My discus setup

Where in Pretoria are you? Either your municipality is skimping on chlorine or you have the luck of the devil to not have lost all your fish after a water change.

 

No Worries Tetra.

I can totally relate to what you re saying. As a youngster in Brakpan ( yes I know ) , I ran a Marine Aquarium for 12 years and never used Primer of any sort without a single loss after a water change.

Keep us updated , for better or worse , you have a lovely Aquarium and you have every right to be proud of it.

 

Hey @Jenn, I live a fair distance away from @Tetra so i'm pretty sure the same luck of the draw wouldn't work for me! But like i said, the fish look great.... plants too. Maybe Tetra has a secret.... hahaha :hmmmm2:

 

@Tetra in first line of my post i do compliment your tank as its very nice.but what i mean by it being wrong for small discus is that its very difficult to raise juvies in a planted enviroment.what im trying to get at is that why not raise them out in a smaller BB tank until they around 12cm then transfer them to the larger planted tank.then do at least 50% water change twice a week.thus it would be possible to do large daily water changes on smaller BB tank.and what im saying here is not the gospel according to me but the fackt remains that juvinile discus need very clean warm water and enough good variety food and thawing bloodworms before feeding they will not have problems.so what im getting at is save yourself the headache and keep good healthy adults in your LOVELY PLANTED TANK it will look awsome.and if you want to raise babies start with good discus that do not have cloudy eyes and clamped fins.If a juvinile gets sick he will generaly not grow to his full potential.And if prime to pricy try safe it lasts for ever.

 

Bollocks bollocks bollocks bollocks

Moderators - honestly how long is this going to be tolerated?

Enlighten us please Quakeszn, what "more functions than just removing chlorine and chlorimime" is so vital that Tetra "need" to use it?

"80% water change"?
Did you calculate that according to fish load or is that just bollock statistics read on Simply and rehashed here?
I can tell you - its bollocks!!
If I keep 5 adult Discus in a 1000lit tank, must I then also do 80% wc per day?
If I keep 20 juvies in 100 liters-still 80% a day?

Mods - Im leaving it at this.
Tetra's Discus is one thing but replying to a post in this manner?
I think its unacceptable. I reported this yesterday already.

Who is this person to say the following - "im tired of people thinking its ok to keep discus like this and then still showing off your discus..." Is he the self appointed Discus messiah?

Ok then - I am also tired of people commenting on threads as if they have the first clue about certain fish, when in reality absolutely NONE of the information is based on any science, experience or logic.

Sort this out please guys! This is NOT the first issue.

Tetra, your tank is stunning. Your discus are unfortunately stunted. Its a common problem mostly due to flagellates. Unfortunately what you have tried here is one of the most challenging things in freshwater fishkeeping - a planted Discus tank. Usually one of the 2 disciplines suffer, and in your case the Discus did. If you had higher temperatures, 29°at least, and the flagellates couldve been sorted earlier, then the fish could very well have grown to a good size. This is unfortunately the downside of Discus keeping and partly the reason why they are labelled as challenging.

As to the way you do water changes. Im going to give my 2c - i respect my fish too much too put them at risk like that. We never know when chloramine is used in water conditioning in PTA and if/when they use that for some reason, the results will be catastrophic. There are some threads on TASA abt this happening a few years ago.

I however do not promote the use of any dechlorinator. I think its an expensive waste of money. If you can get a big drum to store water, and a small pump to pump the water - you can make yourself a simple Activated carbon filter to do an even better job. You are welcome to contact me for an illustration of how to.

Lastly - you may note your discus are dark, maybe you dont see that because you really dont know the difference-the reason for that is the dark substrate. The turquoise looking fish in your tank will look very different in a tank with a light substrate. This may not bug you and that really is a personal thing. Its just better to see the colours of discus fish on a light substrate rather than dark one, they do really just look better.
No harm done though.

Kind regards

Marco

 

Enlighten us please Quakeszn, what "more functions than just removing chlorine and chlorimime" is so vital that Tetra "need" to use it?

Prime also helps with the production and repair of a fishes slime coat and it also helps break ammonia and nitrate levels to assist the bio filtration.And lets say some thing goes wrong with the water in your area and the municipality peppers it with chlorine??

Who is this person to say the following - "im tired of people thinking its ok to keep discus like this and then still showing off your discus..." Is he the self appointed Discus messiah?
The problem here is that someone who does not know better sees these fish and thinks this is what a nice healthy discus looks like goes to petshop and buys simmilar fish only to be dissapointed later after many hours and rands later

80% water change"?
Did you calculate that according to fish load or is that just bollock statistics read on Simply and rehashed here?
I can tell you - its bollocks!!
If I keep 5 adult Discus in a 1000lit tank, must I then also do 80% wc per day?
If I keep 20 juvies in 100 liters-still 80% a day?

