Shan's First Discus Journey

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Shan, they do look great and keep up the good work.
Pat

[Shan_Evolved]

Thanks my dudes. I may have to look into a bigger tank sooner than expected

[jeep]

Their belly's look good

[Shan_Evolved]

Their belly's look good

ahahaha. Yea I got a worried seeing a big belly but they just eat a lot. Witholding food for a day definitely helped. I might do it again if I see overfilled bellies.

[abijitr]

Great going Shan! Love the fishes and how happy they are...

[Makko]

I am following a similar water change as you. I do 45% daily so far. For me I wanted to age the water and the barrel that fit in my closet was 50g so yea 45% max. I was kinda scared of doing bigger changes anyway.

just got 9 discus from Hans, I’m jealous you got to go see him in person. Anyway I’m day 3 in my adventure. I already love the little guys. They like FDBW the best so far.

[Iminit]

Hey Makko! Good luck with your Hans Discus! I too keep Hans. I bought 8 2.5” in June and did 50% daily for 2 months while keeping them in a 45. I’ve since moved them into a 75 and the are from 5-3.5” now. I’m now water changing every other day. Set up a qt tank or have one ready. As of now 3 of mine have visited the qt. All doing much better now. Seems to me that some will just stop eating. If moved to qt with salt added an temp raised they quickly rebound. Good luck and how big is your tank?

[Makko]

I have a journal thread going also. My tank is a 110g + sump. I did saltwater for a long time, I converted to fresh
I have a QT tank 20g long with a HOB and heater. Im hoping I dont need it :-)

[Shan_Evolved]

Very nice Mark. Make sure you try to record a 30 second video every week! It'll make for a great grow up montage.

[Shan_Evolved]

[Second Hand Pat]

They look great Shan, and hungry lol
Pat

[Iminit]

Looking good!!

[fljones3]

Thankful that they have settled in, growing. Happy fish, happy owner!

Shan, after all this time, problems encountered previously, and all the advice, what do you think the issue(s) were with your previous attempt? You probably have answered it scattered throughout your comments. Perhaps, a summary here.

[Shan_Evolved]

Thank you everyone and great question Frank.

Regarding my failure on my first batch, I would conclude in summary there were various minor issues but the fault would have to remain on the low KH leading into PH fluctuation.

Minor Issues

-Cannister filter gunk build up, too much flow pulling pieces of beefheart and poop getting it stuck on prefilter
-Not using levamisole dewormer via Al's QT procedure
-Crushed coral as a PH buffer
-90% water change daily (way too much)

Major Issue

Unstable PH due to extremely low and variable tap water KH (0-1dKH). In combination with low KH in my tap water and attempting to stablize PH after getting the fish rather than before, I am certain there were violent swings in PH causing a lot of stress and lowered immune response in my batch due to the huge water changes and inconsistent KH.

Makes sense as all the minor things combined lead to really bad KH stablity which swung my PH. I could have also had a minicycle and the creation of excess nitrate bacteria lead to prolonged nitrites in my water which could have lead to brown blood disease allowing all these different issues and symptoms to surface.

I say this because I discovered recently when cycling that it took a long time to cycle from high nitrites to low nitrates even though my ammonia cycled into nitrites fast. (2 weeks for ammonia but close to 2 months for nitrites to hit 0.)

[fljones3]

Thanks for taking the time to summarize your thoughts, Shan. I agree that your thoughts are probably on target.