Originally Posted by
baagar415
hello all... My dad, ill get back to him, we're in this together ;) i was raised on a farm that i refer to as noah's arc; my mother rescued anything that needed a home. I have always had a love for animals but the one thing i didn't grow up with was fish; mostly because it was a hobby before she had kids and i believe mostly salt water tanks. Now as an adult my fish adventure started with a free guppy in a plastic cup from a carnival that my daughter won. As any good parent, especially one who has nursed too many half dead strays, i made her do some research on how to properly take care of a fish, made her spend about $100 of her own money to buy this fish a proper tank and filtration system only to have the fish die 3 days later. As most of you know once you have your foot in the door it's hard to stop. I have been in the hobby for a little over a year and 4 aquariums later i have decided to jump off of the discus cliff. The first time i saw them i immediately fell in love, they are so beautiful. Then i did a little research and realized that these guys were not going to be easy to keep.
So i started with the basics: 55gal, fluval 306 canister, some amazon swords and other "easy to keep" plants, drift wood from the local pacific north west beach, basic river rock and some "tank mates" (pleco, cory doras, mollys and tetras) were all recommend online. Not mentioning any of this to my dad he comes over for a visit and i casually say that i'm prepping the tank for discus and he looses his ****, goes and grabs his wife (my other, most amazing mom!) to bear witness that he was not involved in my madness in any way and then precedes to tell me how he used to raise and breed discus but this whole time never mentioned a word. We are now raising discus together over the phone and text because even though i thought i knew what i was doing, i still know nothing! Dad said the tetras were fin nippers and i didn't listen "because the internet told me it would be ok" and a few months later my poor cory doras only have nubs left... So my oscar ate well for a few days... Plants died so i ripped them out to. Then later i find out how amazing bare bottom tanks are and easy to clean so i took all the substrate out of all of my tanks. Also dad says the low profile is not the greatest for the discus, that they should have my high profile 65 gal; so i played musical tanks, medicated so i didn't transfer coodies and now have nothing original from the beginning when i knew it all hahaha; i'm now growing out my babies in my high profile 65 gal, fluval 406 canister, a sponge filter as well, no tank mates, an anubias nana and a few sprites survived, bare bottom with a few logs.
Now that i think i'm ready i order my babies and boy did they set their expectation bar high. Go figure there is too much fog in seattle for my babies plane to land so they get sent to a safer destination that is only about a 4 hour drive for me but will be shipped the next day. After several heated phone conversations i find some one who cares enough about these fish not dying and finds a way to get them off of the air craft carrier and holds them for me to drive to pick them up. 2 of 9 were dead on arrival but i transferred the rest into the 5 gal bucket i prepared with an air stone and heater for the long drive home.
Day one everyone is the usual shy and hiding in the back of my 20 gal quarantine tank, one is lying flat on the ground for an hour or so and then shoots up sporadically and continues to gulp for air behind the filter for 2 days. Later i notice 1 is missing 90% of his pectoral fins on both sides, 2 have squished, misshapen eyes, 2 others are pooping out worms, another just stared at the back of the tank for about 5 days and all had very sad tucked up fins. I contacted the seller whom at first was very interactive through emails about the fish until he realizes how upset i am that he sent me a group of infested quasimodos and then i get crickets from him. I won't name the seller but please learn from my mistakes and do your research on your breeder.
I started noticing some aggression among the ranks in the tight quarters of the 20 gal and decided after medicating to dump them all in the big tank.
I'm about 3 weeks in now, bought a few more at the local pet store and now have 12, 1.5"-2"; a variety of colors. Since their arrival i have played with peat, just recently upgraded my peat brewing to a large trash can out in the garage; spent less than $10 to y off of the washing machine, stuffed a bag of peat into some old pantyhose, 24 hours to dechlor, mini subpump for circulation, a heater and it's rather easy. The peat stains the water in the tank but i really don't mind, my fish are loving it! I have successfully lowered the ph and hardness, very slowly, but they have all been striving in it. I feed them some pellets and frozen salad shrimp.
I do about 30 to 50% w/c daily, add the desired amount of peat yada yada, they have been averaging 50-70ppm hardness and mid to high 6 ph.
I did lose one guy while on vacation (3 days). We noticed he was sickly and didn't really pull through from the initial meds in the quarantine tank before we left town. I did a 90% water change the night before we left and set an automatic feeder for only twice a day feedings and came home to the sick guy passed away; everyone else fine and happy to see the shrimp lady!
Since day one i calmly talked to them and hand transferred them to their tanks, my hands are always in the water at feeding times, i sit and talk to them while they eat. We're 3 weeks in and they are taking food out of my hand and softly brushing up against my fingers at feeding time. They come out to play as long as my kid hasn't recently ran screaming past them, all of their fins are erect so i think i/we are doing an ok job so far... My dad gets most of the credit. He has taken on to his new grand kids well, especially by putting up with my daily texts of paranoia!
My dad forced me to join this forum to get advice and to help wrap my mind around these little guys and he was right again. I have learned a lot from the feeds, answered many of my questions from other posts and now would like to say thank you for allowing me to stalk your blogs silently but i'm here now to say hello and help with the little knowledge that i have.