600 gallon low tech planted tank

[Reesj]

great setups. Although I prefer the your older look to the new one

[jmf3460]

OP I was critical of your original set up on PlantedTank.net, you had way to many fish in that tank and an inevitable crash happened as you experienced a whole tank of columnaris that killed off 90% of your stock. This was after you argued with forum members that your genius flow set up and filtration made it so you hardly ever had to do water changes. You have a bad habit of extreme over stocking, and it looks you didn't learn your lesson last time. Yes this is a huge tank, and yes you can fit a lot of fish in there but to be honest you should never have introduced the discus, much less 30 of them as the tank was pushing its stocking limits before the discus. I do hold out hope for you, but I predict the same thing will happen as this beautiful but impractical tank is way over stocked again.

I realize this sounds harsh; which it is not my intent to hate on your beautiful tank. My advice is to get rid of some fish if you want to keep them healthy.

[Quintin]

Lovely tank.but not suitable for growing out discus due to large size and tank mates.i would only put adults in there 2 years plus.and did u quarintine all fish.learn from ur mistakes.u have an amazingly big tank.try get it rite it will be worth the work eventually.good luck and please heed the advice here its only ment well

[Siddhartha Saive]

OP I was critical of your original set up on PlantedTank.net, you had way to many fish in that tank and an inevitable crash happened as you experienced a whole tank of columnaris that killed off 90% of your stock. This was after you argued with forum members that your genius flow set up and filtration made it so you hardly ever had to do water changes. You have a bad habit of extreme over stocking, and it looks you didn't learn your lesson last time. Yes this is a huge tank, and yes you can fit a lot of fish in there but to be honest you should never have introduced the discus, much less 30 of them as the tank was pushing its stocking limits before the discus. I do hold out hope for you, but I predict the same thing will happen as this beautiful but impractical tank is way over stocked again.

I realize this sounds harsh; which it is not my intent to hate on your beautiful tank. My advice is to get rid of some fish if you want to keep them healthy.

Thanks for the advice
But I disagree on a few things. The tank wasn't overstocked with the discus a year ago. The problem started with me adding unquarantined native wild caught fish( glass fish and rice fish that I caught myself and many small catfish and algae eaters from a local supplier). I added nearly 80 small new fish. .which I didn't mention. A few catfish were infected and sickly which started dying in the first 2 days which eventually spread to most of the other fish until I diagnosed the disease and started treatment.

I'm sure I never argued that my filtration was better than water changes lol. Or else, I wouldn't have troubled myself with changing 80% of the water once a month with all RO. This was probably good enough for a large planted tank but not for the growing discus. The tank tds used to be around 40 to 60. I might have said that I'd never need to siphon or clean the sand because of the overflow. If you think that was genius I'm thankful

I feel the stocking now is good. You might change your mind if you see the tank in person. The tank still looks half empty. This will fill out as the fish grow out. I intend to remove a few discus...5 or more runts/stunted ones. Before adding the discus it was hard to find fish in there.

I won't be adding any new fish. I'm changing water thrice a week now and feeding heavily. This batch of discus seem to be doing so much better. Very even growth except a few runts. Maybe the large group helps as I've read so.

Thanks for scaring me though. I'll have to increase my water changes

[Quintin]

No one is trying to put you down or dissing ur tank.but take it as you want there is a reason u have "runts" and "stunted" discus.there are a few contributing problems in ur tank.take or ignore the advice as you please.ive been there read my threads and ul see.your tank and current water changes are probably fine for ADULTS but not juvies.anyway love ur tank and hope u find a working balance.

Kind regards
Quintin

[Siddhartha Saive]

No one is trying to put you down or dissing ur tank.but take it as you want there is a reason u have "runts" and "stunted" discus.there are a few contributing problems in ur tank.take or ignore the advice as you please.ive been there read my threads and ul see.your tank and current water changes are probably fine for ADULTS but not juvies.anyway love ur tank and hope u find a working balance.

Kind regards
Quintin

Quintin I'm well aware of the problems in the tank for growing out the discus

There will definitely be a few runts(genetic weaklings) in any discus spawn.. which are eventually culled by the breeders.

Growing in good numbers is supposedly better. That's why I have 30 discus in there. I'm hoping to get decent growth on at least half of them and I'll keep the fish that I like.

[Dis82]

Maybe up the amount of water changed and you will find even better results. Goodluck

[Siddhartha Saive]

Thank you for your encouragement Dis82

I have increased the water changes to 30 to 50% thrice a week. That's 600 to 900 gallons changed per week.

New mobile pics. Pics taken from the side of the tank
Most of the discus are around 4" now
It's been 11 weeks since I got the discus at 2". I'm guessing they are 5 to 6 months old now.


You can see the smallest runt with the big brother in the second pic

20150624_153051.jpg20150624_152943.jpg20150624_153417.jpgScreenshot_2015-06-24-18-18-08.jpg


Are they growing out good enough?

[Allwin]

Looks great, i like it.

[Quintin]

Nice.

[rickztahone]

These discus look excellent to me. Minus the runt that is, but you always have one of those somewhere, lol.

[jmf3460]

i agree, your discus do look very good at this stage. even the runt doesn't look too bad.

[Siddhartha Saive]

These discus look excellent to me. Minus the runt that is, but you always have one of those somewhere, lol.

i agree, your discus do look very good at this stage. even the runt doesn't look too bad.

Thanks guys That's very encouraging
I hope they turn out good.

I like the little runt. I always look for it when ever go to the tank

[pastry]

Sid, please don't think I'm baiting you! Just asking what you mean by "decent growth"? I ask because I'm just guessing you'll get some over 6", a few may get to 6.5", most will be just shy of 6", and of course a few will be closer to 5" on the dot after 2 years. That's about what mine turned out to be (I have an old loooong thread somewhere you can check out). Anyhow, I ask what your goal is for the biggest & average so that we can track your progress through this thread (keep it going). If they get huge, great... if they hardly get over 5", that stinks but still great for documenting. I'm hoping you outperform my expectations but if not, so what! All's good

Quintin I'm well aware of the problems in the tank for growing out the discus

There will definitely be a few runts(genetic weaklings) in any discus spawn.. which are eventually culled by the breeders.

Growing in good numbers is supposedly better. That's why I have 30 discus in there. I'm hoping to get decent growth on at least half of them and I'll keep the fish that I like.

[Siddhartha Saive]

Sid, please don't think I'm baiting you! Just asking what you mean by "decent growth"? I ask because I'm just guessing you'll get some over 6", a few may get to 6.5", most will be just shy of 6", and of course a few will be closer to 5" on the dot after 2 years. That's about what mine turned out to be (I have an old loooong thread somewhere you can check out). Anyhow, I ask what your goal is for the biggest & average so that we can track your progress through this thread (keep it going). If they get huge, great... if they hardly get over 5", that stinks but still great for documenting. I'm hoping you outperform my expectations but if not, so what! All's good

Hi pastry. Ive been through your entire looong thread already You did a great job with ur fish

The best I'm hoping for is to get (most of) my discus to 6" with good shape. Even if they don't, they already look great and I'll be happy if I can keep them alive

I'll try to do my best to take care of them and I'll post updates regularly.