5 Adult discus in 1000l tank 80% a week not every 2 weeks
20 in 100l tank will not last long but 6-8 discus i would not do 80% a day but rather 2 x 50% daily if you want then to grow 15cm or bit larger

in a planted tank you miss alot of the dirt and only cleaning every second week its building up.

and activated carbon with aging barrel will work but just be carefull it doesnt leech chemicals back to the water

 

Good afternoon members of TASA and participants of thisthread. It is deeply concerning and disturbing that members of our forum areconducting themselves in such an undignified and unprofessional manner. Let usall take a step back and ask ourselves the question, why are we all on thisforum?

We are here to learn, educate and share our experiences onfish keeping. We have turned this thread in to a circus. I can appreciate thecomments with regards to content on this thread but, is it really necessary toput it in the way that some of you have? Is any of us educated authorities ondiscus or any other species of fish? Of the top of my head know. If you have adegree or some kind of qualification that I am not aware of them I apologize inadvance.

I have a good mind of closing this thread but, I won’t as I wantyou all to learn from this and stop behaving like little kids. Please reframefrom posting fish keeping ideas like it is the only way. It’s worked for you sogood for you. Educate the other members in a reasonable fashion.

We will not tolerate this in future as you bring yourselfand this forum in to disrepute.
I trust this is in order.

 

I like your tank it looks good. Might as well add my 2c worth. I have never kept discus but recon like most people I have tried and failed many times in my endeavors it is called learning. There are many years of experience on this forum that can be shared I do not see the need to be aggressive about it but rather to encourage and teach. We appreciate the wisdom gained by other advice but even what seemed to be true at one time has proven to be either incorrect or there have been advances that make things better. Look after you fish too the best of your ability be prepared to learn but most important let them bring you pleasure.

 

It's a pitty things got abit sour on the threat but I've learned a hell of a lot new things for my discus tank. I've even learned a few new English words as well.

Thank you Marco for your post to the thread and the compliment I've just realized that I have taken on a big step in my fish keeping hobby, trying to get the perfect planted Discus tank. I'll contact you to ask for further advise.

Things that I thought were okay for my fish wasn't really ok at the end.

i do apologize if any of my post offended anybody.

I think I need to invest in a carbon filter ASAP, since the Prime is going to cost me a lot of money in the long run. I will raise my tank temp again and find away to prepair the tap water before a water change again.

Is it advice able to make use of the undercounter filter or the reverse osmosis filtering systems to filter the water for a water change? Or does these filters remove to much from the water?

 

No @Tertra, its your thread and i appoligise for the way that i conducted myself.i have the wrong way of saying things.

 

Epic TANK!:bigsmile:

 

hi tetra.i have kept discus for approx 15 -20yrs.i have succesfully bred and raised fry to the point were i sold them to petshops.i always took advice from those that were succesfull with them and over the years i have found small things that worked for me.a planted discus tank is the most beautiful sight to see.but hard to maintain.even the true masters battle with it.if you want to keep discus,keep them on their own for starters.bristlenose do well with discus.keep about 6-8 juveniles in a bare tank.use a sponge filter only for now.keep temp at 30 degrees.feed 2 times a day moderately and syphon off any uneaten food within the hr.keep water as clean as possible at all time.if you see anything that looks unhealthy,remove it.you will be amazed at this little set up what wonders it does.once they get used to this set up,i promise you they will thrive.i have 12 discus in a 1.5m bare tank and they just thrive in it.once they start eating well,you can change the filtration to suite your tank etc.hope it helps

 

How often do you vacuum the substrate Reedfish?

 

these are some very nice looking tanks....guys,just remember that there is a rule of thumb wrt to fish husbandry,but many exceptions to the rule. I for one will not post how i raised my discus(when I had) bcoz I will raise many scales the wrong way. BUT there is alot of good advice on this forum...TETRA, considering that the discus is the King of the aquarium lets give the royal treatment that it deserves.

 

I personally don't like bare tanks so would not keep discus if that was a requirement. A bare tank always makes me this of something in limbo waiting for completion.

 

Just to add my 2cents here in terms of bb tanks. When you are breeding and raising young discus, trust me, bb makes tank management FAR easier.

In terms of a nice display with adult discus, @Reedfish setup is STUNNING. Very natural looking discus bio-tope. ( excluding of course the pb based discus )

 

Nice looking tanks guys I hope to achieve the same with my Discus.

This thread had a lot of mixed inputs but learned a lot from everybody, will keep you guys updated of my progress. The first plan is filtering or preparing my water for a water change.

I've increased my temp to 29 degrees and the Discus is much more active in the tank.

once again thank you for all the advise