ChaseDiscus
03-28-2019, 04:20 AM
Hey folks, I'm Nick.
Excited to be here. I've been researching about keeping discus fish for a couple of weeks now and I'm finally getting to the point where I'm making meaningful decisions related to my future tank, which I have already acquired and will be getting water in shortly.
Background on me is that I'm an experienced saltwater reef aquarium keeper. I have fairly little experience in freshwater in general. I've kept a few small community FW aquariums over the years and none at all recently. I would say I've managed and maintained beginner level freshwater tanks and gone no further with the hobby. And finally, I'm generally pretty solid with DIY. I've built tanks, stands, sumps, protein skimmers, lights, etc.
Anyways, I would like to keep discus as the primary focus of a community planted aquarium. This is the simple, and apparently not so simple, goal I've set for myself. Partly because I'm totally excited about it and particular because my SO loves discus and the fish is part of the bargain struck that allows me to keep a 120 gallon aquarium in our living room. Also the tank must be ''presentable''.
So that's that, I have a 48x24x24 (120g) aquarium that I've purchased lily pipes for and will be running on a DIY cannister filter with approx. 3x the capacity of an FX6. Essentially all the other equipment is being cannibalized from an old saltwater setup I'm no longer using. So my lights are marine LEDs... however even with the blue spectrum turned off I'll still have more usable spectrum light than 2x fluval 3.0 48" lights if necessary. We're in a new house so I haven't tested the city water yet but I have a test kit in shipment already. I have an auto top-off system, high capacity RO/DI unit, sooo many watts of heating and really anything else I can think might have any application whatsoever at this point.
The main weakness of my setup is that the only aquarium available to be a QT tank is 10 gallons, not entirely ideal for 6-8 discus fish. I had planned to do a planted cycle on the 120g and then quarantine the discus as the first additions to the tank after the plants settled in. I know this isn't ideal but further research has led me to worry that it may just not work? (What do you all think?) I could QT the discus on the 120 before adding any plants with just the substrate and hardscape in place or even with the tank completely empty but this would make the rest of the tank setup just awful. Trying to lay down substrate, hardscape and plants in an occupied 1/3rd full 120 gallon sounds very unfun!
So putting it all together. QT tank is already cycling. Everything will be ready for the 120g display in the next couple of weeks. I had intended to add hardscape, plants and then cycle. Break to let the tank and plants settle in. Add 6-8 larger adult discus from a reputable source like Kenny's and QT in the 120g display. (spending $300+ bucks on a fish species I've never kept is always lovely!) Acquire a school of corydoras and add them to the QT tank. Then acquire a group of fancy guppies and QT. (maybe 1 pleco in there somewhere) Finally, get some sort of top dweller and QT that. I like Clown Killis but research leads me to believe maybe they wont tolerate the heat. Other potential considerations being a betta, honey gourami, rams, tetra or swordtail group, open to whatever.
Anyways, thanks for reading if you made it this far. Would love some advice, just tell me if I'm a crazy idiot who is about to burn a few hundred bucks! And if you have no opinion on the matter then just.. Hello and nice to meet you, I'm happy to be here, seems like a great forum!
Excited to be here. I've been researching about keeping discus fish for a couple of weeks now and I'm finally getting to the point where I'm making meaningful decisions related to my future tank, which I have already acquired and will be getting water in shortly.
Background on me is that I'm an experienced saltwater reef aquarium keeper. I have fairly little experience in freshwater in general. I've kept a few small community FW aquariums over the years and none at all recently. I would say I've managed and maintained beginner level freshwater tanks and gone no further with the hobby. And finally, I'm generally pretty solid with DIY. I've built tanks, stands, sumps, protein skimmers, lights, etc.
Anyways, I would like to keep discus as the primary focus of a community planted aquarium. This is the simple, and apparently not so simple, goal I've set for myself. Partly because I'm totally excited about it and particular because my SO loves discus and the fish is part of the bargain struck that allows me to keep a 120 gallon aquarium in our living room. Also the tank must be ''presentable''.
So that's that, I have a 48x24x24 (120g) aquarium that I've purchased lily pipes for and will be running on a DIY cannister filter with approx. 3x the capacity of an FX6. Essentially all the other equipment is being cannibalized from an old saltwater setup I'm no longer using. So my lights are marine LEDs... however even with the blue spectrum turned off I'll still have more usable spectrum light than 2x fluval 3.0 48" lights if necessary. We're in a new house so I haven't tested the city water yet but I have a test kit in shipment already. I have an auto top-off system, high capacity RO/DI unit, sooo many watts of heating and really anything else I can think might have any application whatsoever at this point.
The main weakness of my setup is that the only aquarium available to be a QT tank is 10 gallons, not entirely ideal for 6-8 discus fish. I had planned to do a planted cycle on the 120g and then quarantine the discus as the first additions to the tank after the plants settled in. I know this isn't ideal but further research has led me to worry that it may just not work? (What do you all think?) I could QT the discus on the 120 before adding any plants with just the substrate and hardscape in place or even with the tank completely empty but this would make the rest of the tank setup just awful. Trying to lay down substrate, hardscape and plants in an occupied 1/3rd full 120 gallon sounds very unfun!
So putting it all together. QT tank is already cycling. Everything will be ready for the 120g display in the next couple of weeks. I had intended to add hardscape, plants and then cycle. Break to let the tank and plants settle in. Add 6-8 larger adult discus from a reputable source like Kenny's and QT in the 120g display. (spending $300+ bucks on a fish species I've never kept is always lovely!) Acquire a school of corydoras and add them to the QT tank. Then acquire a group of fancy guppies and QT. (maybe 1 pleco in there somewhere) Finally, get some sort of top dweller and QT that. I like Clown Killis but research leads me to believe maybe they wont tolerate the heat. Other potential considerations being a betta, honey gourami, rams, tetra or swordtail group, open to whatever.
Anyways, thanks for reading if you made it this far. Would love some advice, just tell me if I'm a crazy idiot who is about to burn a few hundred bucks! And if you have no opinion on the matter then just.. Hello and nice to meet you, I'm happy to be here, seems like a great forum!