I use conditioned water all the time and make 100% water changes daily. This applies to adult discus tanks and juvenile discus tanks (and the angelfish tanks as well.) In the winter in Minneapolis, water comes into the house at 35F so it has very high levels of saturated gases. Even going through the heater does not release enough gases and produces the 'bends' when I change water. So everything goes through 24-hours of aeration before use. This is not necessary in the summer, but I do it anyway because the system is already set up and requires no further work.
Making large water changes is not the problem. Not conditioning your water is.
At my age, everything is irritating.
Hypoxemia. When you use straight tap with prime you must make sure that the tank has well circulated and oxygenated water.
Yeah, I've made the mistake of changing too much water at once too many times. Believe me, this isn't the first tank full of discus I've killed, as crazy as that sounds. Before I lost even more fish (around 14) due to my rash decision to change the whole tank water. That loss was even greater than this one in terms of money. I lost around 15 discus at the grand sum of $800 versus $300 in this one. Both losses could be attributed to the same problem- too much water changed at once. I'm kicking myself in the foot for not having learned from my past mistakes. Isn't there a saying along the lines of "repeating the same thing while expecting different results is the definition of insanity"?
I've should've known that such drastic w/c's would've hurt the discus being the sensitive creatures they are. Next time, I'll go with smaller w/c's spread out through the week vs the one huge water change.
Thanks for the condolences. It does really sting to lose the Red Eagle as it sure has nice coloration. The deep scarlet red made all the other color discus pale in comparison. Man, I was hoping to enter it in the NADA 2021 Las Vegas show.
I would use a water barrel in the future for water changes. But I'd don't think I would be that diligent to test the water every time I change water. I can't fathom using the API master kit every time I add water. Do you use the test strips instead?
Yeah, I thought about the possibility of the city "cleaning out their pipes" in the past. I've done large w/c's in the past usually w/o problems, but twice the fish have been completely knocked out afterwards like this case. I wonder if they do add massive doses of chlorine to clean out the water especially with the surge in coronavirus cases here. Btw, I live in San Jose, which has had pretty large number of virus cases. I've been tempted to call the water company to check what's up with the water treatment. But I'm not that diligent to keep track of precise water readings.
I'll definitely contact Kenny when his next shipment's posted; I'm already longing for my discus. But part of me is concerned that I can't keep these fish alive for long. Maybe I should stick to something more hardier such as goldfish.
Thanks for pointing that out. I'd never knew that Safe was that less effective in neutralizing chloramines versus prime. I'd previously thought that too much Safe would be toxic, therefore I would purposely underdose. This probably led to incomplete neutralization of chlorine then. The funny thing is I had all my "sudden deaths" after switching from prime to safe. All just to save a few bucks- which cost me major $$ in the end. I learned an invaluable lesson from this though, that spending more for quality is better- whether it's spending more for Prime or buying from quality suppliers.