My Discus Journey

[Sabrina]

Cheers George
I didn't loose my cycle, there is no ammonia or nitrite in the water, winning! I did however find 2 of my peppered catfish dead this morning, I thought they were acting weird yesterday, very strange that both of them died at the same time, I have no idea what might have caused that, the only thing I can think of is the temp being too high for them or they ate too many black worms and not enough of their own wafer food.
No issues with the canister filters, they are running well, and the prefilters are catching debris already, I can see why its a good idea to have them now.
The adults are still spooked, I think I have lost their trust completely now, they wont eat with the LED on, only when I turn it off will they eat and every time I walk past the tank they hide from me or go crazy, its a bit upsetting. The babies however follow me around like puppies from one end of the tank to the other begging for more food.
Its Easter weekend here in Australia, Happy Easter everyone

[Sabrina]

Good morning,
Its 4am on Easter Saturday here and I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed, so both the tanks are going down for maintenance this morning. I seem to be having issues with high Nitrate in both takes, they are reading at 40ppm..
I'm going to do a 100 liter water change on the babies tank and I need to move the air stone away from the canister filter surface skimmer because it seems the bubbles are going into it and sending air down the intake tube into the canister, then the canister makes a swishing sound and the air gets pushed up the outtake pipe and comes out the spray bar filling the tank with bubbles. Not sure if this is normal but I'm going to move the air stone just in case..
On the adults tank I'm also going to do a 100 liter water change and at the same time I need to remove the spray bar and I'm going to cut the hard tubing a bit so that the spray bar sits a bit higher in the tank, more closer to the surface, because at the moment its so low in the tank that it makes a big hole in the sand and you can see the glass bottom..
I hope the large water changes and vacuuming lower the nitrate in both tanks today.. And I'm going to be a bit more careful with feedings from now on too.

[Sabrina]

Oh!! I forgot to mention my lucky break, there is a free facebook page in my home town that one of my friends took it upon themselves to post on on my behalf asking for fish tank for me to use as a hospital tank as I cant afford one right now, turns out a tank came up for FREE two days later! Its a 75 liter (20 gallons) fish tank and its absolutely PERFECT!! It was very dirty and had sticky tape resin all around the top of it, so I got the razor blade out and removed as much of the resin as I could and then grabbed the apple cider vinegar and scrubbed the whole tank with it, it looks like a brand new tank now. The only thing it is missing is a lid, it doesn't have a lip around the top that I could put a lid on so I'm currently racking my brain about what I can do for a lid.. I have all the equipment for it except a heater right now, which I just found the right size heater on Ebay for only $26, so I will order that next week. I am SO happy about this find!! Hopefully I never have to use it though, I don't want sick fish..
The water change ect on the babies tank is now done, looks like I need to replace the power board all the power cords plug into, when I switched it off and back on it started making crackling noises at the switch on point! Its on and working fine now but I don't want to take the chance with it blowing up all my equipment, so later today I will buy a new one.
Here is a pic of my new FREE hospital tank and the babies water change
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[Sabrina]

The power board on the babies tank has been change to a brand new one.. I also scrubbed the gunk off the walls of their tank during the water change, they are happy little veggie mites now.

So my discus journey has just taken a turn again, I had been watching my adults for the last few days, the PB up to his tricks again stopping the other 3 from eating, trying to starve them to death like he did the Blue Turq last week. I fed them like normal, the PB guards the food no matter where I put it or if I put 2 or 3 different locations in the tank, it got to the point today that the Red Rose wouldn't even come up to eat and the 2 Red&Whites would make a mad dash to the food and peck at it franticly before being beaten off by the PB and chased away. I became very angry today, I have watched this PB chase Tangerine daily until he developed HITH and died 2 days later, I have watched this PB beat up and chase my beautiful Blue Turq until it starved to death and died only a week after Tangerine. Today I was not sitting back and watching that PB try to starve the other 3 discus to death too, it had to go today or I was going to euthanize it. I made a post on a fish keeping facebook page locally about the bully, saying to take him at your own risk, posting him for FREE. He was gone to his new owners in 30 minutes flat, I could not care less what happens to that fish. I now have a struggle to keep the remaining 3 adults alive, and I'm up for another 2 discus to make the group back up to 5 fish, thankfully I have the hospital/quarantine tank now to QT the new ones eventually. To think only 3 weeks ago I started out with 6 healthy adults and now I'm down to 3!! Again I have done everything I could to better their lives as fast as possible, but it seems all in vein. Perhaps I'm not meant to be a fish keeper, or maybe its just discus. Today I feel like I have failed at fish keeping yet again, tomorrow is another day.

