Discus Illnesses (White Feces)
White Feces.
White Poop (Part 1):
White poop may be from 4 distinctive reasons or
combination of those:
1) Internal parasite,
Comes by different names like Hexamita, Octomitis. .... In human related parasite is Giardia.
they have flagella (like tail ) they use it to mov e and to attach to intestine wall FLAGYL is the brand name of metronidazole now we see where they got the name of this medication.
2) Bacterial infection:
In digestive system of all the animals there is ac id, digestive enzymes, yeasts and bacteria (good bacteria/probiotics ) to help digestion and absorpt ion of food all of these creating a balanced envir onment, if we disturb this balance digestive system won’t work properly and there is a chance that h armful bacteria take over and causing problems. How we mess up this balance: usually is by using antibiotics that kill the good bacteria. Imagine you see the white poop you treat with metronidazole and it’s not working then you see bigger longer more fluffy white poop this is over growth of bad bacteria and intestine mucus.
3) White poop but not white poop!
Because this is a worm
How to diagnose: best is by experts and microscope .... How to relatively diagnose, that i can help:
**If the fish shows absolutely no interest in food getting dark go to corner and looking the otherway and you feel he is disgusted by smell of food( actually he is ) and you see white poop almost as thick as anus of fish hanging but not very long, most probably internal parasite. Oh the fish usually has empty belly.
** If you see the fish is kind of bloated eating b ut not good not growing fast sometimes you see whi te poop like sticking there which is smaller than anus size and its round and just hanging there, it ’s a worm.....if you see white poop that if kind of flat and segmented it’s also worm.
** HOLLY CRAP if you see lots of white poops all over the tank or hanging to fish really long and its fluffy and thick and bigger than anus size of fish (especially if recently you treated fish for some other issues ) its most probably bacterial infection.
4. Stomach Lining
If the fish has been fasted for transit then sometime it will have white clear feces. Do not panic, keep up your water changes and bump up the tempature.
White Poop part 2 (prevention)
What’s better than treatment? You got it! Few facts:
Give or take Discus growing 80 % of its potential size in 6 months, and each time a fish goes through this white poop things take about 1 month to be recovered and back to normal, then again give or take. When a fish gets an intestinal problems there is more chance that he/she gets the same problem again (recurrence). Well now we see why there is so many substandard stunt fish they simply spent their growth time fighting with this condition among other reasons.... let’s put it this way when I see a full grown nice +6” discus I imagine he had a healthy life, so let’s prevent.
First thing comes to mind is quality of water and all the parameters I am not going there it’s a whole long story so please assume water parameters are under control ( which is the most important thing in Discus keeping ) and of course following QT methods, good quality food and so on you name it
Clean up, clean up
The easiest way is I create a scenario of my maintenance routine I underline the parts that may help you then adapt the rest for your own. If you have a planted tank with plants and lots of sand and snail and different fish, this won’t work for you please don’t try that sorry I wasted your time at least read to the end I promise at least three new good points!
I have a 120g bare bottom grow out tank (little bit of sand sometime to keep my back stretched) canister filter and small sump (30 g)
“every night” I do 50% water changes I clean up the water line every night as extra floating foods sticking there and in 85f they rot fast I use Kleenex or toilet paper
“Every week” I do big water change 120%! (Empty the tank, add some water empty again and fill up see below) I scrub down the whole tank from inside don’t forget the air tubes, heater...., when the tank is almost empty like 80 to 90 percent empty I add two to three tablespoonful table salt, wait 5 minute add some water to 30% full, empty again to 10% and fill it up! Easy, here is the logic first the salt reduce the stress in fish and salt has mild antiseptic/anti-bacterial effect, last but not least when you add the salt it makes other unwanted things to comes out of water, it could be extra calcium, proteins, oils, remaining solved foods... (You can Google “what is “salting out” and read the details”)
“Every Month” one day “before” my big water change I treat the tank with copper sulfate (or cupramine) the next day big water change will remove the copper. Logic: No matter how hard you try there will be some corners that you won’t reach there to clean and small colonies of algae will grow and help colonization of other bacteria and parasites, by using copper you kill those hiding places (some species are sensitive to copper, it kills the snails so as I mentioned hi-tech planted, sandy snail multispecies ...be careful)
Take care of your canister filter and sump Clean up clean up clean up
Credits: Kia Kiani