Fish disease case nr. 87 Discus with gill flukes and probably Discus Pest

Dear Aquarist, hello. You choose to watch this case of fish disease number 87, in which we will discuss a problem with a discus fish. And when you're a discus lover, of course, you want to learn how to tackle the problems, how to prevent certain diseases, and how you can manage to be a more happier hobbyist. And this is a case I hope can help you to understand some diseases or health problems that occur with the discus fish. It was a tank raised discus, fleche and snake, which has a mix of infections. To tell you honestly, this was a fish from. Germany who closed their operations this year, 2022. So luckily we had the opportunity to enjoy a lot of their nice fish. But still, a fish even from a good breeder can have health issues like mankind. We can be healthy at the next week. We might be having an infection or a disease. That's part of the biology of life. Here I show you the discus in the tank. And you can see that. That some of the discus are here at the corner. They're getting darker here. This one is not so dark, but this one is in the corner. It's hiding. It's not active. It's not so good eating. It's getting skinny and wasting away. And here we. We have put it in a. In a separate bowl. And you can see it's slightly. Some Popeye, very lightly, but not so big. It's. It's active, but not as active as it should be. It has a real darkening of the color. And of course we start taking skin scrapings. That's the first we do. If we have a sick fish. And we noticed a lot of extra mucus. And also some bacteria are on the. On the scales, which is abnormal. This amount of mucus is not normal. So there is an excessive mucus secretion on the body and the same in the gills. Also the gills had extra mucus. You can see it here in between. And here we use an enlarged observation with the microscope. 200 identification. And we see already also some gill flukes, not so many, but a few. And that is of course irritating. If it's a few, it's not a massive infection yet. But still to be concerned that we might have to make a treatment, because in the coming weeks it can be an explosive infection. But the mucus is also concerned. So there's an extra mucus. And when we did a dissection of this discus here, the gas bladder has already been cut by doing the dissection. But what we noticed is the very large and large red spleen here, which is not Normal that it's so large, the blowing. Yes. Where is the problem coming from? Well, we check under the microscope and we see a lot of melanomicrofarg centers. That's a kind of a reaction to. An invasive reaction to bacteria. Might be bacteria, maybe a virus. But in our cases we deal with in ornamental fish like this. Because it's very commonly something that happens when there is a bacterial infection. And this might be the reaction of this spleen. That's why the spleen has no good activity anymore. The organ is failing. And of course the fish will be weakening and having a lot of problems. The same in the liver. See, this liver is not normally formed anymore. You see also the macrophages who are getting together to fight off an infection and of causing the liver to be malfunctioning. Even in the mesenteria. We see a lot of blood clots here around, which is not normal. Where is this coming from? It's sometimes hard to identify. Sometimes you need laboratory research. Maybe you can find viral infections, I don't know. We didn't do it because it's very expensive for us in our aquarium hobby. Also, the kidney was not well shaped. You can see a lot of black pigmentation, also some blood clots in there. So the fish was suffering from internal problems. And. Well, our conclusion was that we will have to look for the origin of the problem. Always I'm looking at a holistic view on fish diseases. And in this case we had a suspicion that the fish were affected by other South American cichlids and other Asian discus which were in the same environment, in the same area, in the same row, in the same battery of fish kept together. And when the fish has a poor immunity. Yes, poor immunity can. When that fails, anything can attack the fish. A bacteria, a virus, a parasite. So I always say, well, if you're dealing with discus, try to stay with the same breeder, the same origin, and don't mix with other species. Because it looks like some of the disk are allergic to certain pheromones or bacteria that's coming from other species. I explained that to another video, which I show at the end of my presentation. For this case, do a regular water changes. Do more water changes. That really helps the fish to overcome the problem. It means also diluting what is floating around in the water. Maybe using an antibacterial treatment that might help. Ask your fish doctor. Feeding the fish with immunostimulants, which is available in our Dr. Bass nearby fish food forte or the professional care. That means improving the immune system, improving the health of the fish. And that can be done with the help of a fish food. So the fish can fight off the disease, particularly the fish, you know, the one which are still colored and will not get sick if they still eat well and they can overcome the problem. So prevention is better than cure. And for this I can recommend you to see my books like the new Illustrated Guide to Fish Diseases and watch my video on YouTube. Here is the link I give you also will give it in the detailed information on the YouTube link, so you can go to there where I talk about the discus pest and this kind of problems that appear with the discus. So this was another case I showed you on a discus fish, which of course are beautiful fish, but they stay beautiful as long as you can take care of it. I hope this video helped you take care. Bye bye.