4 juvi discus 2" in a 20 gallon long tank

[cpballer]

Will they get stunted in this tank with proper water changes and proper feeding?

[a volar]

Welcome.................


bare bottom and daily water changes will be fine for a while.....

[cpballer]

Thank you. Yes BB, how long will they be good for in there? Thanks

[Dudley Eirich]

It really depends on a lot of things. How quickly you want them to grow, i.e. how much and how often you feed them, what type of food you feed, the frequency of water changes and the maintenance/cleaning schedule for the rest of the tank, i.e. how often you wipe down the walls of the tank, how often you rinse out the filter media, etc. With good food, plenty of water changes and good maintenance, I would feel comfortable with them up to about 4 inches, head to tail measurement. That said, you should be looking for a bigger tank asap so you can move them before they get that large.

[cpballer]

What if i get a pair,can i just keep the pair in the 20 gallon long tank and move the other two or sell them? I'm wanting to breed them.

[Eddie]

You can keep them in there for like a day, maybe 2 days. LOL No but really, they'll outgrow that tank FAST if they are healthy and grow out properly.

[cpballer]

So u are saying that they will get stunted and will not grow to its potential size if it was in a bigger tank.

[Eddie]

So u are saying that they will get stunted and will not grow to its potential size if it was in a bigger tank.

Depends on the care you give them but keeping them confined to a tank that small is working against you.

And 4 is a bad number

[Dudley Eirich]

As the juvies grow, the water will get dirty with fish waste more and more rapidly. Your biological filter, if sufficiently sized, will remove the toxic waste materials, but in small tanks with too many fish, the filter will foul more quickly and will need to be rinsed more often to prevent it from becoming clogged and less efficient at removing the waste. Even in the best kept tanks, there are non-toxic waste chemicals that come from the fish themselves that will accumulate and will not be removed effectively by the filters. If those waste materials build up too high, they can cause stunting and possibly reduce the immunity of the fish to disease, even though they may not necessarily be harmful at lower concentrations. This is one reason why water changes are important. The water changes dilute out the built up waste chemicals. The greater the volume of water you have for each fish, the less frequently you will need to do water changes (or the lower the volume of water that needs to be changed) in order to keep these waste chemicals under control. Some discus keepers do 100% water changes (or very close to it) to keep the accumulation of those waste chemicals as low as possible. Small tanks with either large numbers of fish or too many adult fish, tend to accumulate these waste chemicals pretty rapidly, so keeping up with water changes becomes more and more challenging. Maintaining the right number of fish for the size tank you have just makes it more likely that you will have healthy, happy fish that will grow to respectable size. They may even pair off and eventually provide you with some fry to take care of. Water quality is extremely important to successful discus-keeping and correctly sizing your tank for the number of fish you have (or want to have) helps tremendously in maintaining good water quality.

[cpballer]

Thanks guys

[aalbina]

This might not be a popular answer - but my opinion is that using a 20 gallon tank for raising young juvenile discus is a losing battle for all the reasons stated in the previous posts. It's a recipe for way too much work, which will run you out of the hobby or kill your fish if you don't keep up with maintenance. Things can go bad very quickly in a small tank.

My recommendation is to wait until you can get a larger tank. There's probably a lot of people who are going to post that they have raised many fish in a twenty gallon tank. Sure you can - but why stack the deck against success if you can increase your odds with a bigger tank.

As harsh as it might sound - if you don't have space or money for a larger tank then discus are probably not for you - they aren't the only colorful fish species. I'm not trying to be insulting - I would love to have a horse but I don't have the land space, stalls or money to provide what they need. So - I don't have a horse. I could probably keep one in my garage with a space heater in the winter until they got bigger but that's not what's best for the horse. So - I don't have a horse.

Just my opinion.

Adam