Greetings from a hardcore reef aquarist, with a question on discus growout water

Hello discus world, thanks in advance to anyone reading this. While we may all be different in many ways, anyone reading this shares a passion for this hobby. My name is John Coppolino and I’ve been an avid hobbyist since I was a child growing up on a lake in Northern New Jersey. I just turned 43, and with the exception of two years studying and living in Ecuador in and just after college in the late 90s (Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon), I’ve had my homes filled with aquariums. Since moving back from Ecuador though almost twenty years ago, I’ve only kept saltwater aquariums in my homes. These have grown as our homes have grown, capped off with the 1300 gallon display I put in our “forever home” we built seven years ago. I take pride in my fishkeeping and still have the first clownfish I bought after getting married in 2001. For those interested, check out this thread which shows my saltwater systems through the years…
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2668064

While I was studying Ecuador I met a beautiful and amazingly intelligent woman just over twenty two years ago. We’ve now been married over nineteen years and have a fifteen year old son (who is die hard into the aquarium hobby) and a twelve year old daughter (who has picked up my other lifetime love, ice hockey). We visit Ecuador about every year or so and while I kept many different freshwater systems as a child, what I really miss is having an Amazonian planted tank. I’m therefore switching over a 350 gallon display I have from saltwater to freshwater, with the intention of keeping a planted discus tank with Altum angels, rams, tetras, Corydoras, some other fish, and some hardy plants.

Before getting the 350 going I’d like to get my freshwater feet wet again, while at the same time growing out a number of different discus in my fish room in 20 to 40 gallons aquariums. I’ll keep my favorites for the 350 down the line in a few months. My question is in regards to discus grow out water. My large reef system is 1950 gallons, with a 1300 gallon display. My RO/DI system produces up to 150 gallons a day of 0 TDS water, and many times that goes out as waste water, right down the drain. I plan to plumb the waste water so that it drains into the discus grow out tanks, after going through a tub where it gets aerated. The water will then overflow out of the tanks and down the drain, allowing me to keep excellent water quality at no extra water cost. My tap water is 4-5 KH and 6-7 GH. My waste water is obviously higher, with a KH of between 6 and 8 and a GH of between 10 and 12, and a pH of ~7.7 after aeration. I know that for grow out in keeping discus water changes and keeping organics down is more important than providing soft water, but is my waste water too hard for this purpose? I’d like your thoughts, and cheers to all fellow fish nuts! : )

Copps

Not sure what to say here. I’m kind of amazed. You're a reef keeper and your plan to keep and grow out discus is to use the waste water from your RO system. Have you looked into keeping discus? Is your gh and kh correct for discus keeping? Your ph will work. I do believe you may be a little off track and may want to read a few threads on here.

Hi John and Welcome to Simply Discus! You’re in the right place and we are happy to have you.
I haven’t used waste water before, but the parameters look fine to me. The common consensus here at SD is clean, consistent water rather than shooting for specific parameters. Unless you’re looking to breed and/or keep wilds that is.

I should add, that any system you end up using, make sure it makes water changes easy and can be done daily for grow outs. You learn to love the maintenance!

As you know, keeping an SPS reef - one misstep and there goes years of growth and thousands of dollars.
Keeping discus is much easier and much cheaper. I use AI lighting and a santamonica algae scrubber and GHL controller from my reefing days but thats as high tech as you need.
You also have to do frequent large water changes -
dont need rodi for maintenance but essential with breeding

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrendanJ23

Hi John and Welcome to Simply Discus! You’re in the right place and we are happy to have you.
I haven’t used waste water before, but the parameters look fine to me. The common consensus here at SD is clean, consistent water rather than shooting for specific parameters. Unless you’re looking to breed and/or keep wilds that is.

I should add, that any system you end up using, make sure it makes water changes easy and can be done daily for grow outs. You learn to love the maintenance!

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Thanks for the warm welcome Brendan! The term "waste water" sounds worse than it is. This water goes through the first three stages of my seven stage RO/DI unit (a sediment prefilter and two different types of carbon blocks). After that this is water turned away from the RO membrane which just makes it harder. I run hundreds of gallons of it right down the drain with no purpose as I need 0 TDS water for my reef (I get about 200 TDS out of the tap, brought down to about 5 by the RO, then to 0 after a double DI). Basically I have free water that is 6 to 8 KH or slightly softer water at 4 to 5 KH I can buy (from the tap). And trust me... I have over 2500 gallons of aquarium in the house... my days of trucking buckets are long gone. I do 200 gallon water changes on my reef with just the opening and closing of a few ball valves... my plan is to plumb a few grow out 40 gallons to the waste water so that they flow through and it's automatic, minus some siphoning of detritus here and there. I know in growing out discus I'll be churning through water but wasn't sure how hard is too hard when it comes to growing out discus.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by captainandy

As you know, keeping an SPS reef - one misstep and there goes years of growth and thousands of dollars.
Keeping discus is much easier and much cheaper. I use AI lighting and a santamonica algae scrubber and GHL controller from my reefing days but thats as high tech as you need.
You also have to do frequent large water changes -
dont need rodi for maintenance but essential with breeding

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Thanks for the response. I realize this is much simpler than my reefs, but in the planning stages I'm always thinking about long term economics in terms of monthly bills, as these come every month and my wife sees them! This is the bane of many reefkeeper's existance, and forget about when they send bills that compare you to your neighbors. My 1300 gallon alone uses about 3500 watts of light alone (2400 in halides), so you can imagine my electricity bill. So, there's no need to up the water bill at this point if I don't have to.

On my large reef I run redundant 3 HP heat pumps to heat or cool the water. With reef tanks it's mainly about cooling water... with discus keepers as you guys know it's about heating, but it's equally expensive. There have been many advancements in our hobby that lessen the electricity draw, like DC motor pumps (each of my three return pumps on my reef draw only 130 watts, as opposed to over 400 when they were AC pumps). Yet, heating and cooling water still costs a lot. I keep my house at 71 degrees. All of my display aquariums are in wall as you can see from my thread above, and access and maintenance are done on epoxy covered floors behind the scenes. Fortunately, the 350 gallon I'm switching to my display discus tank is in a separate room we use for storage and I'm thinking of insulating the wall off there and running it a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house to lessen the burden of heating ~400 gallons of water with electric heaters continuously to over 80 degrees. We have gas heat which runs very little due to the 4500 watts of metal halide bulbs I have on my different reefs which create a lot of heat in the house. Any way I can get that heat going into my gas bill, which my wife doesn't eye every month, is a bonus. If I find a way to warm the room with the 350, I could also move the 40 breeder growouts to that room. Right now where I am setting them up they are in the quarantine section of my reef tank fish room which is kept cool on it's own mini-split AC. I'll have to use quite a bit of heating wattage to keep those warm for the discus growout, but I'm more willing to do this on the 40 breeders for now than the 350 of course.

Thanks again guys,

Copps

Sorry John, I wasn’t trying to tell you how to suck eggs lol. I’m familiar with RO as I have a 5 stage unit myself, I don’t use it for fish though. Your plan sounds pretty good to me, can’t wait to see it unfold!