Why dont discus keepers do automatic water changes more often?

[nwehrman]

Actually John is very friendly... Just saying - but he will tell it like he sees it. But if you want discus knowledge and how to do it well - he's a good guy to ask! He's probably had discus longer than most have been around!

[John_Nicholson]

Lots of them but if you want the truth stay here. We are not normally a bad group of guys. The one thing that tends to get irritating is the same question over and over again when the poster has already made up their mind of the answer that they want. It is kind of like going on a10 hour road trip with a kid that ask every 3 minutes "are we there yet?" I hope you stay around.

-john

[rcomeau]

dkeef -
I think I decided to keep discus to build an automatic water changer, not the other way around. An Arduino runs it. It is good fun. Good luck with your solution.

My changer is currently configured to automatically change 50% of my 50g tank every other day. I do not need to touch it while it performs these steps:
1. 20 min to siphon 50% from the tank. 14 ft vertical pipe x 0.433 psi/ft = 6 psi of siphon vacuum (no pump). This step is silent.
2. 15 sec to drain cold water from the fill pump to replace it with warm conditioned water from the bins. This avoids pumping that dead water into the tank.
3. 180 sec to refill the tank. The pump is loud but it is in the basement. The water splashing into the tank is louder because it is up where we are.
4. 4 sec to top off the tank to keep the float switch up
5. Send me a text message of how long it actually took to refill the tank. This gives me peace of mind. Old failures had the symptom of taking way too little time to refill.
6. 140 sec to drain unused water from the bins. I don't like/want the old water in there before filling with new tap water.
7. 800 sec to refill the bins until the float trips
8. 25 sec to top off the bins to keep the float switch up
9. 2 sec to pump water back up into the siphon line because a prior step drained it. This solved a problem that I had where the line was not primed for adhoc vacuuming.
10. 30 hours of doing nothing other than aging the bin water (no agitation nor heating)
11. Begin agitating the bin water
12. 48 hours after the start of the last water change, start the next step
13. 6 sec to dose 6 ml of Prime with a peristaltic pump into a bin because my tap water has chloramine in it. Agitating continues which mixes the Prime.
14. Heat the bin water until over 81 deg F then start step 1. Continue heating until step 3. The heaters are set to max heating. The arduino turns them on/off once at 84 deg F.

Debris vacuuming is manual. However, I simplified it down to pressing a button to trigger arduino to siphon for 90 seconds. It uses the same tubing that stays clipped inside of the tank for water change siphons. The tubing extends halfway down into the water when clipped to the wall and it is also clipped up under the entire length of the top. I pull it out of the clips to reach everywhere along the bare bottom of the tank then put it back in the clips when done. I do not disconnect the tubing nor remove it from the tank. That reduces debris vacuuming to a little more than the 90 seconds. (Except that the siphon is stopped/started with a diaphragm valve. Debris held the diaphram valve open once or twice. I solved that by putting a filter before it. The debris needs to be cleaned out of that filter every month or so.)

The walls still need to be wiped down and filters need to be cleaned about once a week. I try to do that before the water changes so that 50% of the disturbed water is replaced during the next automatic water change.

It ages and agitates the water in two bins. I believe that the purpose is to maximize water/air exchange by maximizing the surface area and maximizing the agitation of the water surface. Two bins have more surface area than I found with any one deep bin. A power head pumps the least agitated water from one bin to drop it onto the surface of the other bin. Ph rises to match the tank at about 7. The way I think of it, the water in the tank is agitated by the filters. Agitation of water change water in the bins conditions it to be closer to the tank water.

The bins are behind the hot water heater in the basement. That made easy access to the cold water supply and the sump pump for accidents. It is also about 14 feet below the tank which provides 6 psi of siphon vacuum. The more vertical distance the better for siphoning. The pump is strong enough to pump the water up that distance from the bins to the tank.

I cannot comment on how this would work with a planted tank although I did keep a planted tank with injected CO2 to control PH at 7 in the past. I stopped that before going bare bottom with water changes for discus. I do not think that most people work out how to maintain CO2 levels when doing high water changes regardless of doing it automatically.

I am glad that I didn't keep it simple. However, to avoid misleading anyone, my approach involved custom electronic circuit design and construction, custom programming, and custom plumbing. The ability to completely customize it was a key success factor. I did not start the project until I was sure that I was capable of building out the entire complex concept. I called it Project Rube after Rube Goldberg. I doubt that most people would succeed with it even if it were packaged as a product with a manual. Perhaps those points are answers your subject question.

