Balancing water change regimens needed for plants and Discus

[Dave B]

Hello,

I'm new to Discus but not to fishkeeping. I've had experience with low-tech planted tanks, but I was never any good at it, mostly because I'm sure I used too much light and just ended up with algae killing off my plants. I'd get growth of new stuff but the nice big sword leaves sucked. I actually have all the necessary equipment for a high-tech setup but I gave up before I got it set up successfully. Plus I got Uarus so plants were pointless.

Anyway, obviously I know I've got to get the plant thing down if my goal of a feature tank including Discus and plants is to be realized. Going through the plans in my head, though, I keep getting stuck on one thing:

How do you balance the plant water change needs (typically 50% WC weekly with EI dosing) with the much more demanding needs of the Discus (who in many cases get daily giant WCs)?

I was planning on doing a nice automatic RO/drip system that kept the water nice and fresh, because the primary goal is the health of the fish and honestly, I'm not up for doing daily changes on a 240+, at least not in that room where any spillage could be problematic. But I'm not sure how to make that work with plants.

I was thinking I'd go Hi-Tech on this stuff because I like a lot of light. I have never liked how my fish look in low-wattage 6700k lighting. But I think this makes me a bit difficult, because I don't actually want a giant overgrown forest and something more Heiko's Lesson-ish (surprise surprise, it inspires another person) should be low-tech. (That said, how the heck is that low-tech but using 450w of MH bulbs?)

Any thoughts on how this could all balance out to also satisfy the plants?

[waters10]

Hello,

I'm new to Discus but not to fishkeeping. I've had experience with low-tech planted tanks, but I was never any good at it, mostly because I'm sure I used too much light and just ended up with algae killing off my plants. I'd get growth of new stuff but the nice big sword leaves sucked. I actually have all the necessary equipment for a high-tech setup but I gave up before I got it set up successfully. Plus I got Uarus so plants were pointless.

Anyway, obviously I know I've got to get the plant thing down if my goal of a feature tank including Discus and plants is to be realized. Going through the plans in my head, though, I keep getting stuck on one thing:

How do you balance the plant water change needs (typically 50% WC weekly with EI dosing) with the much more demanding needs of the Discus (who in many cases get daily giant WCs)?

I was planning on doing a nice automatic RO/drip system that kept the water nice and fresh, because the primary goal is the health of the fish and honestly, I'm not up for doing daily changes on a 240+, at least not in that room where any spillage could be problematic. But I'm not sure how to make that work with plants.

I was thinking I'd go Hi-Tech on this stuff because I like a lot of light. I have never liked how my fish look in low-wattage 6700k lighting. But I think this makes me a bit difficult, because I don't actually want a giant overgrown forest and something more Heiko's Lesson-ish (surprise surprise, it inspires another person) should be low-tech. (That said, how the heck is that low-tech but using 450w of MH bulbs?)

Any thoughts on how this could all balance out to also satisfy the plants?
Assuming you're talking adults, you can do EI with 50% water change weekly. There are people that do that here and at planted forums around.

Another option, is to look into PPS-PRO fertilization. It's much leaner than EI. The principle is that you're dosing what the plants use per day. Per the creator of PPS, you can change water whenever you want, and whatever volume you want. I've just started doing that and I was having mild success. Had good growth, but also algae. But then again, I had algae before starting the method. I'm planning to rescape my tank in the future, add CO2 and give PPS a fair shot.

[Dave B]

Assuming you're talking adults, you can do EI with 50% water change weekly. There are people that do that here and at planted forums around.

Interesting. I am planning to just start with adults, but I think that would make me nervous. When I was attempting a planted tank I had a really hard time keeping nitrates down due to the depth of the substrate. I wonder how that PPS Pro could possibly be integrated into a slower drip system. Maybe if it did 25g per day or something on a 240 I could get the best of both worlds... Anyone manage to pull off something like that?

Though I think I'd probably still need to do CO2 injection just because of my lighting preferences. I guess I can do some experimenting. It'll be a while before I can swing the fish anyway since I'm so house poor for a few paychecks...

[waters10]

Interesting. I am planning to just start with adults, but I think that would make me nervous. When I was attempting a planted tank I had a really hard time keeping nitrates down due to the depth of the substrate. I wonder how that PPS Pro could possibly be integrated into a slower drip system. Maybe if it did 25g per day or something on a 240 I could get the best of both worlds... Anyone manage to pull off something like that?

Though I think I'd probably still need to do CO2 injection just because of my lighting preferences. I guess I can do some experimenting. It'll be a while before I can swing the fish anyway since I'm so house poor for a few paychecks...
I don't know of any fertilization method that works with drip system. I'm sure they can be tweaked to work for that, but I'm not aware. Then again, I didn't search for that info specifically.

Regarding PPS, I'm barely a user, let alone an expert. I was just letting you know that it exists and what's based on. I decided to try, because as a discus owner first, I feel like water changing is a part of the maintenance and that method seems to go along with that well. If you want to read more about it, there's a sub forum dedicated to it at aquatic plant central. Maybe you could post the question about drip system there.

