Thanks Bob! (Bobtools)!

[roclement]

So in my quest to re-start my Discus addiction I decided to get some local fry from Bob, a memeber here that lives literally five minutes from my house! Tank is up and running and I went to meet up with Bob.

First of Bob replied to all my e-mails promptly, send me pictures of the fish's parents and other pairs, acomodated my schedule, and even sent me water and feeding information as requested.

Bob welcomed me into his house and showed me his very well kept, clean, and beautiful discus tanks. All pairs in the tanks come from well established breeders with proven lines, ad seem fat and healthy as one can expect!

As I am looking to get my feet wet again in this great Discus hobby, I was looking for any strain that can breed true, from known parents, so I can have a comparsion guide of sorts to gauge my husbandry. The goal is to use these fish as a control group of sorts, in order to further establish some discus tanks with pairs, etc.

The fry are healthy and look good, they took to food within a couple of hours from being in my tank and seem to be doing well. I am excited!

Bob, nice to meet a local guy that has great fish and whose rearing philosophy is similar to mine. These fish will make a great control group for my new start! Did I mention I payed for 7 and got 9??? Thank you very much! I'll post pictures tomorrow.

BTW, as I was there one of the pairs was about to drop some eggs, as I got home and already had an e-mail from Bob, he informed me that they had indeed layed eggs! I got dibs on some of the fry!!! : )

Best,

Rod

[Discus-Hans]

Good job Bob and Welcome back Rod in the Discus.

Looks like you found a road trip buddy there,

Hans

[GrillMaster]

Glad to see ya back Rod!!! :)

If the fry look as good as the fry he brought up to my place a couple weekends ago for the NEDA auction, you have some nice fish to start with!! :thumbsup:

As Hans said he will make a great road trip partner!! ;) :D :D

Fall NEDA meetin.... Hint.....hint....:D

[Eddie]

Thats great news! Bob must have some crazy breeding water as his fish are either about to breed, bred, and or are raising an insane amount of fry!

All the best with them!

Eddie

[dpt8]

Bob is a very personable friendly guy with beautiful fish. Great to meet you at our meeting Bob.

[subcooler]

Welcome back to the hobby!

Got to meet Bob @ NE Discus meeting -very nice guy(Wish I lived closer!)

Best of luck with your new discus,

Rob

[pcsb23]

Good to see you back Rod. I had the pleasure of meeting Bob at the NEDA meeting too, he brought some lovely fry for the auction, just wished I could have got them on the plane home! Good luck with them.

[roclement]

Good to see you back Rod. I had the pleasure of meeting Bob at the NEDA meeting too, he brought some lovely fry for the auction, just wished I could have got them on the plane home! Good luck with them.


Paul! How are things!? Good to see you are still around! We had some good arguments back in the day!!! : )

Thanks everyone for the kind welcome! Bob does have magic water, his fish are great and the fry are plentiful!!! All of them are doing good, still a little skittish but took food, today i will do my first WC in the new era of Discus! Pumped up! And to think I hated WC before!!!

Rod

[pcsb23]

Things are good Rod, thanks.

[roclement]

After day two:

all fry are eating like pigs! they have taken frozen blood worms and artemia, flakes, and a little bit of my own reef formula! This is way too messy for them but as a treat...why not!?

All fish are active, exploring their tank, show no signs of stress, and have fat bellies, and...dark healthy poop! in my experience healthy poop = healthy fish!

Here's a tank shot with actinics on, I'll try some fish shots next.

Rod

[roclement]

bad shots of fry...it gives you an idea...

rod

[Eddie]

bad shots of fry...it gives you an idea...

rod

Nice little buggers you got there. All the best with them Rod!

Eddie

[roclement]

Another couple of days in and still doing good!

I am getting an auto-feeder so I can provide these guys with a couple of more meals a day, any ideas on brands, etc?

WC are as follows, 3 to 4gal in the morning, after feeding, and 3to 4 gal in the evening after the last feeding, tomorrow on my day off, there will be a 10gal WC in the am and a 3to 4/gal in the evening. The plan would be to do larger WC on my days off. The tank size is 40gal by the way. I have found in the past that smaller changes doen twice a day stress the fish less and gets them used to all the action in the tank. Any toughts or suggestions?

Rod

[Eddie]

Another couple of days in and still doing good!

I am getting an auto-feeder so I can provide these guys with a couple of more meals a day, any ideas on brands, etc?

WC are as follows, 3 to 4gal in the morning, after feeding, and 3to 4 gal in the evening after the last feeding, tomorrow on my day off, there will be a 10gal WC in the am and a 3to 4/gal in the evening. The plan would be to do larger WC on my days off. The tank size is 40gal by the way. I have found in the past that smaller changes doen twice a day stress the fish less and gets them used to all the action in the tank. Any toughts or suggestions?