[Filip]

If you decide to buy new discus and you want to do it the right way , you would have to follow the 1-2 month long QT procedure . That would mean maintaining 3 tanks .
I would try to sell the remaining 3 suspicious in health discus and start over from zip 0 with a new batch of 6 discus instead .

Another idea would be to put the rest 3 discus along with your young discus , since they already shared filters , and focus only on maintaining one healthy tank . In the future if you are ready to buy more you can always start again the second tank .

Leaving the 3 as they are would just lead to creating another bully , just like the one you have donated .

[Sabrina]

Hi Filip, I have sat and thought thoroughly about your suggestions. I don't mind to maintain 3 tanks, I'm already doing the 2 big ones on a daily basis with not too many issues, so I think I'm going to go with buying 2 more and QT them for some time then place them in with the left over adults I have now, I really like the 3 that are left they are beautiful fish. The 3 left are starting to eat today which is positive, they are still very spooked though.
With placing the adults with the babies all together in the one tank, I wont take the chance, I don't want to compromise the health and growth of my babies and the adults would teach them to duck, scatter and hide and I don't want that for them.
I really appreciate your good suggestions but I'm going to leave things as they are for right now, keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.
Thanks Filip

[Sabrina]

Filip, you were right! Since removing the bully the remaining 3 have just sat in the one spot and hardly moved, so I decided to go with your suggestion to place all my discus together in the one tank. I removed the 3 adults and placed them in the babies tank, they seem to be much much happier now, they are swimming around again! Thank you

[Sabrina]

Hi guys n girls,
Its been a few days since my last post because I don't have all that much to report, things have been good!! I removed all the Cories from the discus tank a couple of days ago, so its discus only now, the cories have their own 4 foot tank for the moment. My 8 discus are doing really well together, 5 babies and 3 adults, all eating, swimming and just being fishes. The only incident in the last couple of days was with my Red Rose, she is the biggest of the lot, I honestly don't know how she is still alive she is so crazy! I walked past the tank, as I do many times a day, and she went nuts, flew from one end of the tank to the other hit the wall, got stuck between the jumbo sponge filter and the wall, then buried herself in the sand trying to get out, came hurdling out of the sand at high speed only to hit the wall on the other side, which finally stunned her and she came to a stand still! I was flabbergasted to say the least, I thought her gills would be full of sand and the knocks on the head would have killed her, but no, she is alive and well lol
For an odd group of discus they seem to be getting on really well. I will see if I can catch some footage of them later this morning as ive only just finished a large water change

[geo57]

Hi Sabrina, glad to see your spirits are up and to read your tanks and fish are settling down. Fish are funny in that they will be all calm for like days on and then out of no where they will get shy and start hiding. When I see my fish start shying away from me I just leave them alone for awhile until they start to settle a bit. I had a couple pair up and start to mate and lay eggs, this also made them a little more aggressive and scared the other fish for a while. The tank is big enough so that eventually everyone settled back down and the pair claimed a small section where all the intakes(3) are. Don't worry over so many things and don't over load yourself with more tanks than you can handle. You have to gleam some pleasure from this and not just a lot of work.

[Sabrina]

Hi George,
Cheers, yes things have become better with all being together in the 1 tank now, still having trouble with them being skittish and hiding, but I think this is due to their tank being in a high traffic area of my house. I removed a large fake plant yesterday that they were hiding behind all the time and replaced it with a small driftwood and a potted hair grass, so now they have no where to hide, they seem to be moving around more which is great.
Here is a short video I took last night

[Sabrina]

Hi all,
Things have been great, all is running smoothly, well until 5 minutes ago, I walked past the tank and they all got a fright, 1 of the babies went straight up and out a tiny gap in the glass and fell behind the tank! I quickly grabbed the net but I couldn't reach it with that so I reached under and grabbed the fishes tail picked it up and put it in the net and back into the water, I hope it will be ok, I got such a fright