Need feedback

[Ronnie123]

I own a small pet shop in a small town in the mountains and I have run fresh and basic salt tanks for a while. A lager operator came to town and set up a discus tank and left it for me to maintain. So,I would like to describe the system and just get some feedback on what’s right and what’s wrong.

Tank is 300 gallon. 2”sand bottom and no plants. Just big driftwood in center. Custom tank with 1 intake that goes thru filter sock in sump, a small sponge between sections of sump, ozone generator bubbling direct into sump for 30 min every 3 hours, a couple bags of carbon changed monthly and a small bag of peat changed during water changes. Also have 2 circulation pumps running in the sump or else it gets stagnant quickly. Main return pump flow is restricted a lot by a valve going into tank so can’t really know flow rate. No other circulation or air pumps. Tap water Ph here runs steady at 8.4 (central Rockies). And what we do is come in once a week and vaccume sand and remove about 50% water and add bag of peat, discus code and black water supplements. We were adding a lot of discus buffer too but have cut back a lot since adding peat (which we started a few months ago). We had a crazy amount of precipitate floating in tank and building up in sump...been better since we cut back on powder buffer. Also what we do is run replacement water direct from faucet thru a portable water softener (the kind often used to wash windows or RV,s without leaving spots). We replace the resin once a month. And I should also mention this tank has an auto top off system that runs water direct from tap, thru a filtrete under sink water filter, and direct to sump.

Tank has 3 full grown discus and 6 angels, dozen black neon tetra, few yo yo loaches, Pygmy pleco, a Betta, 6 Australian rainbows. We had 5 discus originally when tank was set up a year ago. One discus died when bread was found floating in the tank ( open top design) and the other never looked great. Ph we try to keep around 7 and that’s were it usually is but reading yesterday showed 7.6. Ammonia 0 and nitrate 30 and Gh 275 and temp 82. Fish look ok and eat well and all but the bodies have always looked pinched to me, not full and smooth.

We are planning to add 5 more discus soon. Thanks for any advice and comments.

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Ronnie, a few suggestions, first is the discus are not getting enough to eat. If you look at the discus pictured head on you will notice how pinched the forehead is. Second is the nitrates seem high for the tank volume and the load bio-load of the tank. Are the nitrates in the source water? or perhaps a place where mulm is collecting in the sump?
Pat

[Ronnie123]

Thanks for the reply but I was really hoping for some criticism of how the tank is run. I don’t like it but I’m stuck doing it this way. No RO, using ozone, no biological media, no airation, no aged water, using buffers and water softener from the tap, and auto top off.... is this all ok? Been making it work for a year but I keep thinking it’s all gonna fail sooner or later.

[Willie]

Much depends on your objective. You can have 1) a nice community tank with discus, 2) you can have a tank with the best possible discus or 3) you can have a tank where discus spawns. You cannot have all three. It looks like you're going after #1 and it may well be working for you.

We can probably comment if you post a picture that shows more discus and ones that show the entire fish. Hard to tell without more perspective.

Willie