Gaman: My first Discus tank

[Gaman-Dekinai]

So I've been keeping fish a while now, but after a quite sudden and surprising move my beautiful full grown red tail shark and Betta cardinals and, mollies all died when I regretfully had to have my roommates move my fish while I was at work. So I've decided to start from scratch and get the fish I've always dreamed of. Discus.

My 55g tank ran fishless for about a month and a half when it cycled. I have a Finnex 24/7 led light, 80g hydro sponge filter, and a SunSun 304b 100g cannister filter. I have a thin thin layer of sand with 2 small potted anubias, 1 2inX5in Java fern mat, a fake log with Java moss attached, and 3 medium to small rocks forming a Cairn all on the left side of the tank away from where I feed and the intake. My tank parameters are at 6.4-6.8pH, 0 ammonia, 0 Nitirite, and 5-10 Nitrate.

Today marked the first day my first real batch of discus arrived, but I'll start from the beginning. After the tank ran fishless for a month and a half I added 8 cardinals and 4 sterbai Corydoras from my LFS. They were all fine and had no spikes of any sort when I noticed the largest Cory cat one morning before work was laying on its side at the bottom of the tank when it was fine and happy eating bloodworms running around the night before. Ran late for work so couldn't do anything about it when later in the day my gf called saying it was dead. But 2 weeks went by and saw no signs of sickness so I added the rest of the cardinals to make a total of 13 cardinal Tetras. 3 weeks to the day goes by and with once a week 50% WC and no drastic spikes in anything I decide to go to the LFS to start stocking on discus food when my gf noticed they actually just got a shipment of discus from Singapore the week prior. After looking at how some looked from the incredibly pour hygiene in the tank k and no basic knowledge of discus (tank said it was at 75 degrees in a 20 gallon tank with probably 25 discus) my gf convinced me to spend the extra money for a small discus to save the best looking one. Ended up buying a stunted roughly 2.75in checkerboard blue with a clipped eye. He had the most color, was the most active and reacted great when I asked if they could feed a small amount. It's now been 12 days with 50% WC 5-6 times a week that's he's been by himself showing Zero signs of sickness (stiill treated for worms and bacterial/parisitic infection s)and is finally the day hes getting some friends. 3 specifically from Uncle Sam's Discus.

The packaged left Ontario Airport (LA not Canada xP) at 12am and arrived to my door at 10:40am in Sacramento. Opened the box and noticed it was soaked and saw the heat pad was wet too. Got the fish out to see if they were alive and they were but tested the temp of the water and it measured at 60 degrees :O can only help but wonder if these guys would've survived if they were shipped somewhere farther :/ but I start the acclimating process by letting there bag float in my tank for a bit to help warm them up. Did that for about 30 minutes when I opened their bags in a bucket and started slowly over the course of an hour added some of my aquarium water to the bucket. Finally I eagerly added them into the tank. My goodness was it as beautiful as I imagined guys. I've never owned another fish like it that's for sure.

I now am the owner of a 2.75in Blue checkerboard named Zen (the LFS fish), a 3in Blue Diamond named Mizu (Japanese for water), 4in Red Melon named Kasai (Japanese for fire), and Enso the 5in Ring Leopard with 13 Cardinal tetra and 3 Sterbai Corydora Catfish.

Since adding them everything seems to be going ok. I've had the lihhts dimmed as low as I can. Zen the fish whose been here the longest really took to the new fish well and vice versa. He swam to them and hasn't left there side since. The biggest one Enso adjusted surprisingly fast and well only hanginf out at the bottom on his side for maybe a minute before he started swimming around exploring. The 2 smaller one Mizo and Kasai layed on their sides for hours only swimming around for a bit only to find a new place to plop down and rest which continued for about 5 hours. But it's now been a total of 14 hours since forst introduced to the tank and they are now allbschooled together for the night occasionally going around skimming the ground together looking for lefrovers (I'm glad they seem hungry) but that's all I really have for today here's some pictures of all my fish
Kasai the red melon00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20180417105645818_COVER.jpg



Anndddddd it's not letting me post the rest of the pictures so I'll update that does you guys later once I figure this out lol.

[Filip]

Hi and welcome Zach . This sure was a long read for me .

