Originally Posted by
discuspaul
To be completely candid, your plan to begin with a 450 gallon tank is an aggressive approach for a novice to discus-keeping, and could readily prove to be significantly problematic and discouraging to say the least.
One of the key elements in succeeding at keeping discus healthy and thriving is to consistently provide them with plenty of fresh water changes in order to ensure they have the benefit of high water quality and conditions. Therefore it's important for you to research and determine a suitable program to achieve doing that in such a large tank, particularly if you plan to aqua-scape it and add numerous tank-mates.
This type of a plan even poses a challenge for experienced discus-keepers who would likely opt for starting off slow & easy, with nothing less than mature adult discus to lessen the risks of being incapable of maintaining ideal conditions for the fish to do well.
Not meaning to discourage you, but I would strongly suggest you spend some tome researching discus traits & behaviors by going through the stickies in the Discus Basics for Beginners section, as well as spending several weeks following the threads & posts on this forum to give yourself a good understanding of what it takes to succeed well at discus-keeping.
Once you've done that, I believe you will want to adopt a safe learning approach by starting out with a much smaller set-up, stocked with good quality discus, preferably in a bare-bottom environment, in order to gain some experience in suitably keeping these beautiful fish healthy.
Enough said, I'd expect others would plan to step in with some other thoughts to help you move into discus with a good approach for your start-up.
All the best to you.