lowest temperature that discus can take

Hi all

I talked to a friend of mine who suddenly lost discus overnight, he woke up and 2 were dead. he pointed the finger at the heater which stopped working, his temp was 25 degrees.
I said to him that discus don't die at those temps, as i've kept them for 2 weeks at around 25 during a trichlorofon treatment. I also forgot to turn the heater on after a water change a couple of times, they do look weird, hardly move etc. but never lost a discus because of the temp being 25C.

Can 25C kill discus? What is the minimum temperature discus can survive under for a couple of hours?

don't know what the minimum temp is, but I've had a heater die on me in the winter, and the temp dropped to 65 by the time I got home. The fish were floating sideways. I just frantically did massive WCs with hot water and, lucky me, they were up and eating after 3 hours or so.

Ted

77f/25c should not cause death. I have changed tanks full of water that I accidentally left too cold or forgot to turn the heater back on. They arent happy but they dont die. They move pretty slowly but they rebound pretty quickly after the temp comes up. I think there may be some other underlying issue that he needs to figure out.

I agree with Mikscus There's no way they should have died from a gradual drop to 77*/25*.

G

Yeah

i told him so too..wow 65 is 18C, thats very low, didnt think they would take 20 or less to be honest.

thanks for all the replies

Water holds heat quite well, so if a heater is tuned off, the temp decrease would be very gradual. Most fish can go a long way down, within reason, if the decrease is slow.

What they can't take is a large bounce down in temps.....up isn't too bad

G

just a question - at night do you guys ever turn off your heaters to save some money :o? my temperature movements are as follows:

day time with heater on - around 84-86F (depending on how how it gets outside). i have my heater set at 84F in preparation for the discus

night time without heater on (without discus yet mind you) - 74F or something like that.

do you think the discus would be ok with those movements (gradual) on a day to day basis? i don't want to cut corners, but i mean honestly even in the amazon (or in singapore or malaysia whereever they are bred on a mass scale), there will be days when it's not blazing outside... so i'm assuming there are maybe 5-10F in temperature drops during the course of the day and night even in their natural environment?

what do you guys think?

Hi ...Probably the worse thing that you could do...you want consistent temps at all times.

Tropical countries and the Amazon don't vary water temp wise other than maybe a degree or two and that would be over a 15+ hour period. As I mentioned before water holds heat.

I have 3 stealth 250's in my 125...

one is maxed out at 86F

the other 2 are set at 84...

Usually only 1 heater, the one in the middle is on, but if it gets chilly, then the other 2 bring the water up to temp.. It maintains right about at 85F

Did a massive W/C once and the temp dropped down to about 79F... took a few hours to get back up to temp, and I didnt notice any ill effects, or behavior.

Discus die @ 58F

Hi,

this is Heiko Bleher and I saw the thread regards discus temperature.

It is a fact, that temperatures below 20℃ are deadly for any discus (only very short time they can survive below it). In nature the temerature, as I have shown in my book, can go down to almost 22℃, almost never below in discus habitats (and if it does they gasp and come all to the top or try to escape the cold).

Naturally the temperature changes from daytime to nighttime, and specially in the early morning hours, there can be up to 3.5℃ less than at daytime (afternoon) temperatures. That is also why after midnight the discus, which live in deeper waters, migrate to near the surface, as it is were it is the warmest at early morning hour.

But I guess some have not read my book, every detail there...

To conclude: Do not keep normally them below 25℃ at any time.

best regards

Heiko Bleher
www.aquapress-bleher.com

I almost killed one of mine today. Did a water change with fresh RO. 68 degrees was the final temperature. One of my two discus was fine, the other was 'head standing' and thinking about floating!. It was probably a (somewhat but not extremely rapid) 10 degree change in temp as I had the heaters turned off a couple hours before I started doing the water change. Stupid me. I just wasn't paying attention. Usually I don't let it get below 72 and everyone does fine.

I got him into a bucket of warm water and he is doing okay now. Someone else posted that 58 degrees will kill them. I say 68 is a bad venture too!

Adult discus can tolerate a much lower or high temp ... If you have juv, they might not make it ... I have a full tank of 6"+ adult .. I forgot to turn the heater back on after a big WC .. and left it overnight and the most of the following day until I got home from work .. The water temp drop to ~70 ... Most of the discus were not moving and all gather at one corner .. I added some hot water and use 4 heaters to help raise the temp .. they were all fine within a couple hours ..

A water temp of 77 will not kill any fish .. adult or juv .. If you ever receive any fish thru shipping .. those water temp are usually at that temp or even lower ..

I did have batch of 1" fry .. my heater went bad and won't shut off .. When I got home .. the temp was at 95 ... I lost 90% of the frys ..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zarmi

Yeah

i told him so too..wow 65 is 18C, thats very low, didnt think they would take 20 or less to be honest.

thanks for all the replies

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We had some fish delivered in January by a well best not go to deep into it but the water temperature was 15C I thought 1 of them was dead. It took 7 weeks in the hospital tank before he was right after that. I think that must be about the limit of what they will survive

i wonder, can ADULT discus live comfortably in 78-80F or is that pushing it? im just starting my planted tank journey and as we all know most plants(neat ones atleast) prefer colder waters. im trying to look for a common ground here.

sorry for hijacking your thread :D

The thread is ancient!

I wouldn't, you'd be asking for trouble eventually. I think you have to choose plants that will tolerate discus temperatures or not bother. There are lots of plants that will survive, the trick to a nice aquascape is what you do with them. Getting the aquascape right is something that I don't have any experience of yet!!! Next time ha ha!

I keep the water temperature at 22 degree in the winter, and my discus are fine, also I am quite sure that they can withstand even lower temperature for short period of time (less than 12 hours), because in HongKong, there is always maintanice of power supply in the winter. At that time room temperature is about 15~18degree.

Will it be caused by gene problem? like turquise are usually stronger then leopard, and certainly the albino.