Weird Discus behavior

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OffG

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 2, 2025
Messages
5
Location
Poland
Hello. I recently bought 2 very young discus for my 55 gallon (i know it’s small but that’s why i bought young ones. I’m upgrading soon) and for the first week or so everything was going perfect, they were active and eating, but one day out of literally nowhere one of the fiscus appeared very skinny and lethargic, hiding, not eating at all and acting kinda unresponsively, this started happening around 3 days ago after a water change and it got worse, i raised the temperature to 29 celcius but it changed nothing, i was thinking maybe i somehow messed up during the water change but i quickly ruled that out and also the other fish are all acting normal, first i thought that maybe it was constipated? But as i said, it’s very skinny, almost see through and now i’m thinking it may be parasites, now before anyone asks about the color of the poop, i have no idea because i CANNOT seem to find a moment to capture the discus pooping and all the poop on the substrate is the proper color. I’m not sure what’s really happening to this fish, so i hope you guys can help me out quickly. Also i really wanted to attach some recordings but it looks like the app
doesn’t support that
 
Were these wild caught Discus or tank bred? Also, Larger Angelfish and smaller Discus are a bad combination. Angels will usually eat faster than Discus so your fish may have stopped eating out of fear from the larger Angel(s)
 
Were these wild caught Discus or tank bred? Also, Larger Angelfish and smaller Discus are a bad combination. Angels will usually eat faster than Discus so your fish may have stopped eating out of fear from the larger Angel(s)
I’m pretty sure that they are tank bred, and you’re right about the food, the angels go crazy but i even tried giving food into one spot where the discus is alone with no other fish interrupting and it still wasn’t interested at all
 
I really hopes somebody would have helped me out here, now it looks like the fish is on it’s last breaths and dying, shame that this post didn’t blow up more but i’m still open for replies to see what it actually was that happened to that fish
 
I really hopes somebody would have helped me out here, now it looks like the fish is on it’s last breaths and dying, shame that this post didn’t blow up more but i’m still open for replies to see what it actually was that happened to that fish
It's going to be very hard to determine exactly what happened with this fish or them both only because they are in the wrong community. They look small enough that starving is the more likely reason for their impending deaths. The reason for their starving is likely one of 2 things: Bad tankmates or internal parasitic worms. Discus are known for carrying worms but if these were tank raised, it's less likely but your fish should have been quarantined for a least 4-6 weeks to confirm their health before placing them in the main tank. That way you would have known that they were healthy to start with. THEN, if they stopped eating in the main tank and the issue was not a water chemistry issue, you would know that it's the Angel(s) or other more aggressive feeders that are the problem.
So you see, there are too many potentials to narrow it down to just one thing at this late date. :(
 
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