Rod

Thats great Rod! Go for the Eheim 3581s as far as autofeeders.

HTH

Eddie

[David Rose]

Hi Rod,

I admire your dedication to your WC schedule that you've started. I think everyone is different to an extent on this topic depending on the number and size of tanks that they have, planted/decorated or bb, time available and methods used to do water changes such as special plumbing, use of aging barrels depending on water quality etc.

IMO, I think Discus will get used to whatever routine you decide on, so on-going stress shouldn't be an issue. As to frequency of water changes, I have two tanks now 75g/gravel (vaccumed 3 times/week but will be converted to sand) and 46g/sand and am adding a 120g/sand. I use a 50g/day RO unit and accumulator tank and change 30% twice a week with a 70% change on the weekend. Given the output of my RO unit and not wanting to use buffers on my tap water, this works best for me and my current budget. At some point, I will probably add a higher capacity RO unit and more sophisticated direct plumbing.

My juvies are growing out nicely and the three times a week works for me.

Best of luck in finding what works for you.

David

[Eddie]

Another couple of days in and still doing good!

I am getting an auto-feeder so I can provide these guys with a couple of more meals a day, any ideas on brands, etc?

WC are as follows, 3 to 4gal in the morning, after feeding, and 3to 4 gal in the evening after the last feeding, tomorrow on my day off, there will be a 10gal WC in the am and a 3to 4/gal in the evening. The plan would be to do larger WC on my days off. The tank size is 40gal by the way. I have found in the past that smaller changes doen twice a day stress the fish less and gets them used to all the action in the tank. Any toughts or suggestions?

Rod

Hey Rod, I really didn't want to give any advice on water changes since everybody on the forum feels I overdue it. LOL

I do agree with David about doing it all at once. The amount of water you change is entirely up to your stocking levels and feeding routine, and the particular foods you feed. Some foods are alot more messy than others. At the age of your little biscuits, I would do at a minimum, 50% every other day. Now thats just a recommendation not a must or anything like that.

All the best in cooking those little biscuits up!

Eddie

[BOBT00LS]

Hello Rod. Im glad to hear that things are going well. I also recommend the Eheim auto feeder as that is what I use. You can program it for four feedings per day while you are out. As far as the water change goes, you saw how many I had in one tank and I do a 90% water change every day. The fish do not get stressed at all and actually seem to enjoy it. As others have mentioned, everyone has a different regimine for water changes but one larger change as upposed to two small might be better.

Bob


Another couple of days in and still doing good!

I am getting an auto-feeder so I can provide these guys with a couple of more meals a day, any ideas on brands, etc?

WC are as follows, 3 to 4gal in the morning, after feeding, and 3to 4 gal in the evening after the last feeding, tomorrow on my day off, there will be a 10gal WC in the am and a 3to 4/gal in the evening. The plan would be to do larger WC on my days off. The tank size is 40gal by the way. I have found in the past that smaller changes doen twice a day stress the fish less and gets them used to all the action in the tank. Any toughts or suggestions?

Rod

[roclement]

The main reasons I am spliting the changes are as folows....

easier time wise for me to handle two smaller changes so I can be more diligent this way.

very convenient to vacum uneaten foods leaving little to decompose in the tank.

new tank, so I want to keep water from going down hill, smaller changes also mean you remove less good bacteria from the water colum (in theory) at one given time.

In my previous discus life I did 50%wc daily in all my tanks...then I got a shipment of 2 inch blue diamonds and started with these smaller, twice a day changes and they grew very well and took food agressivly since there was nothing there for them to graze on...I did this with them untill they moved on to other people but I was very happy with the results, also in a 40 gal tank, it takes me 5 minutes to change 3 to 4 gal every time so it is very easy to do so I tend not to skip any changes...works for me...

If I do 6 gal a day (minimum) it's like what? 15%? daily...that's not bad...and then the couple of larger ones on my days off...best I can hanlde for now!

Rod

[bs6749]

new tank, so I want to keep water from going down hill, smaller changes also mean you remove less good bacteria from the water colum (in theory) at one given time.


In theory that is true, however it is also true that nearly all of the beneficial bacteria will be on surfaces like the glass, decorations, on gravel/sand, in filter media, etc. Very few beneficial bacteria actually exist in the water column as compared to the surfaces of the tank.

Larger water changes are always best. Say if you wanted to do a 50% water change in a 100g tank. The way to do this that requires the least amount of water to be changed is to do a single 50g change and be done with it. If you wanted to do a 50% change equivalent on a 100g tank doing 10% water changes, you would need to do SEVEN 10% water changes to be just under what a 50g water change would do and you would be using 20 gallons of additional water.

