My First Post. Couple of Questions

[t_evan50]

Hello everyone. I've been reading this forum for over a month waiting for my tank to cycle and now that it has And I've purchaced my first discus I just have a couple questions....I have 6 discus all 3-4" in size I purchaced from Al @ Rocky Mountain Discus. I feed them BW 3 times a day since thats what he fed and I'm trying to make them feel more at home. My question is...How much should I feed them each time? I've been thawing and feeding one cube of BW each time. Is this too much, too little? I dont want to over-feed. I have other foods to feed for variety once they warm up to me a little more. My other question is on water perameters.

75gal
PH 7.6
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 8-10
KH 2
GH 4

I'm doing about 35% twice a week. I just wanted to see what you guys and gals thought about them. I know my ph is high but if I try to mix in RO to lower my KH goes to 1 or less. Any ideas I'll take em.

[hedut]

Hello everyone. I've been reading this forum for over a month waiting for my tank to cycle and now that it has And I've purchaced my first discus I just have a couple questions....I have 6 discus all 3-4" in size I purchaced from Al @ Rocky Mountain Discus. I feed them BW 3 times a day since thats what he fed and I'm trying to make them feel more at home. My question is...How much should I feed them each time? I've been thawing and feeding one cube of BW each time. Is this too much, too little? I dont want to over-feed. I have other foods to feed for variety once they warm up to me a little more. My other question is on water perameters.

75gal
PH 7.6
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 8-10
KH 2
GH 4

I'm doing about 35% twice a week. I just wanted to see what you guys and gals thought about them. I know my ph is high but if I try to mix in RO to lower my KH goes to 1 or less. Any ideas I'll take em.



Hi welcome to SD. I feed my discus at least five time a day Hikari FBW and one time Tetra, the key is make sure what you give didn't leave over. I change 80% to 50% daily and add Prime straight from the tap.


hendri

[alan j t]

your ph looks fine
if i were you i would do a w/c daily if possible
i would try 2 cubes and see if it goes quickly so it doesnt sit on the bottom of the aquarium
if it doesn't get eaten right away then one's enough


feed them the new food in the morning when they are most hungriest

[Chad Hughes]

Hello everyone. I've been reading this forum for over a month waiting for my tank to cycle and now that it has And I've purchaced my first discus I just have a couple questions....I have 6 discus all 3-4" in size I purchaced from Al @ Rocky Mountain Discus. I feed them BW 3 times a day since thats what he fed and I'm trying to make them feel more at home. My question is...How much should I feed them each time? I've been thawing and feeding one cube of BW each time. Is this too much, too little? I dont want to over-feed. I have other foods to feed for variety once they warm up to me a little more. My other question is on water perameters.

75gal
PH 7.6
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 8-10
KH 2
GH 4

I'm doing about 35% twice a week. I just wanted to see what you guys and gals thought about them. I know my ph is high but if I try to mix in RO to lower my KH goes to 1 or less. Any ideas I'll take em.

Welcome to SD!

I use the eye as a guide to how much food to feed. Look at the size of the eye and estimate about that much food for each fish. You cannot overfeed this way.

Your water parameters look very good. Don't pay too much attention to Ph. Your GH and KH look great for gorwing out discus of this size. The lower Ph and TDs comes in to play when trying to breed your discus.

IMO your water change routine sounds fine, but others like to do more. I guess you really can't go wrong with more water changes than fewer. Most discus keepers change 50-100% of their water daily. Some siphon out debris daily and just replace the water that they removed. Some just do like you do. It's a judgement call. Keep an eye on the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings. As long as the first two are reading zero and the nitrate is less than 10, you're golden.

So far you are doing well!

Best wishes!

[t_evan50]

thanks for the tips. They've been cleaning off one cube in about a couple of minutes. I'll try two today and see how it goes.

[mmorris]

I feed juvies as much as they want, as often as I can feed them. You should aim for 5-6 times a day or more. Anything uneaten after a half hour can be siphoned out. It's important to vary their diet. I highly recommend beefheart as well as a quality flake, pellet, bw...You could up your wc's a bit but you are far from overstocked. Do you have substrate? Is this a planted tank? I have to ask because your stocking ratio is so low.

[MSD]

Al is usually big on Omega flakes using the first flake and then the color flakes. Then as mentioned get them on a good beef heart mis and use Hikari FBW's as a third and end of day food. Too many worms and they won't eat anything else.

[t_evan50]

My tank is a 75gal show tank. I have gravel substrate and many silk plants(hope to one day switch to real but wanted to keep it simple for the first time with discus) and some drift wood. I also have 2 bristlenose with them. I vacuum the gravel at every water change and it doesn't seem to be too dirty. I'm just not a bare bottom kind of guy I like the show tanks so I guess I'm gunna have to work a little harder. I did get some Omega flakes from Al when I bought the fish so I will be incorporating them into the diet later on this week. I also have brine shrimp to feed them. Thanks for all the feeding suggestions, I just wanna make sure I don't overfeed.

btw: there are some pictures of a few of the fish in the pics section.

[t_evan50]

......and my stock is low because I was planning on adding some rummynose and maybe a couple Rams, but now that I have discus I may just be making another trip to RMD and go all discus. :D

[mmorris]

Since you have substrate and a planted (sort of!) tank I don't think you are understocked.

[t_evan50]

Some pics of my tank and discus (first time hope it works).


http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt17/t_evan50/mini-CIMG0455.jpg

http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt17/t_evan50/mini-CIMG0462.jpg

http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt17/t_evan50/mini-CIMG0463.jpg

http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt17/t_evan50/mini-CIMG0466.jpg

[Keasbeynights]

I really like you tank set up, even if the plants are fake, haha!

This may seem like over kill but I feed my fish Hikari discus granules, Tetra Color granules, Ocean Nutrition discus flakes, a couple of AngelPlus flakes (usually hi-pro growth and triple growth combo) (thanks to Eddie), frozen BW, BH, Brine shrimp, Mysis shrimp, Ocean nutrition frozen discus formula and Hikari frozen Discus formula. I feed this all rotated three to four times daily, with two to three feedings of flake/granules and one feeding of frozen food.