Hilary

These are old photos. I don’t know what gender mine is either. It’s never mattered to me since I have no intentions of trying to breed them. Planet catfish does have an article on the species and a couple breeding reports that might help with identifying the sex. https://www.planetcatfish.com/common/species.php?species_id=153

Thank you so much! This was great advice. I turned up the temp to 86f and took a step back. The stuff I was seeing was definitely just slime coat with some sand in it. They are doing well. The little one’s appetite didn’t improve at first, but I waited to make sure it wasn’t something I’d caused by fussing too much. I did a round of dewormer and now it’s perked right up and is even challenging the others for food again. I am hoping it’ll catch up in growth since they are still really young. The biggest one is almost twice the size of the average ones and the little one is smaller than them. They’re all eating really well now so hopefully they’ll even out a bit. I had posted on the simply discus forum, but I didn’t receive any replies there.

My discus were doing good until about a week ago I noticed them occasionally flashing against plants and objects in the tank. I also noticed a few white spots on a few discus. The spots were barely visible though and seemed like ich or possibly velvet. I've been treating for a week with a formalin malachite green treatment. They seem better, most of them are still growing and brightening up, but a few of them seem paler than a week ago and like they aren't growing as fast as the others. The smallest palest one doesn't try to eat much. Some of them have had white poop segments and the smallest has had mostly white poop when it poops at all. I live in Canada and medicine is hard to get. Sometimes there are still white particles attached to them but more loosely like they may just be clinging sand or gas bubbles or tiny injuries maybe...and they come and go so I'm starting to wonder if they even matter Most of the discus are flashing, the smallest one seems to have excess slime, any of them occasionally have tiny which particles or bubbles on their skin, fins or slime coat, white poop segments in most of them and white poop exclusively on the littlest one, smallest one not eating and pale and timid. I'm worried about the smallest one not eating and not looking great and I'm worried about the flashing all around. If it weren't for those two things I wouldn't really be worried about anything else. I've been doing a 40% water change and then treating with Pond Microbe Lift Broad Spectrum Disease Treatment (formalin and malachite green) every night since Monday. I'm not planning to do it tonight since it seems to stress them out and if they had ich I think it should've been gone by now. They do seem a bit better, but it may have just been the ample water changes. Tank/Water It is a 65 gallon tank, current occupants are: - 1 L204 Pleco >3years old, long term resident - 1 Gold Nugget Pleco >3 years old, long term resident - 6 Discus ~4 months old, added October 1st Water parameters are: - temp ____84F - ph _____ 7.6 - ammonia reading ____ 0ppm - nitrite reading ____ 0ppm - nitrate reading ____ 0-5ppm I got my discus from a local breeder and they were raised in municipal water. I added new plants added a few days before they started flashing I started trying to feed them flake that contains metro - they don't want it, they are trying to eat black beard algae off the filter intake instead Here is a link to videos I took today. Please let me know if you need anything else. The difference in their colours and sizes is bothering me. Up till the past week they've all been roughly the same size and colour. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0x2cygcp3...HxtjwCjLa?dl=0