Discus Hiding Problem Pls Help

[Luke S.]

I'm new to discus and have had them for a while but they aren't shurely happy and hide but are eating somewhat when I leave the room. Pls help and respond

[zchauvin]

Lighting? Filtration? Tank size? What size fish? How long have you had them? What are tank mates? Feeding regimen? Water parameters? Pictures of fish.

[Luke S.]

The lighting is a. Urgent led light that is growing plants and the tank is 90 gallons. I currently have an aqua clear 110 (the largest size), a penguin emperor filter (largest size), and a power head with a sponge on the in take which helps a lot. The biological media is ceramic. The other filtration is charcoal, peat moss,and mechanical sponges and other matting. There are 3, three inche ones, one 2 inche one and two others that are 5 and six inches. There are no tank mates but one tiny green pleco. I have had them for a while but I had others that died in the process but some are six months old and I just got one at an auction that is three inches and is doing fine, but is Hidding like the rest. I was feeding them nothing but strait blood worms until lately when I discus breeder at an auction told me that it was the proper diet so i'm feeding them new life spectrum discus pellets and they are only nibbling on them but they are still adjusting to pellets so don't take that into the asumption. The perameters as of right now are 4.9 for ph the gh is 35ppm and the temp is 86 but yesterday the ph was 6.5 is this a crash? If so what in the world should I do to safely fix it.

[limige]

ph sounds unstable, are you using well water? 4.9 is very low and 6.5 is ideal. most important is stable conditions and lots of fresh water.

you want to do water changes every day if you can. you should use water of the same temp and treated for any chlorine or chloromine before adding to the tank.

please explain your water source and what you do to prep for water changes.

do you have any gravel sand or plants?

sounds like you have a lot of current. discus generally do not like lots of current. quality filtration does not make up for water changes with discus. they do poorly in high nitrate situations.
they also do not seem to care for softened water. if you have water softener you need to look for straight well water.

need more info. how often have you been changing your water, whats the source, whats your tank size, how much do you change?

[limige]

tetra bits, or sera discus bits are good foods too

never had any luck with store bought beefheart.

brine shrimp blood worms, black worms

if you get ahold of al he sells Australian blood worms that fish seem to devour.

your issue is one of water quality I would almost guarantee

[bluelagoon]

You can also get rid of the peat moss;your water is soft enough without it.Charcoal also is not needed.

[Luke S.]

I removed the charcoal and peat moss but the water im using is running through an Ro but I just added 14 gallons of very hard tap water and it seemed to buffer the ph and take it to 5.8 the fish seem to be a lot more active but still aren't. Completely happy and I still need to stabilize the ph. What would be the best way to approach this. My water source is in a holding tank (800 gallons) what should I do to stabilize it and what should I do in the near future. My fish are not unhealthy they are just stress because they aren't in the right conditions. The tank is a bare bottom with two peices of drift wood that are about a foot long each and there are some small new plants anchored to the drift wood and one huge Anubis sunk with a led weight. Should I put well water in he holding tank and get that water where I need it so it's ready to put in? And then just monitor it once it's in the tank a. Or should I remove the drift wood so it doesn't change the ph. What mixture of water should I add to the water holding tank to get it where I want it because some people say to add 50/50 of well and Ro water is this ok?

[Second Hand Pat]

Luke, are these domestic discus? If so why all the work to soften the water with RO, peat etc. Try a 1/3 tap to RO mix. Also if these are domestics they should handle your tap just fine.
Pat

[DISCUS STU]

Luke, are these domestic discus? If so why all the work to soften the water with RO, peat etc. Try a 1/3 tap to RO mix. Also if these are domestics they should handle your tap just fine.
Pat

Pat's right on this. No real need to do all this extra water conditioning. Tap water is normally higher in ph and minerals and will remain stable relatively ph stable but will gradually acidify depending on your tank environment. Using your holding tank and adding Prime or some other water conditioner should work fine, no need for charcoal. This may remove too much, it's up for debate.

Hopefully the peat you were using didn't have any fertilizer in it. Yes, you did have a crash and extremely low ph's affect the disposition of the fish for the worse. If you're in-between water changes then some old fashioned baking soda will also help to bring it up. I haven't seen fish adversely affected by an upswing of ph, only the other way around.

I use RO for my breeder tank, hospital/quarantine tanks, but buffer with RO Right to add minerals back. I also use a 50/50 mix to tap.

[Kyla]

i would suggest to get the api gh/kh test kit and find out what the kh from ur tap water is. if your tap kh is low and u are also using ro water, your kh may not be high enough to buffer the pH and hold it steady.

my kh was really low and my pH dropped dangerously low between water changes. i ended up using aragonite crushed coral to stabilize my water, brought kh from 0 up to a steady 4 and increased the pH from off-the-scale low to steady 7.4 and held it there.


i just rinsed a couple cups of aragonite really well and put it in a mesh baggie in the filter. i havent had to add any more since last year - it works for a long period. a staging barrel works great for preparig the water outside of the tank. you def dont want to be adding a bunch of aragonite all at once to ur tank or changing ur tank's pH too fast.

[limige]

luke, we need to know more about your water to determine if you need to mix at all. you say its hard, how hard is hard? whats the ph of your well water after aging for 24 hrs?

this 800 gallon storage tank, is this to pressurize the water for your house or is this just for the fish? are you mixing the RO in this tank or another one? are you aging the water after you mix it?

[Luke S.]

The 800 gallon tank is not pressurized and is for discus only because I have tons of large tanks around the property so I stuck this one in a crawl space in the basement and right now it's full with just Ro water. A permeate pump from my Ro is running on a Ro line from the aged water to my tank and I was thinking of putting a timer on it. My discus are domestic. If u guys want a video of the tank just let me know how so I can do that. I removed the charcoal and peatmoss yesterday. The discus seem to be very happy now but are skiddish sometimes. I'll post another thing of my perameters of my well water, current tank water and my Ro since it's now coming out at zero for some reason because after it was running for two days the two membranes are plugged up. Should I switch to using the pond water that has an amazing spring feeding it that is extremely soft water at a ph of 6.5 and the gh at 80. If so should I run a uv light through it before it goes into the holding tank? Or should I run the pond water through the Ro and to the tank or is there something wrong with my Ro because it is currently coming out at 74 for tds and a ph of 7.6 The other thing is that I do have a gh/ kh API test kit so I'll get back to u guys on the Ro,tank,and well water perameters in a little bit.

[Luke S.]

Mm guys it just needed a little trial and error to fix but thx for helping

[limige]

glad you got it, just the RO filter was it?

[Luke S.]

yes though check out my latest post because the ro is fixed now but im not shure on what I should add well water wise to the tank so its ready to be put in my discus tank. For the future.