To much bacteria???

[F8VRT-HBY]

Hello everyone!
Ok i need to tap the knowledge of you o knowledgeable ones. I am thinking that the only way my scardy cat discus will get on a regular routine and get used to me getting near the tank is to set up a 20g bare bottom tank to house them in for a few months.
What i am woundering is will they get sick if i start pulling up my fake plants and drift wood out of my gravel bed in the 55g??( the breeder said it would be risky to vacuum the gravel because of the bacteria, so i figured disturbing it would be the same, or worse)

what do you think? I am going to cycle the 20g and move the dicus asap, but i think the only luck i will have catching them without major trama is to remove stuff from my 55g first before chasing em.

well do you think the 20g and moving them would be ok?
how about getting em sick in the process?? likely/unlikely???
Thank you so much people :bandana:

[Cosmo]

Way too little info to work with here :( How many Discus, how big? What are your water parameters ? Cleaning and WC routine :confused:

Very strange advise regarding the gravel too... unless your gravel bed w/ a UGF is your only means of biological filtration, you should be vacuuming the gravel regularly to keep it clean of detritus :confused: Unless the advise is because your gravel is so polluted stirring it up would be risky :confused:

"Scardy cat" behavior can be caused by bad water quality

More info please :)

Jim

[Cosmo]

just read your other thread where you do list more info... couple thoughts come to mind...

- could be that they're just not used to their new environment, do you ever just sit in front of the tank and watch them? This will help them get used to you. I talk to mine, and my wife gets a kick out of telling everyone about it :D

- water quality is usually the first suspect if the fish are acclimated to their surroundings

- have you been vacuuming the gravel? Not sure why anyone would tell you that vaccuming would be a problem with GOOD bacteria. You need to keep the gravel clean. You don't want to remove all the gravel from the tank at one time, but, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone cautioned not to remove decorations :confused: Decorations should be removed, including real driftwood, and cleaned periodically also.

Don't remember mention of your filtration... do you clean your filters regularly?

last thing, sometimes too much decoration, meaning too many hiding places, will actually promote hiding. Maybe you simply have too many things for them to hide behind ?

good luck
Jim

[F8VRT-HBY]

Hey thanks jim,
For a quick rundown,(i know you already know some of what I have but I'll list again)
-55 gallon
-1.5-2 inch gravel/sand combo
-Emporer filter w/no carbon and peat in both the media holders
-Air stones on both sides of tank,
-lots of fake plants
-I big peice of drift wood(looks like the bottom half of a mini tree, like roots)
-two more peices of driftwood as well.....hum they do have alot of hiding places.....dohhh
ohh yeah i have 5 discus the biggest is mabey 3.5 inches long.

they acclimated in a perfectly(you know what i mean, nothing is perfect but you could plung the vacuum in the gravel and no detrious would come out) filter was freshly clean, everything was real nice) clean tank.

Here is my question- what do you think about a 20 gallon bare tank to hold them in while i re-do the show tank??? I can have a 20g ready in a week or less useing the show tank water. (i hope they live this long, they come out and play when im not directly in front of the tank)

sorry for the long post, thanks again
Keith

[Carol_Roberts]

You would need to move the emperor with the discus unless you have a filter that is fully cycled you haven't mentioned. A 20 gallon is too small for the emperor.

How about if you put the discus, water and heater in the 20 gallon. Immediately clean out the 55. Add fresh, warm, aged water and the Emperor back to the clean 55. Wait about 3 or 4 hours to make sure every thing is OK (pH, temp, etc.) then put the discus back in the 55.

[F8VRT-HBY]

good idea!! Thank you that sounds like a plan to me!! then i can add stuff slowly in stead of vise-versa, i like it. Thank you very much!!
Im still open for input, i like many ideas

[Cosmo]

Keith,

You thought yours was long :D

Depends on how long you anticipate having them in the 20 while you re-do your show tank.. If its a few hours or a day or two they should be fine, but for a month or two a 20 would be small for 5 3.5 in Discus.

If they appear normal so long as you're not in front of the tank, they're probably not at risk of dying. When I first setup my 90 I had lots of fake plants (sorry Howie :) ) and large stones and mine behaved the same way. Once I removed some of the hiding places they became much less skittish.
(I now have a large rubbermaid container full of unused fake plants, stones, fake tree stumps, etc.)

One of the risks you run with sand as a substrate, especially if it's too deep, is that you may get pockets on undesirable bacteria (anearobic?.. the kind that don't need oxygen) and that can be a real problem (maybe what the breeder was worried about). Most people that use sand keep it to an inch or less - you mix yours with gravel, but it's likely that over time the sand will drop below the gravel due to size/weight considerations. If you have fake plants, why the sand??