I understand that time can be hard to come by but it would be better IMO to do one larger one versus 7 smaller ones. I also understand what you are saying about the food sitting in the tank, but you will get it down how much you need to feed your fish and there won't be much leftover when you do.

[bs6749]

If I do 6 gal a day (minimum) it's like what? 15%? daily...that's not bad...and then the couple of larger ones on my days off...best I can hanlde for now!

Rod

If these are in a 40g breeder, which is actually just under 48 gallons, then it would be a 12.5% water change IF you change all of the water at once. If you change 3 gallons now and 3 gallons later on it's closer to 12%. The percentage changed keeps dropping for smaller and smaller water changes.

[Ed13]

Couldn't resist getting some youngins, huh Rod?:D How small are they?

bs 6749, For what is worth a 40b(36" x 18" x 16") is exactly 44.9 gallons, no disrespect though I'm just like that.

[bs6749]

Couldn't resist getting some youngins, huh Rod?:D How small are they?

For what is worth a 40b(36" x 18" x 16") is exactly 44.9 gallons

The 40B's that I've measured were 17" tall. Do they make different heights?

[Ed13]

The 40B's that I've measured were 17" tall. Do they make different heights?
Actually, that happens sometimes. Dif manufacturers may have +/- (usually very small) on tanks listed the same, wether it be on the width, height or lenght.
I know MArinelands are 16". Did you measured (very good practice btw) the brace too?

I know some are reading this and thinking "who cares"? but sometimes is good to know the actual water volume. Like when I'm medicating I measure the volume using the waters height instead of using nominal volume and calculate the actual volume.

And know back to the schedule programming...Rod's new discus:D

[BOBT00LS]

Another couple of days in and still doing good!

I am getting an auto-feeder so I can provide these guys with a couple of more meals a day, any ideas on brands, etc?

WC are as follows, 3 to 4gal in the morning, after feeding, and 3to 4 gal in the evening after the last feeding, tomorrow on my day off, there will be a 10gal WC in the am and a 3to 4/gal in the evening. The plan would be to do larger WC on my days off. The tank size is 40gal by the way. I have found in the past that smaller changes doen twice a day stress the fish less and gets them used to all the action in the tank. Any toughts or suggestions?

Rod


Hello Rod. I saw the Eheim Autofeeder on DRSFOSTERANDSMITH.com today at 45% off. I think the price was $35.99. Not a bad deal. Thought you may like to know.


Bob

[roclement]

Thanks everyone for the feedback in this thread! Bob, I will look into the feeder tomorrow since I am off from work!!!

I see everyones point on the larger, single changes versus the multiple smaller ones, the only problem that persists for me is time, if I can handle a small change, twice a day it allows me to maintain them with no fail. Changing 10 gal of water at once, or so, requires a larger comitment of time and preparation, at least for me, in this time of the year (golf season).

I'll see what I can do about performing the WC once in the evening, and just a simple one gallon change after morning feeding, before I go to work, I'll start tomorrow and keep everyone noted. I will also take some pictures of the fry and start documenting growth, just for fun!!!


Rod

[bs6749]

Rod, take Bob's suggestion about that Eheim feeder, but get it through Big Al's (www.bigalsonline.com) They will match the price at Drs. Foster & Smith and then take 5% off of that price (you have to call them). They also have free shipping on orders of $60 or more for another week or so. That should save you even more money. Shouldn't be too hard to find $25 worth of goodies to add to your order to qualify for the free shipping.

[roclement]

OK so I just changed 6 gallons of water in the morning, after the second feeding of the day, I will do a second 5 gal change in the evening just for kicks since I am home, I will try to maintain this 10 gal a day as my standard from now on, I knwo I am still spliting the changes here but the fish seem to like it...they are all fat and happy with dark poop. As I said before, dark poop = healthy fish! Sorry for the bad pictures, I startled them when walked up to the tank!

Rod

[roclement]

swimming happy!

[Ed13]

That full tank shot is so awesome. They look tiny! Looking forward to update pics as they grow into monsters:D

[roclement]

UPDATE!

Got a feeder, free from a friend, and it allows for two additional feeds a day, now my guys are up to five/day at least and loving it!

WC have been uped to at least 30% a day, sometimes more if my day allows for it.

I have also added a new air pump with simple airstones to move more water..the side effect is that the fish love them and are more active then ever! They seem very happy chasing bubbles in the water collum!!! Funny!

The fish are starting to show color, red on the fins, 3 are growing faster then the others and have become dominant...normal...two of them may be culls, also expected since I bought them so small, but since BOB was kind enough to add two extra to my purchase, this is no problem! I will not cull anybody untill they grow more, they will function as agression dispersers...that and they may turn out nice after all! Their parents are gorgeous!

Pictures later!

Rod