[2wheelsx2]

I'm a total n00b to discus, but I have 2 high tech planted tanks and one is a 125 gallon. My third tank is Excel dosed low tech.

If you do some research, you'll see that many many people do continuous water change and automatic change systems with EI and other forms of dosing. You just have to target for a higher level of dosing to compensate for the continuous water changing and tweaking.

IMO, though, a high tech, large, discus tank is combining the most labour intensive work of freshwater keeping. If you mess up with the CO2 or dosing, you're going to run into BGA, BBA, thread algae, etc. Essentially an algae nightmare. The worst part is if you do succeed, you'll end up with hours and hours of pruning and trimming to keep everything neat and tidy each week. I can tell you with my 144 w NO t5 lights in my 125 gallon, I prune in excess of 1 lb of plants per week on average. You can do the math in a tank twice that size with twice the light. And I'm only growing java fern, vals, Anubias and swordplants.

Since you mentioned you hadn't succeeded yet, I would not start this route and give yourself and impossible goal. I would get the technique down with a smaller planted high tech tank and then once you have it all down, and you still like it, take it up the scale and once you got that down, bring the discus into the mix.

Just my 2c, so take it any way you like.

For reference this is my planted 125 with a Chocolate cichlid, a JD and 2 EBJD's, plus a large number of cories and exotic plecos, so the bioload is high like a discus tank would be. I change 50 - 75% of the water once or twice a week depending if I'm travelling for work or not and dose EI and inject CO2 at 2 points.

P.S. probably a lousy way to introduce myself in my first post as a lurker who is considering discus.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_92IVadGjH2w/S9I-Pg-QPXI/AAAAAAAABvY/K0aq8538kZQ/s800/DSC_1764.JPG

[Bacano]

Nice ferns two wheels mustve took months....

[kush]

Plants don't mind frequent water changes. They like it, too.

When I had a high-tech planted tank I changed 1/3 of my water once a week. Now I have a high-tech planted tank with discus and I change between 1/3 and a 1/2 of my water three times a week.

I micro-dose an iron supplement daily - between four daily fish feedings and all that fresh water, that's all that's needed.

[Foxfire]

Plants don't mind frequent water changes. They like it, too.

When I had a high-tech planted tank I changed 1/3 of my water once a week. Now I have a high-tech planted tank with discus and I change between 1/3 and a 1/2 of my water three times a week.

I micro-dose an iron supplement daily - between four daily fish feedings and all that fresh water, that's all that's needed.

Questions - do you ever add salt (NaCl) for the discus at times? Does doing this hurt the plants?

Also, don't plants need K (potassium) added?

Do you measure the Fe levels?

I have a low tec planted tank with ten discus

[kush]

I think the bottle I'm using now includes potassium and manganese - but I'm too lazy to go down the basement and check. At any rate, with frequent water changes, trace minerals are being replenished, and fish food also includes minerals. I strongly believe that more problems result from over-fertilizing than under.

I very rarely test for Fe, maybe three or four times a year. Since I dose daily, I know that there's at least some iron in there and you can tell pretty easily after a while just looking at the leaves on your stem plants if you've been dosing enough.

If I need to use salt, I do it in a bare-bottom tank. Java ferns and anubias can tolerate salt, and most other plants can tolerate it in small amounts for short periods of time, but tetras and pl*cos do not like it at all. Also, when I do use salt, I use it at high temperatures, like 88F-90F, and that creates an unholy mess in a planted tank (yes, I've done it).

[Foxfire]

I think the bottle I'm using now includes potassium and manganese - but I'm too lazy to go down the basement and check. At any rate, with frequent water changes, trace minerals are being replenished, and fish food also includes minerals. I strongly believe that more problems result from over-fertilizing than under.

I very rarely test for Fe, maybe three or four times a year. Since I dose daily, I know that there's at least some iron in there and you can tell pretty easily after a while just looking at the leaves on your stem plants if you've been dosing enough.

If I need to use salt, I do it in a bare-bottom tank. Java ferns and anubias can tolerate salt, and most other plants can tolerate it in small amounts for short periods of time, but tetras and pl*cos do not like it at all. Also, when I do use salt, I use it at high temperatures, like 88F-90F, and that creates an unholy mess in a planted tank (yes, I've done it).

Thanks, that does clear up some points - I understand the salt/heat tretment; good heads up

[calihawker]

Assuming you're talking adults, you can do EI with 50% water change weekly. There are people that do that here and at planted forums around.

Another option, is to look into PPS-PRO fertilization. It's much leaner than EI. The principle is that you're dosing what the plants use per day. Per the creator of PPS, you can change water whenever you want, and whatever volume you want. I've just started doing that and I was having mild success. Had good growth, but also algae. But then again, I had algae before starting the method. I'm planning to rescape my tank in the future, add CO2 and give PPS a fair shot.


Totally agree. I did the ei method with c02 injection on a 300 gallon. I've since gone low tech since the plants just took over and I was spending so much time pruning. It's the difference between having a planted tank with discus or a discus tank with some plants.:)