Also, you'd be surprised at what you might find (uneaten food, feces) under the plants and the driftwood... not pleasantly surprised either I might add :D
You'll also find that the bodies of the fake plants are full of some very nasty stuff that you don't really see until they're disturbed :(

If you feel you need to keep the gravel/sand ... here's what I'd do;

PLAN A
Carol's suggestion

PLAN B
- 50% water change (maybe 2 days)
- next day, with your syphon hose ready.. remove some of the plants and possibly a few pieces of driftwood, syphon out what gets loose and vacuum the gravel thoroughly. When I had substrate, I'd normally do half the tank one day, the other half the next. The fish will stay on the side you're not working on.
- doing this should necessitate adding another 50% of fresh water
*** the water should be aged and approx. the same in ph and temp as the water you take out *** decholorinated of course :)
- clean whatever fake plants and driftwood you plan on putting back in with hot chlorinated water (no soaps!) - bathtubs are good for this cause you get a lot of pressure to rinse off the nasty stuff (don't put them on the bathtub surface though... filthy even if it looks clean)
- re-decorate (with less decorations) either just before or as the new water is added.
- you might want to do another 50% water change in between and do the other half the third day depending on how your fish are doing.
- when your finished, you'll have a cleaner tank, and fewer hiding places.
* a good deal of the sand will probably be syphoned off as well.

With fewer hiding places, they'll hopefully become more used to being exposed to you and others. It made a huge difference with my fish. Over a period of time I removed more and more decorations until I was down to 4 plants and one stone. If you keep the gravel and fake plants, make sure you clean them regularly (even the driftwood needs regularly cleaning).

Another approach

When I setup my 180, I added gravel cause it's in the family room and my wife didn't want BB. Fewer fake plants, fewer stones and the fish were much less likely to spook. But, I vaccumed every day and wasn't really happy with how much gunk the syphon hose pulled out :( The plants continued to accummulate gunk, so I removed them every so often for cleaning.

Finally, I talked the wife into a BB - gradually (over a period of a couple weeks) removed most of the gravel with a very large syphon hose (1 inch in diameter) (removing all at once can upset the bacterial balance), then, when I was ready I removed the fish - put them in a 44 gal rubbermaid w/ life support systems for a day and a half, emptied and cleaned the tank, then set it up with only the bare bottom and some driftwood... came out surprisingly nice - even the wife thinks it looks better. The fish seem to like it too... I posted some pics on the forum titled something like "BB conversion complete" - about 3 weeks or so ago, if you want to see how it worked out. I'd post a link but don't know how to search w/o losing this, and I can't type it all over again :D

Strange thing is, the fish are so much calmer than when I had the gravel and fake plants.

After years of gravel, I'm totally hooked on bare bottom tanks - they are so much easier to keep clean and you really don't lose the asthetic appeal so long as you do something. I'm totally addicted to daily water changes too though, even though if that's not for, you the more the better.

As a last thought, you might want to add some more bio filtration. The Emperor 400's are good, but I'm also a firm believer in massive over bio filtering. Another 400, or an big Aquaclear (which everyone on the forum seems to prefer) or a foam filter or two certainly couldn't hurt :)

Best of luck.. hope I didn't bore anyone too much :o

Jim

[Cosmo]

ps. If you go with Carol's plan... which would be the best way to go.. I've found that 20 gal Rubbermaid containers are better than glass tanks. With the opaque walls and the darkness, the fish feel more secure so it tends to be less stressful. Make sure you have an airstone and heater in there for them :)

Jim

[Howie_W]

Both plans will work fine.

If the fish are going to be in the temporary home for a full week I'd go with the spare 20 gallon tank. You'll want to make sure that the tank is kept immaculate at all times, and in a regular tank it's easier to see any debris, feces, uneaten food, etc. floating around. If you need to you can always place something around 3 sides of the tank to help the fish feel more secure.


Howie

[F8VRT-HBY]

WOW you people are awsome!! Thank you.
Well I have my plan of attach and im excited ( besides for the stress on the fish) I am going to put the fish in a rubbermaid container ( i like that idea, sounds very safe) And im cleaning my showtank out.
Im ganna go bare bottom with mabey a peice of drift wood for now until they get older than mabey ill get some potted plants or somthing of that nature.
Im excited, you people are rubbing off on me, before i wanted a pritty tank but the healthy fish are all I want now :D
Thanks again, im ganna go get to work :bandana: