Discus Help!

I'm new to discus and I purchased two healthy looking ones, about 3.5-4" maybe 3 weeks ago or so. I've noticed one has started to show black around the edges of his fins and I read that it's a cause of stress or disease. Can anyone help me figure out how to help him out?

I don't see any signs of parasites.
Swimming around the same area.
Is breathing a bit heavy. Added in a sponge filter to help add some aeration. Not going to the top for air.
Hard to tell if he's eating or not but I don't think he's eating much.
His buddy is doing fine.
Did a 50% water change yesterday.
Temp is around 84.5.
Ammonia is at 0 and below are the rest of the parameters.
They're only in a 20 gallon right now, but its just the two of them and no other fish to stress them out or cause extra waste. They will be going to a bigger tank but while they were a bit smaller, I wanted to keep them alone in a 20 to keep stress down.

Any suggestions on what else I could do? Thanks!

Can you please show a picture of the whole tank? How hard is your water? These guys must be kept in soft water. What is your pH?, is it acidic?

This is the tank at the moment. pH is showing around 6.5. Hardness, a bit more on the harder end as shown in the above picture.

These guys are just looking for a nice spot to relax in, I would suggest turning down the light and using a lot of floating plants to shade the tank.

At least start with that and see what happens.

I would use a liquid test kit. Those are way more accurate than the strip ones. I use the API kit. It lasts a while to.
Also I know you said you were going to move them to a bigger tank but they should probably already be in a larger tank than that. A 20g is just too small for discus period.
But they definitely need more plant cover near the top. Getting tall plants will really help them come out more and be comfortable.

itiwhetu said:

These guys are just looking for a nice spot to relax in, I would suggest turning down the light and using a lot of floating plants to shade the tank.

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Okay. I can dim that light easily and I have a ton of frogbit in all of my other tanks I can transfer over. I'll try that to start off. Hopefully with the water change, the added airation, and the shade will help him out.

Rocky998 said:

I would use a liquid test kit. Those are way more accurate than the strip ones. I use the API kit. It lasts a while to.
Also I know you said you were going to move them to a bigger tank but they should probably already be in a larger tank than that. A 20g is just too small for discus period.
But they definitely need more plant cover near the top. Getting tall plants will really help them come out more and be comfortable.

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I've got a good handful of ferns and anubias that I plan on gluing down onto some rocks tomorrow that should give them a bit more coverage. I should only be a month or two at most before they're in a bigger tank. Just waiting on signing onto a lease for my business location and they'll have a bigger setup there. I didn't want to add them to my 60 gallon right now since there can be a bit too much movement going on in there. I have a 55 in storage that they'll be going into.

Kaleidoscope said:

Okay. I can dim that light easily and I have a ton of frogbit in all of my other tanks I can transfer over. I'll try that to start off. Hopefully with the water change, the added airation, and the shade will help him out.

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If you look at them in these photos they are both trying to get into the cave, let's see if this will stop that behavior. This is my Discus tank see that the left-hand end of the tank is dark and safe, Discus like to go to these areas to relax.

Kaleidoscope said:

I've got a good handful of ferns and anubias that I plan on gluing down onto some rocks tomorrow that should give them a bit more coverage. I should only be a month or two at most before they're in a bigger tank. Just waiting on signing onto a lease for my business location and they'll have a bigger setup there. I didn't want to add them to my 60 gallon right now since there can be a bit too much movement going on in there. I have a 55 in storage that they'll be going into.

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Sounds great!

When you say "too much movement in the 60g" what do you mean? There shouldn't be a ton of action in a discus tank. I know @itiwhetu has a few tank mates in with his but they were well chosen

Rocky998 said:

Sounds great!

When you say "too much movement in the 60g" what do you mean? There shouldn't be a ton of action in a discus tank. I know @itiwhetu has a few tank mates in with his but they were well chosen

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The 60 has giant danios that are all over the place, catfish, dojo loach, young bichir, few rainbows, angels. Mostly fish that are moving around quite a bit which is why I didn't want to put then in there in the first place. The bichir isn't active enough to cause stress but I don't want him trying to take a bite, and I don't even know how the angel fish would react. I do have a breeding pair in there that can get snippy when they want to lay eggs, so I just didn't want to take any chances with my discus getting hurt or stressed out because of them.

Kaleidoscope said:

The 60 has giant danios that are all over the place, catfish, dojo loach, young bichir, few rainbows, angels. Mostly fish that are moving around quite a bit which is why I didn't want to put then in there in the first place. The bichir isn't active enough to cause stress but I don't want him trying to take a bite, and I don't even know how the angel fish would react. I do have a breeding pair in there that can get snippy when they want to lay eggs, so I just didn't want to take any chances with my discus getting hurt or stressed out because of them.

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The tank you have for your Discus is just fine for now, don't move them. Just get them to chill out, with the suggestions I have made above.

Update. I have added in plenty of plants and floating plants as well as dimmed the light on the tank, checked the parameters. I'm still having issues with the one having a black rim around his outer fins. He is interested in food and he does explore the tank, often exploring outside of the hiding areas, but he's still got that coloring. As far as I see, he's acting like a normal fish. I don't know what else I should or need to do. Thoughts?

Picture and video of the fish?

It could be bullying from the other one.

What are you feeding them?
Discus need plant matter in their diet. See following link for dietary requirements.

Colin_T said:

Picture and video of the fish?

It could be bullying from the other one.

What are you feeding them?
Discus need plant matter in their diet. See following link for dietary requirements.

the discus fish Symphysodon - SciELO - M.MOAM.INFO

Dec 22, 2008 - of the lake hosting more than a thousand discus. Only 16 of the 41 ..... ing free-swimming B. cichlae wit...

moam.info

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Went ahead and printed out what you linked me so I can read it a bit later on. They're mostly getting Hikari Vibrabites (of course it says good for Discus on the back so I've been giving them that) with sometimes giving Seachem cichlid flakes. I took a video of him in his tank. You can see that he is interested in food and the other one is not bullying him. I've never seen bullying between them. They part ways sometimes but they also swim together a lot.
You can see in the video how much more dim it is in relation to the tank below it.