discus isolating itself

[DiscusLover]

So about a couple days ago one of my discus started acting weird it had started to slowly isolate itself from the other discus and stop eating about a couple days ago. I am not really sure why I had this discus for a while with my other discus. My water is usually very hard and I never had any issues with fish being affected by the hardness. My tank is on a bit of the overstock I would say but I have not had any ammonia spike. Could it be infected or sick?

nitrate 20 ppm nitrite 0 hardness 300 ppm chlorine 0 ppm kh 80 ppm ph 6.8 ammonia 0

Edited June 14, 2022 by ryan1

[Fish Folk]

If everyone else is Ok, I wouldn't stress about hardness unless you're desperately trying to breed them. Hardness affects egg hatching more than anything else with healthy Discus IMHO.

What exactly are you feeding? How often are you changing water? How long have you had the fish?

Discus do occasionally prefer some alone time in a tank. But they  generally prefer shoaling in groups. Yours appear young. It's possible there might be some aggression going on.

I started with mine just the size you've got. After several years, they're really filled-out and enjoying life!

[DiscusLover]

I had these discus for about 3 months. I feed these guys tetra tropical granules bloodworms mysis shrimp and vibra bites. I change my water 2 times a week every water change is about 25%. yeah I do often see aggression in the tank but its only when its feeding time.

[jwcarlson]

How warm is your tank?  Wouldn't worry about the hardness, my tap water is something like 20-22 degrees gH and kH (they're roughly the same).

I just lost one of mine that basically had been doing just what yours is doing.  I got mine at 2.5" mid-February (so 4 months - they're approaching 5" now).  Two of them were non-eaters and isolating most of the time.  Eventually one pulled out of it and the other just died a few days ago.    Higher temp (up to 93 - tank mates and plants probably aren't going to like it) for a couple of weeks helped them eat a little more, but never kept them going.  Levamisole seemed to turn the one around, tried metro for 12 days and that didn't seem to help the one who died.

I'm not saying I think that's what is happening to yours, but it's something you should watch.  Some of mine will have a little moment for an hour or so where they sulk away from the group, but usually they're right back at it in short order.  The sick ones will just be isolated or what I call "sad" basically all the time.  They quickly become very obviously "behind" the others.  In my experience they do seem to grow well as soon as they do turn it around, though.  

I don't have the experience to be "that discus guy", but it wouldn't hurt to do a bit more water changing to see if he turns around just based on that.  Mine are growing at a rate of 1/2" per month (and the biggest ones of the group a bit faster than that, were 4.5" after 3 months).  About 90% water change every day for me.  

In any event, hope he turns it around for you!

 

[DiscusLover]

my water is usually around 83 degrees, when one of my discus had swim bladder I raised the temperature to 86 and left the tank like that for 2 days. All the fish were fine inside and some plants did melt but not all. 

[Colu]

You could try raising the temperature and adding garlic guard to their food to help stimulate it's appetite if it still doesn't except the food then I would do a course of Fritz Expel p treating once a week for three weeks