
I have well water in Minnesota that is soft and actually quite good overall at a 7.4 PH level. However, even with that I use a 75% R/O to 25% tap blend. My fish love it. Until recently I was using about 90% R/O with 10% blend but after some reading I decided to up the tap ratio as I am not using an R/O reconstituter like Kent's R/O Right. Make SURE you age the water though, even if you don't R/O, age the Tap. The PH change can be quite dramatic and you want it to hit a plateau before using it in the tank.

Hope this helps!
 
Update: so far the temp has climed to 81, stuck 2 100 watt heaters in there with the 200 and set them all to full. Will monitor temp. Also pulled the carbon out of a power filter and stuck a small amount of peat moss. Will wait a while test the PH and add a little more to coax it to a little more acidic.

Aging about 35 gallons of tap in a new trashcan. Will set up RO filter and add a little to the mix shortly.

Question: will a powerhead and a tube to fit it be a good idea to pump the water out or should i just invest in a small sump pump???

Anyone have other tips?
 
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