Tips for Preventing Discus Fish Disease

The discus fish is a species of fish from the Amazon. They are called "discus" in reference to their appearance; they are shaped sort of circular and come in bright flashy colours. They are used to the rivers and streams of the Amazon and they like lots of dense vegetation in their habitat along with soft water. While these beautiful, flashy, Tropical fish have been the rage for the last ninety or so years they are not the easiest to keep. They can be considered a very delicate type of fish and easily disease-prone.

When caring for discus, you need a very large tank for them to stay healthy. At the age of only six months they are about the size of a tennis ball so that should tell you approximately about what size tank they will need, normally around a minimum of 10 gallons per adult fish as a rough estimate. As they do better in a larger group, about six to eight together, from this you can see that a rather large tank is indeed required.

Discus fish Maintenance Tips

Water - needs daily attention and weekly total cleaning. The temperature should stay at a steady twenty-eight to thirty degrees Celsius. Discus Fish like to have slightly acidic water with a P.H. level of at least 6.0 to 7.0. Also carefully monitor their tank for nitrogen waste.

Aggressive Fish - Don't house them with aggressive fish as they don't do well. They are fine with more docile fish but really prefer more of their own species. Be careful not to house them with much smaller fish as they might consider them food.

Discus Disease

Proper aquarium maintenance is probably the most important aspect of discus care; water plays a key part in keeping your discus healthy. If the temperature in their tank isn't watched carefully they can become depressed. If you see the colours of your discus start to fade then you know that you have an unhappy fish, an unhappy fish will stop eating and you may even notice that they start breathing faster. If you start to notice that they are passing a white-rope-like stool then they have become ill due to the tanks temperature. But this is easily addressed by fixing the conditions in their tank that are undesirable.

Care must be taken in choosing the type of fish that your Discus are housed with as they can become stressed by aggressive house-mates and then become ill. If you notice that they are acting like they're stressed, than simply removing them from the other fish will help them. A common mistake is housing them with an algae eating type of fish and thinking that this breed is harmless to them.

Discus Fish can get diseases caused by worms. One of the more common of which is hole in their head disease. This can be treated by commonly available medicines. These can be used with their frozen food. There are a number of other more serious diseases that they can get but, in the vast majority of cases, can be avoided by keeping a clean tank and the right water temperature.

To learn more about keeping and breeding Discus fish, go to my Discus care website, there you will find out about preventing Discus disease and also a complete list of common Discus diseases

Keeping Discus Fish Disease Free

So you want to keep discus fish or are already keeping discus fish. One of things you must do is keep your discus fish healthy and disease free. In this article I'm going to give you a few tips on how to keep discus fish disease free as:

One of the most common assumptions with discus is that they easily get disease and die. This is not true. They will only get disease if you mistreat them.

The root of the problem is stress, if you cause discus stress there immune system will lower and make them venerable to disease. It is important to keep stress to a minimum so below I have made you a check list of things to do.

o Make sure all water is free from chlorine and heavy metals. It is important that you invest in either an RO unit, water purifier or use a good quality tap water condition.

o Give your discus a good varied diet including frozen bloodworm and slow sinking granules.

o Don't place your discus aquarium near a door and all the movement will cause them stress.

o If you are keeping young discus, keep in groups of no less than six. Discus are a shoaling fish.

o Make sure there are no large changes in pH, hardness or temperature when changing water.

Above are just a few things that you can do to make sure your discus fish live a happy life and remain healthy. Remember discus are not hard to keep, they just require regular water changes and a good varied diet like most other fish. For more details on discus fish please check out my website below.

Rob owns Discus Fish Secrets website helping beginners and advanced fish keepers with discus problems including keeping and breeding them. Please visit the site for more information on www.discus-fish-secrets.com.

Discus Fish Disease: How to Deal with Them

As a hobbyist who is currently taking care of discus fish, you have to remember that aside from knowing how to raise them, you also need to know about the diseases that may afflict them. By learning about the different kinds of diseases that may affect your discus fish, you will be able to tell if your discus fish already has the disease and also know how to treat them.

Basically, one of the most common problems among discus fish is having a hole in the head. Early detection is essential in order for you to treat them effectively. You need to remember that the longer the disease exists in the discus fish, the most probable it will be that the disease may cause its death.

You have to keep in mind that even if the fish heals after the treatment, the wound can leave a permanent scar, which can significantly have an effect on the overall appearance of the fish, especially on discus fish.

This is why treating the wound while it’s still small is highly recommended. For this kind of disease, you may want to treat the disease by increasing the water temperature from 30 degrees Celsius to 36 degrees Celsius. Keep the water temperature raised for around 8 to 10 days.

By increasing the water temperature, you also need to increase water aeration to keep the oxygen level up. You can also combine heat treatment with Metronidazole, which is administered orally. Give this medication to your discus fish once every 3 days. Usually, discus fish will respond well to heat treatment in combination with the medication treatment.

Gill fluke is another disease common among discus fish. Although this will not really affect adult discus fish, it can cause huge problems for discus fry and juvenile discus fish. You have to keep in mind that gill flukes are parasites that can destroy the gills of your discus fish. They can also cause heavy breathing and irregular swimming, which can eventually leave your discus fish totally paralyzed and sink down the bottom of the tank.

To treat gill flukes, you can use formalin. Also, although infested parents can still spawn, the offspring can eventually get the parasite, which can cause very serious problems.

Internal parasites can also infect discus fish. Although most internal parasites in discus fish may not cause serious threats, you have to remember that these parasites can eventually grow uncontrollably, which can cause serious problems for your fish. A symptom of discus fish having internal parasites is that they may produce white feces. Emaciation can also occur and is also considered as a common symptom of internal parasite.

A dose of Metronidazole usually clears the problem. You can get this ingested by your discus fish by medicating the food they eat. Feed your discus fish with medicated food every 2 days for a period of 10 days.

However, if you see that your fish is no longer eating, you may need to force feed them using a syringe without the needle.

Keep these things in mind and you can be sure that you will be able to treat your discus fish of any diseases that they may get.