Shan's First Discus Journey

[danotaylor]

Good one Willie! Lol.

Tom my frontosa's fart all the time...I will try to get it on vid to post...

[Iminit]

Come on Dan if that was true wouldn’t that be your screen saver .

[Shan_Evolved]

Alright so a update with some annoying news but also good news -

TLDR. I'm so done with my smaller tank and having cycling issues. I cannot wait to hurry and move them to the 125...


About the Fish
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All fish are still alive, but unfortunately I have been dealing with some issues for a few weeks.

After a 5 week QT with levamisole, I moved all 3 fish (2 turqs 1 red scrib) to the 55. This was about the same time I finally recovered from my nitrite spike. A few days after I noticed the red scrib not eating. I watched him for another week and he still ignored food.

I contacted Brian and Cary and with some advice I raised the temperature to 94 for a few days. I then started on metro treatment for 14 days (500mg every 8 hrs with daily wc). This seemed to have at least given him a little bit of an appetite. I noticed him eating occasionally but his belly would always swell up.

During metro a vast majority of fish lost their appetite and started to get spooked more easily. After metro I expected some appetites to return, and some did but unfortunately some fish are still acting not as aggressive at lunch time.

Metro finished a few weeks ago. I investigated some of their poop under a microscope and found nothing 90% of the time. But occasionally I found sore capillaria eggs. Nothing ever moving fortunately.

I let the discus rest a week and then gave them a levamisole bath for 24hr. I plan on doing it twice again with a break in between the last treatment. I am also cleaning the tank walls and siphoning everything after each bath.

Oh to make matters worse.. I squeezed one of the dirty filter sponges in tank water a couple of times to clean the murk out of it. I assumed just one would be okay since I have a HOB full of ceramic rings and another sponge filter but NOPE. Another god dam nitrite spike. UGHHHHH WHYYY.

So friggin tired of stressing my fish out no matter how careful I am. I noticed my biggest flachen ignoring food a few days ago and then noticed thick white non-translucent white poop coming out of him. Like seriously? I Literally just did a metro and heat treatment..

-___________-

At least the majority are eating and the red scribblet is eating again. Oh. I put the white poop straight from the flachen butthole under a microscope and found nothing. Literally nothing that looked suspicious or any movement of any sort.

I'll keep investigating the poop when I see it and keep doing 75% WC every 2 days. Adding salt to help with the nitrites. Fish seem to love it too so that's good.


Last thing - I have a ton of progress on my 125 that I'll update in the near future.

[Iminit]

Shan I’m guessing the nitrite jump has got to do with your tank being bare bottom. Very little space for bb to grow in the tank. What are you using for filtration now on the 75. My tanks with the substrate and plants I don’t have that problem my cycle never changes. I’ve cleaned my fx6 and all the other sponges at the same time without a problem.

[Shan_Evolved]

That's exactly what it is Tom. I have a large HOB and 2 sponges atm and thats it. I seriously cannot wait to move them. I am cycling the 125 now

[Iminit]

How the 125 look? Waiting for pics. For me there is no reason to cycle. Just take the filters your using on the 75 and move them to the 125. Move your discus. Let the filters run with the sump for a month than remove them one at a time. You can even add the sponges and media from the hob into the sump as you do this. This will keep it alive and if you need to qt something just pull some out and add to qt filter. With the filters from the 75 and the added water of the 125 your discus will be fine. It’s the same filtration that keeping them alive now.

[pablos]

How the 125 look? Waiting for pics. For me there is no reason to cycle. Just take the filters your using on the 75 and move them to the 125. Move your discus. Let the filters run with the sump for a month than remove them one at a time. You can even add the sponges and media from the hob into the sump as you do this. This will keep it alive and if you need to qt something just pull some out and add to qt filter. With the filters from the 75 and the added water of the 125 your discus will be fine. It’s the same filtration that keeping them alive now.

Exactly! In order to speed up my cycle I did:
1. Put in advance a new K1 media to a contanier with water out of discus tank + few gentle squeezes from sponges
When I was moving my discus I:
2. Dump media from carnister to sump as well as sponges
3. After few weeks I removed carnister’s media and sponges and left K1 only

[AquaticNerd]

Hey Shan,

Thanks for the update! Sorry to hear about your cycling issues - I'm surprised that you're having this much trouble after only cleaning a single sponge. When you use the bucket to clean it out, are you 100% sure the bucket is completely clean of any contaminants? I know you're being extra careful, but any stray contaminant such as cleaning products/detergents could easily wipe out the BB in a sponge. Just a thought, since I know how much trouble you're having and just trying to think of "what could".

The 125 looks like it's on its way to being ready. I understand the feeling of wanting to just get the fish in there, but I would be patient and make sure they're completely clean before moving. It's much easier (and cheaper) to treat 55 gallons of water than 125.

[pablos]

Shan;

From one of your earlier posts, I wanted to have the same fancy lettering you used as backing in a show tank. Now, I'm working on this instead.

Willie

Fart, poop ... my kids would love, instead they are looking on the boring
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They don’t understand a magic of a coffee yet!

[Shan_Evolved]

Oh so that's what smell the coffee means..

[Shan_Evolved]

Also moving the material into the new tank wont do much since it cant even handle the bioload in my current tank. I've already seeded and jumpstarted my sump anyways 2 weeks ago.


Update pics! Should speak for themselves lol

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[AquaticNerd]

Looks like you've gotten pretty close to the "silent" operation you were looking for. Looks great!

One thing to be careful of is how full your sump gets. Ideally you want to leave enough room for turning off the pump to do maintenance / feedings. It looks like you have about 3-4" from the top, so there should be enough room in your sump should the pump turn off, but it's worth testing out and then marking on the sump the "maximum" water line that you can safely have before flooding. You also might want to consider covering the bottom with some thin plywood (like 1/4" or 3/8") and fastening it down for extra storage space. I'm sure you've probably already thought of that, but just throwing the idea out there just in case.

I've also seen folks place their sump in a shallow plastic bin/tote just in case there's any spillage or small leak - the plastic will catch the water and save your beautiful floors and stand.

[Iminit]

Wow nice job!! Very quiet! Looks great! Yes you need a floor on the bottom and maybe some lighting under there. In your overflow box do you have any sponge?

[Shan_Evolved]

This wasnt the final install. I'm moving the whole tank upstairs after it cycles.

As far as the noise - this is before I dialed it down. It is currently ultra quiet. Not that the noise bothered me anyways. I'm used to triple sponges and a HOB waterfall sound. Compared to that, this feels eerily quiet. Hard to imagine there is 1000gph flow in it.

Also the water line only moves up about 2.5 inches after shutting off the pump. I'll mark lines as well as install a light and other QOL improvements later. Just a quick video not the final setup

@Tom - No need for sponges. I'm running 2x large biocenosis baskets. I've already gone through a whole 4ppm of ammonia into nitrates within a week of it cycling just the sump alone. Now I'm letting it cycle to the entire 125g volume

[AquaticNerd]

Glad to hear you've already made plans for a lot of the QOL things and made plans for all the other stuff as well! You're planning everything out and thinking ahead, which is great.

You'd be surprised at how much water volume a little overflow like that can move. I also used to use sponges/HOBs/Canisters back in the day and I can easily remember their noise. Sometimes I still go out just to look and make sure the pumps running it's so quiet.