Originally Posted by illumnae

I feel that the important thing in stablizing altums is a good preventive medication course. Treat in this order: bacterial, internal parasite then external parasite. This is based on my limited knowledge of how long each pathogen takes to kill a fish.

The worst enemy of altum keepers is columnaris (bacterial), so I'd start off with the 4 day recommended full course of API Furan-2. I've had great personal success with treating columnaris using this method, and a number of my losses were due to not treating this early enough.

Next, go with internal parasite cleansing. Jungle Labs Internal Parasite Guard is, in my opinion, the best commercially branded medication for this. This is because it contains both metronidazole and praziquantel. This should take care of most, if not all, internal parasites that may infect your altums. Most other brands only contain metronidazole, which is very good in itself, but does not clear tapeworm. This is ok in bred fishes, but in wild fish, you never know whether your fish was in contact with tapeworm previously or not. If you have the raw forms of both medications, you can go ahead and use them as well in the recommended dosage.

For external parasites, I have no personal experience as my altums came free of such parasites from a visual inspection. However, I have been doing some brief research on this as I just got in a batch of wild discus, and while the ones I chose did not have external parasites, I observed some of their tankmates in the LFS did have. The popular one seems to be Waterlife Parazin. If you don't want to get this, Jungle Labs Parasite Guard seems to be a good alternative. Take note that this is not the same as the Internal Parasite Guard as recommended earlier for internal parasites.

After a full course, continue to quarantine your altums for at least 6 weeks to observe if there's any reccurrance and if so, treat accordingly. I know alot of people don't follow this QT procedure and still get very good results, but if you want to play really safe, I feel that an extended QT is essential. I will be quarantining my wilds (altums and heckels) for 2-3 months before introducing them into their main tank.

After all this and your fish are clear of any harmful "denizens", you can proceed to acclimitize them to higher ph. This is as healthy altums are hardy altums. I am now doing 50-70% water changes with water direct from the tap (only anti-chlorine added) and my altums don't show any adverse reaction at all (remember, my tap water is 7.6 from the tap).

All the best for your altums!