Q&A for Discus Beginners

[lx2077]

Hello I'm brand new to this forum and wanted to start a new topic where us beginners can just ask questions to you experts to answer. My first question would be how often should we do water changers is a 20% once a week ok?

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[sdrexler078]

There already is a beginners section with a lot of answered questions and no 20 percent is too little. It depends on if you have juvies or adult on how much water to change juvies need more than adults

[Second Hand Pat]

Hello I'm brand new to this forum and wanted to start a new topic where us beginners can just ask questions to you experts to answer. My first question would be how often should we do water changers is a 20% once a week ok?

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Hi lx2077, first welcome to Simply and the world of discus keeping. While I understand your intent with this thread but I encourage you to instead to use the search function and seek some of these answers yourself. Read the stickies in the beginner section and other sections. This place has over 10 years of info if you care to check it out.

The question of water changes has been asked a million times and there are many factors which go into the answer. First is the discus keeper, keeping adults or raising juvies? Juvies require more, larger WCs then adults. Other factors include what is being feed and how often, tank size, bio-load of the tank etc.

Other things which factor in is the water source and it's water parameters. Does it need to be aged or can you do WCs directly from the tap. etc. etc. The bottom line is while there are some guiding principles each discus keeper has to get to know their water and how it works for their fish because the answers tend to be different for each person.

Pat

[Elliots]

lx2077, plan on spending many hours reading SD. Probably tens of hours before you get Discus so you will have fewer or no problems.

[tbie2]

I get that all water is different and everyone gets their water from different places but I come from the old school where we were using 100% ro with Trace for minerals. Ok so now (I'v been out of the game for about 20 years) I see you guys are having great results with tap. I have been using my old methods and have been sucessful however its quite a process and my water bill was almost 500 dollars last quater. So I'm thinking about going with tap. I age all tap because the clorine and flouride in my water would definetly kill my fish. Roght now I'm going 80 % ro 20% tap.My question is if I decide to go tap with 20 day old fry how much would you do say daily. Like I was thinking today 70 ro 30 tap tomorrow 60 ro 40 tap. You get my drift. I change 90 % daily sometimes more sometimes less.

Also when can I take these adults out of tank its only 20 gal high and I want to put them back in my big tank

Thanks for reading and or answering........................Tom


Other things which factor in is the water source and it's water parameters. Does it need to be aged or can you do WCs directly from the tap. etc. etc. The bottom line is while there are some guiding principles each discus keeper has to get to know their water and how it works for their fish because the answers tend to be different for each person.

Pat[/QUOTE]

[John_Nicholson]

I don't know your water but my fry will be pulled from the breeding tank (ro mix) and go into 100% tap water in the amount of time it takes to get them out of the net......Never had an issue. As long as the temp is not a lot cooler and the ph is the same or higher you should never have an issue.

-john

[tbie2]

Thanks I am very careful with ph and temp. I'm thinking about getting away from the ro because its such a waste of water literally 2/3 goes down the drain. I was catching it and using it for my other passion my garden but its 29 f here this morning and when its cold it becomes a pain and when its warm the mosquitto's breed in my storage. I was considering feeding the larve to my fish but I dont know if it would give them some disease. Anyway thanks for the info .......Tom

[John_Nicholson]

Everyone's water is different but I use my RO waste water for all of my growouts. I don't waste a drop of it.

-john