The effort obviously does not need to be all or nothing. Some of the harder manual steps can be automated without automating the rest.

Good luck getting suggestions. I will start my own thread to get improvement suggestions at some point. Oddly, some suggestions seem to be biased by how much more work it will add. The changer patiently does the work! It can be configured to perform the most ideal water change regardless of difficulty. I also found it hard to get ideal suggestions in the past.

I hope my post is what you expect and honorably insisted enough to keep requesting. I am glad that you stuck around.

[Gene]

Man you guys are tough group to get to know. Are there any other forums for Discus?

None with as much experience and knowledge in the same place. This is where you want to be if you want nice discus.

[dkeef]

dkeef -
I think I decided to keep discus to build an automatic water changer, not the other way around. An Arduino runs it. It is good fun. Good luck with your solution.

My changer is currently configured to automatically change 50% of my 50g tank every other day. I do not need to touch it while it performs these steps:
1. 20 min to siphon 50% from the tank. 14 ft vertical pipe x 0.433 psi/ft = 6 psi of siphon vacuum (no pump). This step is silent.
2. 15 sec to drain cold water from the fill pump to replace it with warm conditioned water from the bins. This avoids pumping that dead water into the tank.
3. 180 sec to refill the tank. The pump is loud but it is in the basement. The water splashing into the tank is louder because it is up where we are.
4. 4 sec to top off the tank to keep the float switch up
5. Send me a text message of how long it actually took to refill the tank. This gives me peace of mind. Old failures had the symptom of taking way too little time to refill.
6. 140 sec to drain unused water from the bins. I don't like/want the old water in there before filling with new tap water.
7. 800 sec to refill the bins until the float trips
8. 25 sec to top off the bins to keep the float switch up
9. 2 sec to pump water back up into the siphon line because a prior step drained it. This solved a problem that I had where the line was not primed for adhoc vacuuming.
10. 30 hours of doing nothing other than aging the bin water (no agitation nor heating)
11. Begin agitating the bin water
12. 48 hours after the start of the last water change, start the next step
13. 6 sec to dose 6 ml of Prime with a peristaltic pump into a bin because my tap water has chloramine in it. Agitating continues which mixes the Prime.
14. Heat the bin water until over 81 deg F then start step 1. Continue heating until step 3. The heaters are set to max heating. The arduino turns them on/off once at 84 deg F.

Debris vacuuming is manual. However, I simplified it down to pressing a button to trigger arduino to siphon for 90 seconds. It uses the same tubing that stays clipped inside of the tank for water change siphons. The tubing extends halfway down into the water when clipped to the wall and it is also clipped up under the entire length of the top. I pull it out of the clips to reach everywhere along the bare bottom of the tank then put it back in the clips when done. I do not disconnect the tubing nor remove it from the tank. That reduces debris vacuuming to a little more than the 90 seconds. (Except that the siphon is stopped/started with a diaphragm valve. Debris held the diaphram valve open once or twice. I solved that by putting a filter before it. The debris needs to be cleaned out of that filter every month or so.)

The walls still need to be wiped down and filters need to be cleaned about once a week. I try to do that before the water changes so that 50% of the disturbed water is replaced during the next automatic water change.

It ages and agitates the water in two bins. I believe that the purpose is to maximize water/air exchange by maximizing the surface area and maximizing the agitation of the water surface. Two bins have more surface area than I found with any one deep bin. A power head pumps the least agitated water from one bin to drop it onto the surface of the other bin. Ph rises to match the tank at about 7. The way I think of it, the water in the tank is agitated by the filters. Agitation of water change water in the bins conditions it to be closer to the tank water.

The bins are behind the hot water heater in the basement. That made easy access to the cold water supply and the sump pump for accidents. It is also about 14 feet below the tank which provides 6 psi of siphon vacuum. The more vertical distance the better for siphoning. The pump is strong enough to pump the water up that distance from the bins to the tank.

I cannot comment on how this would work with a planted tank although I did keep a planted tank with injected CO2 to control PH at 7 in the past. I stopped that before going bare bottom with water changes for discus. I do not think that most people work out how to maintain CO2 levels when doing high water changes regardless of doing it automatically.