Good luck with your discus and we eagerly await more pictures and info about them .
You shouldn't have mixed discus from different sources without a proper QT since they can Cross contaminate each other but what's done its done , so let's just hope for a begginers luck and that everything will went smooth and well for you at the end .
You don't need pots or any sand for anubias and Javas so keep the bottom sand less than one inch thin in order to maintain easier siphoning and better water quality .

Cheers Zach.

[mbruizer187]

Welcome to the hobby! But if you don’t mind me asking why run a fish less cycle on a clean tank just to put a bunch of fish from LFS prior to getting the discus you were planning for?
Rich

[Gaman-Dekinai]

Hi and welcome Zach . This sure was a long read for me .

Good luck with your discus and we eagerly await more pictures and info about them .
You shouldn't have mixed discus from different sources without a proper QT since they can Cross contaminate each other but what's done its done , so let's just hope for a begginers luck and that everything will went smooth and well for you at the end .
You don't need pots or any sand for anubias and Javas so keep the bottom sand less than one inch thin in order to maintain easier siphoning and better water quality .

Cheers Zach.

Honestly I definitely was not planning on doing so but my girlfriend really convinced me on saving a guy from the LFS cause I have read that everywhere. Never mix discus. But I figured after the time he went without showing any signs it should be ok but yeah I'm pretty nervous honestly ��

[Gaman-Dekinai]

Welcome to the hobby! But if you don’t mind me asking why run a fish less cycle on a clean tank just to put a bunch of fish from LFS prior to getting the discus you were planning for?
Rich

Well I ran the fishless cycle to get the nitrogen cycle going and I added the fish slowly as to not cause an ammonia spike. And I added the LFS fish first since I don't have the best QT setup yet so I wanted to QT them in the main tank before I could put my discus in there. I believe in total the community fish were in there for 3 weeks then the solo discus was in there for 12 days before I put these new discus in. So to answer the question quickly. Just to get the nitrogen cycle going without risking unnecessary harm to fish

[mbruizer187]

My point being that we run a fishless cycle to get a nitrogen cycle for our clean tank so that new discus would be coming into a clean environment free from any type of pathogen. As soon as you introduce fish to that tank you now have pathogen's in that tank, (1 second, 3 weeks) it doesn't matter they are now there, now for your average fish that is usually not a big deal, but for discus, its the #1 rule of what not to do. I am not saying you should give up all hope and quit now, there may be no issues at all, but I am saying you can now never be sure what or where things have come from if your discus start to have problems. So it is there for harder to figure out what may be wrong.
Rich

[Gaman-Dekinai]

So I must have been misunderstanding pathogens and fishless cycles for years now then.. huh. I was under the impression that anything has pathogens good or bad that can be introduced to the aquarium in any way like live plants, driftwood, rocks even my hands. Not just mainly fish. I know not to mix discus because of different immune systems which I knew the risks and did it anyway but was not aware that even if I kept the other fish alone before I got discus and treated them for parasites and bacterial infections and cranked the heat up for the standard 3 weeks before I introduced the first discus that the pathogens would still be alive and in there. Am I understanding this correctly?

Sorry if I sound dumb but discus keeping is definitely the next league up for me and I'm trying to get my stick back on the ice and get an understanding of anything I did wrong and am doing wrong. Hence this journal. Thank you for all the info you've given

[Filip]

No matter how much meds did you threw at your tetra fish before the discus arrival , they still pose a thread from cross contamination to your newly arived discus .
It doesn't mean that they must get sick or Cross contaminate . In more cases things go unharmed even when you mix fish from different sources without undertaking any precautions .
But there are cases and possibilities(maybe even a smaller % that the successful scenarios ) when things can get rough on the fish.
We take that precautions ( sometimes to extreme )with discus , simply because they are a pricey fish and people get hurt when they lose a batch of 15 discus . We ussualy don't even care when a 10 out of 100 tetra fish perish upon arrival .

That's all there is to it IMHO .

[Gaman-Dekinai]

Finally have some spare time to update with pictures and give an update. Heres Mizu the Blue DiamondScreenshot_20180418-120155.jpg
Zen the stunted checkerboard blue? IMG_20180415_105949.jpg and Enso the ring leopard Screenshot_20180418-120119.jpg These pics were taken during transfer to the tank they were incredibly shocked from shipping..