It's been awhile. Long Post.

It's been awhile. Was here pre-covid. Still training in my new job and loving my wild discus. Made my first posts, but work got busier and busier and I failed to keep the forum updated. So here it goes.

After my wild 75 gallon tank, I pursued the challenge of a carpeted plant, domestic discus tank. This time with 10 adult discus (some from Chicago Discus - definitely recommend them! Others from Kai from the facebook group, very nice fish). I ended up with a 125 gallon tank that I traded for. After losing a couple, not sure why. Just woke up and one day one was dead, full of color. A few months later another. But for over a year it became a very pretty, and healthy discus tank. I had a huge spotted leopard from Chicago discus. He probably grew to about 7-8 inches. I called him Big Bruce. My favorite discus I have ever owned. Loved going into my garage and trimming the carpet and feeding the discus and doing water changes just watching them. I even had a couple pairs from Kai's fish that would lay eggs, but never separated them out, as my new job became busier and busier through the years.

Sadly, eventually my 125 gallon and 75 gallon tank happiness would come to an abrupt end. Texas had freezing weather, the grid couldn't handle it, especially in my location where we were promised rolling black outs every 12 hours. That never happened. I was without power for 3-4 days before we finally had rolling backups. Not having a generator at the time was a huge mistake. Never did I think, freezing weather would have such an effect on my fish hobby. By the time I received a generator the second day, the water was far too cold and my discus in my garage tank had all died, even Big Bruce. The only fish that lived, were my 2 king tiger plecos from Chicago Discus and a single Siamese flying fox and a couple Colombian zebra plecos. I was devastated. Not only did they die, but inside the home I also lost some wild discus. And I've struggled getting the current stock to as healthy before the freeze as I did lose another a month later. Currently have 3 left and added two altums, but it was heart breaking and tons of tears.

Lesson learned. I have a generator now, and a backup. And gas cans, lots of gas cans.

For awhile, I was "out of the hobby" besides just taking care of my tanks with minimal maintenance, weekly water changes, canisters cleaned monthly, and routine feeding. But it was just heart breaking watching my tanks and knowing what I had and now what I have. I really blamed myself, my lack of preparedness, and my inability to save them.

I've started to get through my mistakes and disappointments and have again started to rebuild my fish tanking dreams. My 75 gallon inside the tank has changed after my fish had died. Like I said, I currently have 3 of my wilds left and a couple Altums. I've added some hoplo catfish (should probably share their story too). Mainly I've just been waiting on this tank, upping the water changes, changing out the filtration, and just trying to get my discus some girth again.

In the meantime, my focus had begun to get my 125 gallon tank back in action. In my garage, I also had a rainbow fish community tank that I loved to watch and feed. They passed and that was also heartbreaking. In fact, that tank I thought everything had died in and had literally been neglected (no filtration, no food, no water changes for about 8 months), but when I went to clean out the tank I found my 3 yo-yo loaches still in there thriving. Fat as can be. I was shocked. Still am, but that made me so freaking happy and probably ignited my spark again to get back into the hobby.

I decided not to go back with a discus tank in the 125 gallon because of costs while saving money for other investment opportunities. Instead, I went back to rainbows upping the 29 gallon tank I had in the garage to the 125 gallon tank. Slowly over the last several months, I've added rainbows of different breeds and I've absolutely fallen in love with the tank. I've always been a fan of rainbow fish colors, shapes, and behaviors and really put them second place to my wild discus. Sorry plecos, you've been moved to third! I'll be sure to share a photo of the carpeted 125 gallon tank later!

Now, comes to the new plan. My 75 gallon wild discus tank is going away. In fact, it's going to become a custom made sump as I've upgraded to a 220 gallon tank. I'm currently waiting on my aquadecor background and my buddy to complete the custom stand he is building me. But the wilds are not going away. The plan is this tank will continue to be wild, just more. I'm thinking 8-10 discus, but my LFS has been getting more and more wild fish lately and I'd like to get wild rams, tetras, plecos, etc. We will see.

Anyways, I can't wait and promise to share the progress here. If you read all this, thanks. I'm glad your here. Thanks for stopping by!

Phil

Edit to add: Almost forgot to mention this, but 8 months ago is when my daughter was born! Now, my son has a little sister! Very cool, and she loves watching fish were her daddy!

Hi Phil, a long story with lots of up and downs. I heard about the issues with Texas having some a difficult time with cold weather affecting their power grid. So sorry you were so affected. However glad you didn't give up and pushing forward with new fish and a huge show tank. A suggestion on the sump. As your buddy builds the sump two suggestions. Allow a way to side load the 75 into the cabinet and allow enough room between the top of the 75 to the top of the stand to service the 75 sump. You will want enough room to be able to get your arms in the sump clean, move and position heaters etc. Speak from experience :D
Pat

Living in San Antonio with all my tanks I remember the big freeze and how worried I was. Fortunately for us we live on the main transmission line for the local power plant. My discus tanks got to the mid 70"s but never any colder. Our blackouts after the first 6 hour one were for 2 -3 hours at the most. My room actually stayed warm from the fish room.
Good luck with your new endeavors.

Thanks, Pat. Definitely a roller coaster ride within the fish hobby as well as out of it with covid, work promotions, new baby, and so on (trust me there is more, but I'll keep it short and fish related haha).

For the sump, I'm designing it with the baffles and the plumbing. Definitely good advice to have more room above for maintenance. Though this is my first sump (also only using the 75 gallon tank because my wife definitely doesn't want me to buy another tank), I get annoyed lifting canister filters out of the stand. Too heavy and the ergonomics to get it out isn't friendly for someone who is 6'4" like myself. Cleaning it monthly is already a chore, though I should probably do it more often honestly. For the stand, we are using magnets for the outer perimeter boards so they can be slid off and set aside very easily. We are able to slide the 75 gallon directly in from the left side. Also, we won't need any center bracing because we are going with 2x8's across. So that will allow for easier maintenance as well. Since the 75 gallon is only 4' long and the 220 is 6', we have another 2' in the stand for some small shelving to store fish food, prime, salt, etc that can be opened from the other side or front. I'll also have a small circle hole to rest my C02 tank in. So that will help hide everything in the sump and stand. It's definitely going to be a big project for me, but I'm looking forward to it!

Thanks.

Famstberg, that's great to hear! Very lucky to be right there where yall had power. My sister-in-law's family that lived in the neighborhood across the main street from my neighborhood and they had power the entire time! No rolling blackouts. If only it were as easy as bringing my tanks over there... I had just did fresh water changes and everything before the freeze and brought the temperatures up to 88F to give me some wiggle room. Unfortunately, it didn't work out well enough. But it's all good and I'm looking forward now.

Phil