3-4" wilds - feeding?

[zchauvin]

Should they be looked at as juveniles and fed 4-6 times a day with daily wc or just 2-3 times a day with weekly/ bi weekly wc

[Ryan]

If you're looking to get full potential out of them, I would definitely keep up with multiple feedings a day (at least three) and daily water changes. The water change thing will vary based on factors like tank volume and number of discus, but basically the lower you can keep the nitrates and DOCs, the better. A 3" fish is definitely still a juvenile fish.

Personally, and others may have a different way of looking at it, I wouldn't stop the multiple daily feedings and daily water changes until the fish had reached an age/size where I considered them adult fish. Fish supposedly continue to grow (slowly) until they die, but there is definitely a point when they've achieved their adult size and growth slows almost to a halt. In my last batch of discus that was around 18 months. After that, I still fed them three meals a day and did one or two massive water changes a week.

Remember, we don't only do water changes for growth -- we do them because discus are sensitive to high nitrate and poor water quality in general, and discus tend to go south fairly quickly when the water quality does. The percentage and frequency of water changes, as I mentioned above, take a lot of factors into consideration, and so no two hobbyists' routines will be the same in most cases. My general rule is always to watch the nitrates. Below 10 would be ideal.