My Discus has Gill Flukes!

[slevytam]

Hi,

I believe my discus to have gill flukes. Its fins are clamped. It often sits by itself low in the tank. I've caught it twice rubbing against driftwood and one gill is clamped shut while the other pumps rapidly.

I am going to raise the temperature and do a lot of water changes. Would a salt bath be effective here? What about adding salt to the tank in general?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Shalom

 

[tstenback]

Here is a previous post that has some info from one of the mods here that had the same experince as what you are going through. Its about half way down the first page Cian McLiam's post. HTH

 

[Fawke]

hi there

as you can see the above post mentioned was one I started. the problem is still on going. we thought we had solved the problem, and re-introduced the gouramis to the main tank, however the problem re-occured and we lost one gourami

the whole tank is now being treated with a product called Sterazin, which is made by a company called waterlife. it claims to cure all internal parasites (including gill flukes) and lists symptoms as scratching with no other visable signs of illness.

at the moment we are on day six of the ten day course so cant tell you how effective it is. One thing I would like to mention is how helpfull this company were. as we have scaleless fish we phoned the number on the bottle and they confirmed its safe use, also they talked to us about safe dosage, for our tank, not just whats on the bottle.

good luck and will keep you posted on how this med goes

 

[slevytam]

Thanks for your reply.

The first thing I would like to try is short time high salt baths. To me this would be much preferred over medicating.

Can anyone provide me with the proper step by step instructions as to doing this???

Also, would it help to add a small amount of salt to the tank in general? If yes, how does this affect other fish? (tetras, gouramis..)

Thanks in advance,

SL

PS please let me know how the STerazin goes !
Also, I've read the number one medication for gill flukes is Droncit (Praziquantel). It is only available by perscription...

 

[slevytam]

Take a look at this:

http/www.simplydiscus.com/library/diseas...ls_flukes.shtml

The salt bath treatment they recommend is 3% or 7.5 tablespoons per gallon until the fish "rolls over".

Has anyone done this with much success? Seems kinda risky.

SL

 

[Fawke]

I have never done a salt bath, so sorry cant help

when our gouramis were quaretined we added a lot of salt to their tank along with medication. we were told it would help the gills to function, reduce stress ect. we cant put salt in our main tank because we have scaleless fish, if you dont then I would say go for it as I cant see it would do any harm.

salt baths were suggested as possible help to us, but it is not something I am confident about doing (for no other reason than the fear of the unknown )

we chose to treat the whole tank in the end as our pictus cat was giving the odd flick, we wanted to eliminate all chances of it also being parasites and infecting the whole tank, so make sure you keep a close eye on all your fishies!

let us know how you get on

HTH

 

[slevytam]

I just did my first salt water bath. Man, those discus are hard to catch...

The discus flopped onto its side in about 3 seconds. I put it right back into the tank. I guess we will wait and see.

I'll keep you posted.

SL

 

[Fawke]

great, I know who to pm for salt bath advice

hope you see an improvement soon, good luck with him

 

[slevytam]

I think the first salt dip actually helped. The fish's fins are not as clamped. This is really easy to see on the discus. Right now they are at about half open. Before he almost looked like a different fish. He has also been swimming a bit more and even swimming side by side my other discus.

I just gave him his second dip. I'll keep watching closely. I think next time i might lower the salt concentration since the fish is still very young.

SL

 

[Fawke]

glad to hear things are going well, sounds like he is on the way to recovery

well done, hope he is soon back to full health