I am glad that I didn't keep it simple. However, to avoid misleading anyone, my approach involved custom electronic circuit design and construction, custom programming, and custom plumbing. The ability to completely customize it was a key success factor. I did not start the project until I was sure that I was capable of building out the entire complex concept. I called it Project Rube after Rube Goldberg. I doubt that most people would succeed with it even if it were packaged as a product with a manual. Perhaps those points are answers your subject question.

The effort obviously does not need to be all or nothing. Some of the harder manual steps can be automated without automating the rest.

Good luck getting suggestions. I will start my own thread to get improvement suggestions at some point. Oddly, some suggestions seem to be biased by how much more work it will add. The changer patiently does the work! It can be configured to perform the most ideal water change regardless of difficulty. I also found it hard to get ideal suggestions in the past.

I hope my post is what you expect and honorably insisted enough to keep requesting. I am glad that you stuck around.

Thank you very much. all i wanted was someone here with different ideas than traditional KISS water change routine.
i figure if the guy in video has success with auto drip then maybe its possible to us also.
your system is way more complex than what im thinking. i just read it once and im lost. better read it again. would be great for u to start your own thread with pics or videos to help like minded folks. this will help those people with large tanks requiring lot of time to do manual wcs.

[dkeef]

None with as much experience and knowledge in the same place. This is where you want to be if you want nice discus.

+1.

[dkeef]

i also think if the water change aspect of discus keeping can be more automated with less work, then discus community as a whole can grow much more.
discus are really the best looking freshwater fish out there. but what scares most newbies are the required maintenance needed.
right now we got, group like simply that says u gotta keep up with diligent water changes to keep healthy discus(which is TRUE) and other people who barely kept quality discus(most are stunted) saying discus keeping is easy and u dont have to do large water changes and u can get away with monthly 25% wcs(they also say dont listen to simply people LOL)...
it would be nice to find a solution bridging the two that can bring more aquarist into discus. granted that maybe most of us arent trying to raise Show champion discus but just nice quality ones like our sponsors sells us.

[Skip]

. granted that maybe most of us arent trying to raise Show champion discus but just nice quality ones like our sponsors sells us.

Sponsors are the ones that send the show fish..

[John_Nicholson]

The trouble is there is no universal definition of success......I have talked to lots of people who claim to have successfully raised great discus in a planted tank. They tell me at least 7 inches and perfect. I drive over to see and I see 5 inch fish that on a scale of 1 to 10 would rate a 4. I am not saying that you can't do it. I am simply saying that if you really want nice fish then this is not the best way. Once you have adults then fine do it this way and things will probably work out ok, but it is not a good way to raise out young ones.

-john

[timmy82]

I am just trying to get the word out on NADA. Like I have said in the past....It is the most fun that you can have with your clothes on.....

The one area that I would like to see increase is the number of hobbyist that show their fish. Win or lose it makes the show more fun.

-john

Mate end of next year I should be over that way hopefully I don't think I can Bring a discus 14hrs on a plane but would love to see what it is all about in the NADA and see some nice wilds too.

[Second Hand Pat]

I moved this thread to the laboratory for a reason, to allow a free exchange of ideas here without getting beat over the head that the tried and true ways are the best. So please lets allow some wiggle room here and see if this approach yields anything positive or proves that the tried and true are the best. Dave, I encourage you to please document your methods, process and progress to show the results.

[John_Nicholson]

Pat I am not trying to talk him out of it. With any experiment you have to define what success is before you start. I am trying to help define that. He know me I am all for people trying new stuff. I just hate for them to champion a different way until they have done it themselves. I am all for them doing this.

timmy82 looking forward to it. NADA is a blast. The trouble with the internet is it is real easy to get the wrong impression of someone. Face to face communications is always better. While the show and speakers are all great it is the sitting around talking fish that really makes me love NADA.

-john

[Second Hand Pat]

John, he is still in the discovery phase and I am trying to allow that to happen.

[ktltn04]

John, he is still in the discovery phase and I am trying to allow that to happen.

I think he try to run before he can walk. If he couldn't keep up with the water change for a planted discus tank then he shouldn't get a 265gallon heavy planted tank and stock up so many fish and expect them to grow at a normal rate.

[Second Hand Pat]

I think he try to run before he can walk. If he couldn't keep up with the water change for a planted discus tank then he shouldn't get a 265gallon heavy planted tank and stock up so many fish and expect them to grow at a normal rate.

Sometimes you just have to give people the rope and see what they do with it.