375g Discus Planted Tank...Am I Crazy?

[Kronos]

Hello,

I was just getting myself revved up for a weekly water change and then did some reading here and see that most advocate daily water changes.

Am I looking at daily water changes on a 375 gallon tank as well?

Thanks,

Kronos

[Tiptoptank]

Thats alot of water. I would even say weekly water changes of 30-50% would keep the fish happy. Thing change when you get into larger bodys of water. I hope to have a pond in my house that big sometime. I would probly do 50% W/C every week for fert to reload.

[RyanH]

Hi Kronos,

How many Discus are you keeping? What size are they? And how are you setting up your tank?

[Kronos]

I'm not sure how many Discuss to keep. I was looking at Rummynose Tetras, Corydoras catfish and some Bristlenose plecos as tankmates. I also want to plant the tank. I suppose a substrate of Fluorite would accomodate plant life, but not sure if that would affect the Discus.

Thanks.

[Howie_W]

Hi Kronos,

Many of us, myself included, use flourite in their Discus tanks...I've been using it for many years and it works great. :)

The amount of water you change depends upon how many fish you decide to stock; the higher the stocking density, the higher the maintenance. I perform daily water changes in all my Discus tanks, including planted ones...I've found both the fish and plants are happiest this way.

A 375 gallon is quite large...my best advice would be to get some experience with Discus in a smaller size set-up before going this large, not to mention getting as much experience in general with the fish. If you buy juveniles, it's best to grow them out in a bare tank and then move them as adults to a planted set-up.


Howie

[Condor]

Wow, sounds awesome. That is a big tank. What are the dimensions on that? Did you build it yourself?

[markl323]

Just in case you want to keep small ones. From my experience, small discus don't do well in planted tanks due to low temp. When you raise the temp to 86F, plants start to slow down in growth and algae take over. So you might not be able to keep all the plants you want, only the hardy ones. I would keep it BB with some potted plants (to reduce nitrate) until the discus are big.

In my planted tank, nitrate never gets over 10ppm no matter how much I feed my discus so I only change water once a week.