Help! Discus internal parasite/swimbladder infection!

[DanM621]

Hi all,

Woke up this morning to find one of my discus (c.3in, been in aquarium for almost a month now) was bobbing around at the surface. He was absolutely fine yesterday and all my other fish are happy and eating. Tested water and that came out clear (0 NH3, 0 NO2, 10ppm NO3).

I've put him into quarantine and treated with Acraflavin. Tried to tempt him into some bloodworm, to no avail.

Any suggestions on what else I can do/what the cause was?

Thankyou so much in advance!

 

[DanM621]

This is him currently, in quarantine. You can see the swelling around his belly :'(

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[alto]

What are you feeding?
has this fish been eating with vigor or quietly?
Tank parameter details?

Classic "treatment" for this is Epsom salts dosed @ 2-3 teaspoons/37litres

The Skeptical Aquarist provides some classic links for fish health
- including in Dionigi Maladorno's thorough article, "Symptom-based treatment of common Discus diseases", 1998 which is now kindly hosted here ... this article is well worth printing & keeping to hand if you keep discus.

My understanding of acriflavine is that is it more applicable to external infections/lesions - if you suspect an internal infection & fish is not eating, kanamycin is one of the few antibiotics that has been actually shown effective against bacteria isolated from fish (vs water column bacteria), there is also some uptake on this antibiotic across gill membranes into the fish (this is a major problem with water column antibiotics).
Fish looks to be of a size that a vet may be able/willing to inject antibiotics (do not do this yourself!)