600 gallon low tech planted tank

[Len]

Wow, that's pretty cool.

[Siddhartha Saive]

Thank you all 😊

that tank is crazy beautiful. what species of fish (loaches?) are sitting in the sand at the front of the tank?

Those are Garra gotyla. They are territorial but the best algae eaters I've seen. They clean every inch of the glass, rock and wood in the tank.

Awesome tank, what other fish are in there?

Apart from 30 Discus and 16 Geos there are
50 Congo tetra
1 Fire eel
4 neon gobies
6 Garra gotyla
5 clown loaches
2 elephant nose fish
4 spotted Raphael catfish
2 Panama/twig whiptail catfish
2 red whiptail catfish
4 bristlenose plecos
1 veiltail bristlenose
1 l 240 pleco

Relics from previous stocking - 2 yo-yo loaches, 3 rummy nose tetra, 2 denisonii barbs, 1 Rasbora daniconicus,1 zebra danio

I'm plawning to remove the 6 Geophagus heckelii to decrease the bioload and eventually add various plecos. I can keep small tetra again if I remove the heckelii

Your tank does look really nice Sddhartha. I am glad you changed it this last time. Way to go. Any more under water videos

Will share a video soon 😊

[HappyFace]

Gorgeous! I love your tank and setup.

I really love the idea of the overflow baffle. Do you have pictures of it? Is there a risk of flood or do you have something in place to prevent that?

[Darrell Ward]

I'm not a fan of placing growing discus in a planted tank, or for that matter, mixing smaller discus with other species. Asking for problems IMO. Good looking tank however, good job!

[Rapture]

What an awesome tankkk, It's so cool to see that huge group of Discus in a tank with plants, wood, substrate.

[ericNH]

I'd make your tank video my screensaver if I could do it right. It's really quite incredible. Even with all the sand and rocks and driftwood and anubias, your tank looks clean. And I see no signs of distress at all in any of your fish. What you're doing there is ... well it's just *beyond*. Keep sharing your vids please. They're stunning.

[Siddhartha Saive]

Thank you guys Really appreciate it

Some changes to the tank. Finally started planting the tank again as the discus are grown out to a decent size. Increasing CO2 now and will start dosing fertilisers regularly.

Added some needle ferns to the tank and some new fish too

2 X L177 gold nugget pleco
2 X red hi fin pleco
20 golden panchax

Removing the 6 X Geophagus heckelii this week. Will add more plecos gradually
Dunno if I should remove 5 to 10 discus to reduce the bioload... they look amazing in such a big group.
Latest FTS

IMG_20160401_195507.jpg

One of the l177 golden nugget
IMG-20160402-WA0020.jpg

Golden panchax
IMG-20160402-WA0025.jpg

[Debow]

Why are you getting rid of the geos? I was thinking about adding some because of your tank.

[jmf3460]

cute gold nugget he is really cute.

[Siddhartha Saive]

Why are you getting rid of the geos? I was thinking about adding some because of your tank.

I really love them but I want to decrease the bioload. Those heckelii are 8"+ each now. Me and a few friends got them about 15 months ago. The ones with my friends are hardly 6". They grew huge in my discus grow out monster tank
And... my winemilleri are currently nearly 12" each.
Most of my discus are 5 to 6"+ and growing. So need to clear some space. I thought I wud remove half of these discus but I like them in a big school of 30.
And.. the heckelii are total pigs. Eat a lot and poop a lot. High bioload fish. And they also predate on small tetra. The winemilleri which are much bigger don't even bother the tiniest of tetra.. similar to most of other geophagus sp.... but the heckelii will hunt them down. So.. removing the heckelii will give me the option of a big school of small tetra later

cute gold nugget he is really cute.

Thank you �� luckily they are rather bold and i get to see them often

[Las Vegas]

WoW! Love that tank!

[DomiDiscus]

What a lovely bunch of discus, such a stellar job!

[dandestroy]

nice tank!

Can you post some picture or drawing of your overflow setup (80/20 bottom top intake).

thanks

[Siddhartha Saive]

nice tank!

Can you post some picture or drawing of your overflow setup (80/20 bottom top intake).

thanks

It's actually very simple

Screenshot_20160418-134912.jpg


Consider a regular tall overflow box. Water will overflow over the top of its walls into the overflow chamber and through the drain pipes to the sump. So there is only surface skimming here. Now you just add baffles outside the overflow chamber to make another wall outside it. This outer wall should be open at the bottom... atleast 2" more than the substrate thickness. Water can enter through this gap at the bottom and then rise up between the outer and inner walls and then overflow over the inner wall. Most important here is the height of the outer wall. If the top of the outer wall is lower than the inner wall, water will just overflow over both the walls and won't be sucked from the bottom. If the outer wall is too high water will only be sucked through the bottom and will not overflow... so no surface skimming then and there will be collection of floating dust and waste at the surface. Even a little overflow at the top is good enough to clear the surface dust. So ideally the outer wall height should be just a little higher than the inner wall... about 1/4" to 1/2". To make the adjustment easy, you make the inner and outer walls at the same height and then raise the necessary outer wall height by sticking an acrylic or glass strip.. try attaching 1/2" strip and change if necessary

The gap between the inner and outer walls should be atleast half inch so debris doesn't get stuck often

[Siddhartha Saive]

Finally a pair has formed and started laying eggs I was away on a 2 week vacation with no water changes and no feeding and they decided to get busy then..
I have no intention of raising any fry though. Most of the discus are around 6" now. Will remove 10 of them smaller ones soon.

Removed the 6 Geophagus heckelii.
Will remove the Congo tetra. They look great but are very shy.. even around discus and hang out around the back of the tank. So... I'm replacing them with 300 cardinal tetra this weekend

Hope my discus won't make a snack out of the cardinal tetra....

How many of you have cardinal tetra with adult discus?

Will post pics soon