New to Forum, not to fishkeeping.........

[19k8bor47]

Hello to all. My name is Dave. I'm 71 years old and have been keeping fish ever since I was 9 years old. I can't remember but a few times in my life when I haven't had an aquarium of some sort set up. I actually bred angelfish back in 1958 when it was very difficult to do.
My current setup is a 125 that is well established (over a year) with a fine sand substrate, some water worn rocks, Amazon sword plants (growing very tall) and quite a bit of java moss, leaf litter and wood components.
For a long time I had a good sized school of Harlequin Rasboras, and another good sized school of Cardinal tetras, along with a handful of panda cories and there are a lot of shrimp in the tank (breeding explosion).
Filtering is a danner 950 gph going through a 2,000 gal bio pond cannister with sponge and ceramic rings. There is also a large marineland HOB filter.
A couple of months ago, I introduced ten 2-1/2" discus (hopefully to start taking care of some of the shrimp) and they are all doing very well. I'm getting tired of the hassle of tearing the pond filter apart for maintenance when required and buying filter media for the HOB filter. I'm currently working up a 29 gal sump system to take care of the filtration situation.
I live in the woods in Upper Michigan and are lucky to have absolutely wonderful limestone filtered well water that comes out at a PH of 7.6. Everything I've read says this isn't the best for Cardinals or discus, but they all seem to be doing very well.
Sorry, sort of long winded, but there it is. That and I say "Hello."

[Paul Sabucchi]

Hi and welcome to Simply Discus. With your experience you obviously know a lot about fishkeeping. The guidelines usually given on this forum are more for the benefit of less experienced fishkeepers who may be less prepared to respond to the needs if discus. Let's say that we try to suggest the route less likely to create any issues. It is possible to grow discus with a different setup, it does take more knowledge abd maybe a bit more effort. Keep posting and updating us with the progress, there is always something to learn

[LizStreithorst]

Welcome, Dave. Your water is fine for those fish. Don't worry about it. Your tank sounds beautiful. I would love to see pics.

As Paul said, your set up is not good for growing out Discus to their full potential. It would be best for the fish if you could move them to a bare bottom tank and do large daily water until they are at least 4".