Part 2 The Fish

[afriend]

Number and Size of My Fish-- I have stocked my show tank by purchasing young adults (5"+) and introducing them to the tank after a four week QT period. The tank is now fully stocked with 10 adults (6" to 6.75"). Although I do like large fish, my setup is not designed to maximize their growth potential, and thus is strictly a show tank. Some of the fish are still growing.

Pecking Order--My fish are very peaceful. They gently nudge each other occasionally, and the hierarchy between them changes from time to time. Some of the fish are not part of the pecking order. I attribute this peaceful behavior to keeping the tank conditions constant and having very clean water.

Lighting Effects--When viewing the following pictures please note that they were taken with different settings of the LED lighting system. This accounts for the dramatic changes from one picture to another. There are two independent channels, one channel lights primarily the fish and one channel lights both the background and the tank bottom. Also please note that the colors have not been enhanced other than by the LED lighting system.

Picture 2-1 Tank View with Blue Background:
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Picture 2-2 Tank View with Red Background:
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Picture 2-3 Fire Red 6" from Hans Discus:
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Picture 2-4 Silver Pigeon 6.5" from Hans Discus:
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Picture 2-5 Checkerboard 6" from Hans Discus: (smallest fish in tank):
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Picture 2-6 Albino Red Spotted Green 6.25" from Kenny's Discus:
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Picture 2-7 Fire Red 6.75" from Hans Discus (largest fish in tank):
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Picture 2-8 Fire Reds from Hans Discus:
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What and How I Feed My Fish-- The fish are fed the following in order of their preference: beef heart, freeze dried black worms, frozen blood worms, and color tetra bits. I am very selective at what and how I feed them because I want to minimize pollutants in the water column. This is an important factor in keeping the tank clean. The cleanest food is the freeze dried black worms because they float. My automated water exchange system contains an overflow pipe. When new water is pumped into the tank, all of the floating material on the surface is flushed into the overflow pipe and this keeps the surface nice and clean. I feed the fish several times a day, giving them a little at a time. This way they are more likely to eat it rather than allowing it to fall to the bottom.

The beef heart is not mixed with any additional ingredients and is shredded with a Salad Shooter. This greatly reduces the amount of pollutant. Got the idea from Carol Roberts:

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...isolve-in-tank!

For some reason frozen blood worms are not their number one choice. No idea why this is the case. The color tetra bits present the biggest pollutant problem because they don't dissolve as quickly as the other foods. As such, they are more likely to become trapped in an area of the tank with less circulation where they decompose slowly. Thus when I feed them tetra bits I do so very slowly.

[sayid]

hi Paul;
love your new web page,you have already solve one of my big problems and that is a suitable beef heart for my discus, i can't find a b/h that has not got vein ,gristle or fat in it, further more i could not go through the hassle of mixing 20 different ingredient in food mixer etc, all i have to do is to go to the local k mart and find out what is a salad shooter since we are not familiar with that term in Australia ,but i have some idea of what it is .well i am going back to read the rest of your enjoyable web page.
regards
sayid

[afriend]

hi Paul;
love your new web page,you have already solve one of my big problems and that is a suitable beef heart for my discus, i can't find a b/h that has not got vein ,gristle or fat in it, further more i could not go through the hassle of mixing 20 different ingredient in food mixer etc, all i have to do is to go to the local k mart and find out what is a salad shooter since we are not familiar with that term in Australia ,but i have some idea of what it is .well i am going back to read the rest of your enjoyable web page.
regards
sayid

Sayid,

The link below contains pictures of a salad shooter and lots of good information on how to prepare the beef heart.

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...isolve-in-tank

You still have to remove veins, fat and gristle so that you start with pure meat. I've found that I get about 40% yield.

Thank you for your kind remarks.

Paul