Discus swimming oddly

[macman7010]

This morning my juvenile Red Marlboro Discus was swimming oddly. First off he was struggling just to stay at the lower or mid levels of the tank, and occasional he would float up on his side - totally vertical, then correct himself, then swim oddly some more.

He has been just fine, and still eats even with the difficult swimming problem. My initial assumption was that it was a swim bladder malady so I removed him from the tank and placed him in a 3 gallon hospital tank with Mela Fix and Pima Fix and some stress coat. After about two hours he seemed to be swimming fine so I relalesed him back into the main tank.

When I left the house he seemed to be alright, but still swimming kind of oddly. Any ideas, I have heard rumors that fish can ingest air bubbles into thier swim bladders.

 

[BrianNY]

Swim bladder probs can take take two forms. Either too much or too little gas. When a discus can't release the gas from their bladder they swim vertically. When they can't get gas into the bladder they tend to swim sideways.

See my post on how I treated this in this forum.