Discus

Hi Don,

You're making me nervous now, all this talk about, how much time your discus take up.

I was all set to get 6 little'ns 2 or 3 months ago.... then my external filter packed in and needed replacing, there went my discus fish fund.

Now I'm just about ready again, but I'm going to upgrade my tank first 

I'm going from my 4ft 180 litre to a 4ft 300 litre. 

I'm thinking about going for a bare bottom tank with the back, bottom and sides black. I'm hoping it will really make the discus' colours pop. Not to mention the bare bottom making it so much easier to keep clean. What do you think?

With my wood collection, Amazon frogbit floating plants, and a tank full of tannins and oak leaves, It should make a nice Amazonian biotope.

All and any advice would be, as always, appreciated.

Stuart.

I am planning on getting my Discus from Chens.

His water parameters are 180-200 ppm and 7.2 ph.

I have started to ro filter my own water which comes out as 75 ppm and 6.8 ph.

I have been told not to worry too much about the change in ph but what do you think about the hardness? My main concern is, will my water be so soft that the ph will fluctuate?  Will adding more minerals help harden the water or should I go for crushed coral? If I use crushed coral, are you meant to take it out when the water reaches a certain hardness or will it stabalise itself?

I didn't realise you could keep shrimp with discus. I've never had fish that could be kept with them before but I've often fancied it. Not that they would fit in very well with my biotope. lol

I have also thought about getting the best of both worlds. I have some small glass sheets which I could place in the bottom of my tank. The idea being to place aquarium glue on the sheets, spread it out reasonably thin with a damp cloth and then cover the glue with sand. Hopefully this will look nicer than a bare bottom, be more realistic but I wont keep syphoning out the sand when cleaning or doing water changes.

Stuart.

Hi Don, after talking to a few people on bidka I found that using "re-min tropic" helps raise carbonate hardness so I got some. I have now found the right dose that gives me (as near to damn it) the same water as Chens.

I hadn't heard of Octozin but I have now looked it up.

I now have 8 small ones in my tank with a few guppys, a neon tetra and 4 rummy nose tetras (left over from my last tank). I also have 5 Ammanos and 3 Cherry Shrimp (the Cherry's are small and I might be down to 1 now!)

I have 6 turqs and 2 red melons.

1 of the red melons does hide away at the back at times and is reluctant to feed from frozen food. I brought some live food the other day and it had some of that though, although not as much as the others. I know it isn't bullied out of the food because eventually the frozen and live food covers my tank, as if it's snowing and it still isn't bothered. It is getting visibly smaller than the other fish and it's poo is usually white and stringy. Any ideas?

I never seem to have a problem with uneaten food though with the other fish and shrimps in there.

I'm about to post some pictures of my new tank and Discus. Unlike your modest claims of poor pictures mine really aren't that good and by no means do my fish justice.

BTW. I ended up just using sand on the bottom of my tank. As someone pointed out the bags of play sand are only £2.99 from Homebase. If I suck out too much it is easier just to top it up. The sand didn't stick to the glue very well either.

Stuart.