The Forum's Position on Discus in Planted Tanks....

[Second Hand Pat]

[musicmarn1]

Beautiful !!! Iused to feel that way Mike but Healthy Fish are NEVER boring and a vibrant happy, discus that is well on its way to reaching full potential is so not boring. once you know what that looks like you can put adults in a planted tank and then you know if anything goes wrong

[israelillo81]

After almost a year of having my tank planted, now I'm going to test the other side of the coin. I have decided to go hardscape. I will install a background and use fine sand.
so far the colors of the discus with the Bare bottom and white background of wall makes them look amazing compare to the dark hues from the planted environment.

[israelillo81]

Background is done . fine sand will come on the next days.

I will soon open a thread to share you guys my experience in both scenarios.

[Demosthenes]

I have very limited experience with discus, but based on lots of reading and close to 7 years of experience with planted tanks, I have come to some basic conclusions.

The Golden Rule in this discussion that I think every can agree on is that no one should ever try this unless they are already experienced with plants. I think it took me about a year of trial and error before I got to a place where I could successfully keep my plants from dying or the whole tank being consumed by algae, and that was in a tank that was catered specifically to plants needs. It took me another several years of playing around with my planted tank before I got it to a place where I was proud of it. Plants are HARD.

This is a tank shot from 2008, about a year after setting up the tank:


And here's how it looked in 2012 after 4 years of trial and error:




The point I'm trying to make is that trial and error is a necessity. You should not even think about discus until you are past the trial and error phase.

AFTER you have your planted tank well-established and under control, I think the best way to get discus into it is to begin with your discus in a separate BB tank, and to slowly bring your discus tank and your planted tank to the same parameters and maintenance schedule. You need to find a compromise that won't upset your fish and won't kill your plants, and it's much safer to do this while they are still separate so if problems arise you aren't faced with a Sofie's Choice. If you have a happy planted tank at 76 degrees and 1 monthly water change, slowly increase the temp and the maintenance schedule. At the same time, start with your discus in a BB tank at 86 degrees, feeding them to their hearts content, with WC every day. If your fish are happily growing, try to gradually lower the temp, decrease the feeding schedule, and spread out your water changes. When you get to a point where your plants are happy at the same parameters as your discus are happy, you should be able to transfer them over without any drama.

Several places in this thread I've seen requests for a Know All Do All Plant Guide of sorts - step by step instructions for setting up a PT. The problem with that is there are many different ways of doing them successfully. My setup is low tech for the sake of budget and simplicity, but other people in this thread have dumped thousands on a high tech setup and had amazing results. So, unlike BB, you can't really write up a simple "How To." Having said that, here are some things I've learned:

1. Canister Filter - If you use anything that bubbles or splashes it releases all of the CO2 from the water and your plants won't grow.
2. Aerate when the lights are out - When the lights are on, plants consume CO2 and produce oxygen, so with no aeration your fish can breathe(O2) and so can your plants (CO2). When the light are off the process reverses and plants produce CO2, so you will need to run a bubbler at night to keep your fish from suffocating (because remember, you have a canister filter that doesn't break the surface of the water.)
3. No chemical filtration - chemical filtration sucks out all of the nutrients your plants need to survive.
4. Lots of light - aim for about 2.5-3watts/gallon for 10-12hrs/day and you will be able to grow a decent selection of plants. PS - Make sure you are in the right light spectrum - I like to split between a full-spectrum bulb for better viewing, and a pink plant bulb for better growing.
5. Fertilize - I use root tabs, Excel, and Flourish. Nothing crazy - no C02 for me.
6. Sand - sand is much easier to clean (and prettier) than plant gravels like Flourite.
7. Leave your roots alone - Particularly on this forum, people tend to obsessively clean around their plants. If you are constantly uprooting them, they won't grow. Don't worry about the little bit of "dirt" that might get stuck in the roots; if your plants are growing, they will eat it. Clean the sand everywhere that there isn't roots, and leave the roots alone.
8. Daily WC??? - stopped my plants from growing. Too much water agitation - not enough CO2 - plants wouldn't grow. You have to find a balance. My tank is happiest at 2 x 80% WCs per week.
9. 83 degrees - most plants will be fine, and so will most discus.
10. Start with tons of random plants, and only keep the ones that grow well for you. Don't get attached to a certain plant and try to change your tank to make it grow, just get a different plant. I promise it's easier this way.

I'm sure if this were someone else's list, it would be different, but this is what has worked for me. If you have something to add, please chime in!

Kesley

[OC Discus]

Israel,

Why did you decide to change your tank? It looked so amazing. Did it develop a problem? A report might add helpful information to the conversation.

[israelillo81]

I decided to change to hardscape because my discus where always looking dark in color and behaving with unease. Talking to my mentor here In Singapore I decided to make a quick change. For family reasons , since I'm a dad since a
Month ago, It also helped me take the decision of going for an easier to maintain setup.

For taking care of discus and enjoying their colors and behavior , a hardscape is much better and this time I would have to say that the Discus Gurus here in Simply Discus are right. Keep it simple

[israelillo81]

this is how the tabkn inhabitants look as of yesterday
I must say that the removal of all plants, removal of old substrate and river sand was very stressful for the fish. so stressful that one is in QT recovering from a wound on one side that looks like a nasty pimple (reddish with one white spot on top). The bigger discus suffered from tattered fins but they are now recovered.
I promised Pat to open a thread (I will) going I to more detail on how I did to keep the planted tank and writing my new experience with hardscape.
I will keep you guys posted

Israel

[Skip]

I decided to change to hardscape because my discus where always looking dark in color and behaving with unease. Talking to my mentor here In Singapore I decided to make a quick change. For family reasons , since I'm a dad since a
Month ago, It also helped me take the decision of going for an easier to maintain setup.

For taking care of discus and enjoying their colors and behavior , a hardscape is much better and this time I would have to say that the Discus Gurus here in Simply Discus are right. Keep it simple

they look really nice now!!

[OC Discus]

They look great Israel. Happy for your new status as a dad.

[israelillo81]

Thank you guys.

[OC Discus]

I'll gladly take the fish in the first pic off your hands. I like the look of the bold stress bars. Do those ever fade completely out on the wilds, or do they stay pretty pronounced?

[israelillo81]

The paunini blue heckels are able to fade them completely . The big Curuai semi royals have not seen them with the stress marks faded. The Curuai royal blue is able to fade entirely it's bars. I have a pair of solid browns from Cuipeua region that stay without bars lost of the times. The rest of heckels are 4 Nhamunda blue base. Those have their stress bars always very dark

[OC Discus]

Thanks. Its amazing to be chatting in real time with someone in Singapore. What do you pay for those fish in Singapore?

[israelillo81]

A fortune! My most valuable fish I paid almost a thousand usd