200 Gal. Discus Biotope

[Chris.sallee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_wT3o6JqI8&feature=youtu.be

[Altum Nut]

Welcome to Simply Discus Chris...
Impressive tank and thanks for sharing. I see you mentioned that you have a R/O drip hooked up but seeing that your Discus have some growing to do...R/O is not required.
Would love to hear more about your set-up and when you jumped into Discus.

Cheers,
...Ralph

[Chris.sallee]

Thanks for the reply.
I live in Lubbock Texas and my water is liquid rock, with ammonia and nitrite out of the tap. I would love to not have to have an r/o drip on the tank. However it is pretty much my only option.
My PH reads 8.6 general hardness around 13/14

[Chris.sallee]

Also I am lazy and don't want to do 2x 100 gallon water changes a week to keep water in good condition. The drip changes 350 gallons a week with out me having to store water and heat it up to the proper temp.

You also asked when I started keeping discus I had my first discus tank about 3 years ago and it was heavily planted. However I had to move before my discus really matured and taking the fish and tank 8hrs to my new location unfortunately was not an option. I do really enjoy these fish however.

[Altum Nut]

I would not be to concerned about the high ph...as liquid hard water is beneficial to growing out Discus.
You can still drip with your system by just bypassing the membrane and are you adding any nutrients back which is lost through the R/O process.
Do you siphon bottom for uneaten foods or poo?

...Ralph

[Chris.sallee]

I do siphon the bottom about 2x a week. But only try to pull out about 10-15 gallons of water when I do. I am not adding any nutrients back into the water currently. I always thought it was ideal to have the purest water possible for discus.

[Altum Nut]

Trace minerals are lost through the R/o filtering so you have to add back lost essential minerals as fish absorb it's minerals needed through skin.
Kent Marine Discus Essentials is one option and if i remember 5 ml for 30 g.

...Ralph

[Chris.sallee]

I have a planted aquarium also currently running and I do the EI method with dry ferts. Would the dry ferts trace do the same thing

[Altum Nut]

I'll let the plant guys or gals chime in on this one.

...Ralph

[DJW]

Opinions about trace minerals are all over the place, but most agree that young fish at least need some calcium in the water. When I was running an RO drip I was adding a daily dose of minerals. You can use Kent Marine RO Right, or Seachem Discus Trace, or make your own. After flooding the house because of an overflow malfunction, I gave up on the continuous drip.

[MarcG19]

Very nice setup. How did you make the little hill on the left side (from the camera)?

[LostSouth]

You need the GH booster piece of EI.

[Filip]

Hi Chris and welcome aboard .

Since this is a thread about introducing your tank setup it would be great if you can introduce us with all the data about it .
Here is a link with a questionnary that might be helpfull to do a proper tank introduction :

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?94348-Tank-Setup-Questionaire

Now for your tank .
I like that biotopish look with the hill , the tree looking branches and the path . It almost look like a picture from a real park scape .
Im a little bit concerned about the maintenance issues of the bottom that you may encounter allong the way since with so much stones and thick layer of substrate it would be a challenge to keep the water quallity sufficient for growing juvvenile discus .
Ussualy its recomendable to either grow juvvies in a barebottom tank until their adulthood or just buy adults and put them in a display tank right away .

Abou your GH values , dont worry they are not harmfull to discus, they are rather benifitial for growing juvies . If your PH drops to some extent after ageing the water you can safely change aged 100 % tap water .
As for remineralization , if you stay on this 100% RO regime you can remineralize the water by just letting 30 % of your drip to go straight tap .

Good luck with growing your juvies Chris .