Adam Discus Tank

[Iminit]

Anubias looks great! Nice mother plant and from your pics it’s growing nicely. Thing is anubias are slow growers and the leaves may take weeks to reach full size.

[brewmaster15]

Adam do you use uv?

With all.the traveling You do maybe you should set up a video cam on the tank for a live stream... almost as good as being there!

[Adamski77]

Tom… thanks for advice… patience might be a simple answer.

Al… I don’t use UV… just simple LED lamp. It’s for aquariums but nothing special I think.

And webcam clearly a great idea… will get something set up once back in Shanghai.

[Adamski77]

Crap... I didn't realize it's already has been one month since last update. Even though really busy with work these days I do maintain iron discipline around the tank. Everything per schedule and some progress in certain areas.
- algae continue to be a problem but after knocking down the light to 30% intensity I think I'm on the way to somewhere. Problem seems to be smaller though still exists
- one of the reasons for algae growth was filter with activated carbon... at least from my assessment. What lead me to think this way was that algae growth was only happening on one side of the tank... the other side had some but very minor. The only differences between two sides was (1) feeding on one side and (2) outflow for filter with activated carbon. Yes, I know and remember... you told me to kill this filter long time ago but really forgot I have it in all the recent racing in work. So I changed this filter to regular with ceramics promoting bacteria... still feeding where I used to and problem seems to be dramatically smaller. Hence my conclusion
- assassin snails are gift from God . I put only 4-5 in my 80G tank and had to wait 2-3 weeks but they ate absolutely every one of pest snails I had in this tank. There is ZERO (and I mean zero) of them in the tank right now and funny enough assassin snails themselves maintain population of around 10 with weaker ones/smaller ones just being eaten.

Other than that discus are growing... one of them much faster... probably crossed 5 inches at this stage... than I have middle of the pack with 5 of them approaching 5 inches and couple that are probably half an inch behind. But all good, happy and most importantly healthy (knock the wood).

Some phots attached though I still didn't learn how to do justice to my fish and tank. Something to learn...

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[Iminit]

Looking great! Keep up the good work!!

[fishy_jim]

AWESOME tank Adam !! I love reading these journals people post. I soon will be posting picks and what on my journal I stared. My tank is being delivered tomorrow and I feel like a kid at Christmas time. Keep up the good work - your fish look awesome.

[Adamski77]

thank you... I saw your thread as well... looking forward to seeing your set-up. It does feel like X-mas

[Discus Fever]

Keep up the great work Adam, everything looks great I have to agree with AL every time I see your tank my eyes go to the reddish color discus.

[Red Eye.]

great post...New from the UK.....looking for tefe greens.

[ravvlet]

I love those stones in there! What are they?

[Adamski77]

I love those stones in there! What are they?

Honestly... no idea. I live in China... a lot of things I'm buying it's more a matter of look and feel... these just matched the look I wanted to get for my tank. They seem to be some form of basalt... most importantly don't impact water parameters, which I had to test as well as I was setting this up. There is tones of great stuff you can get here... but a lot of purchasing comes to hit one/miss few.

[Adamski77]

Keep up the great work Adam, everything looks great I have to agree with AL every time I see your tank my eyes go to the reddish color discus.

These red two are shaping much better... much less "beaky". Funny enough I pulled all of them from the same tank and in hatchery all of them did look so much alike. Look at it now!

[Red Eye.]

Welcome everybody! This thread will be documenting progress on my discus tank.

First a little bit of a catch up... as I've been having this for 3 months by now. My set-up is quite primitive comparing to what I can see around but I think it's doing fairly well considering conditions, time constraints and other circumstances.
Tank is tailor made as it's in my office so I had the space that I had. 180cmx60cmx40cm (width of 40cm was all I had). So roughly 400+ liters. Running two filters... canister (2400L/hour) + one much smaller hang on filter with activated carbon inside. Idea was to make the water circulate the way I wanted so outflows from the filters working towards two opposite sides of the tank. Light 2 LED lamps (100W each) running currently at 55%. I'm still in the process of fully balancing the tank so this is not necessarily final value. Two heaters (300+200W).
I'm not giving you details about the brands as I'm Polish guy living in China so brands would mean nothing to you ... but all in all the stuff functions well and it's reliable. Here are some photos from the time I was setting it up.

tbc...

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Weekly update... will treat is as my journal here... have my notes on paper... but you never know with paper

Journey continues in positive spirit. Fish seems to be happy and growing nicely. Have this one that is actually focused solely on eating... looking actually quite funny when all other fish are fighting and chasing each other, and he/she just doesn't budge... this one grows much faster than others.
Plants are doing fine as well. I think I'm getting into right light conditions finally... though based on all indications that I read this seems so little. I have only around 110W for 80G tank so kind of 1.5W/gallon where indications are 2-5W/gallon.

Couple of "issues" as we moved through this week:
- snails... not too many but showed up. First of all smashing them manually against the walls, secondly cut on food little bit (feel like fish barely eating anything), thirdly implemented third substrate vacuuming. Also purchased assassin snails... they are on the way and will put them for now in my quarantine tank... but planning to use if necessary
- nitrates... on Wednesday morning got some smudge of pink on my test... indicates value <5 so nothing major but they did show up. Read a lot and seems to be "natural" for planted tank so will just keep my routine going and see how this develops. Obviously immediately tested for ammonia... this is zero.

Current schedule:
- Tuesday night... water change (25-30%) + vacuuming + cleaning up the front glass (~1.5h)
- Thursday night... vacuuming (15-20 mins)
- Saturday morning... water change (25-30%) + vacuuming + cleaning up all glasses (~1.5h)
- Feeding twice a day (morning/evening) with selection of brine shrimps, krill, blood worms, white worms and beef heart (this one they are getting only Friday night before Saturday morning water changes as beef heart quite messy).

Within this week changed filtering floss in my activated carbon filter... doing this once a month and changing activated carbon every couple of months.

And few photos with my pupils

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Well I’ve got no clue what the benefits are of those cages? This is the rhizome on anubiasAttachment 136449 the long 1/2” thick thing looks like a branch. Yes those are roots coming off of it. On the bottom it’s attached to a rock.Attachment 136450 on this one it’s attached to driftwood with a tyrap. This is the way anubias grow. Your way that rhizome will rot.
Now here’s my big question. Have you ever done a planted tank? We know you’re new to discus but if also new to planted tanks you will have problems. Both types of tanks (planted and discus) are tough to keep tanks. Both together require lots of time (think about 6 hrs a week) to keep clean and healthy. Aquarium soil does tend to leach ammonia into the tank for a good while. Most plant keeper won’t add fish for a few months after using aquasoil. Now discus need very clean tanks. So at every water change (every 3 days) you need to also vacuum the substrate. All your waste will be in the substrate and it needs to be removed. That’s why most discus keepers go bare bottom. Much easier to remove waste. Discus =big fish = big waste. Yes these pictures of discus in planted tanks all over the net look great. Many are just set up for the picture and discus returned to their tanks. Those that keep discus in planted tanks do a lot of work or keep very few discus in large tanks. Like 2 in a 125.

Top advice Tom..... I have made the mistake of discus in a big planted tank....will not go down this road again.....as much as I like planted tanks....as a family man with a manual job I just couldn,t do it all...

[Adamski77]

Things are rolling slowly forward… no major events… well, except for one fish that decided to go on a diet… rest is working fine. Feel my tank is really fully cycled now… took actually quite a long time… but as it happened all things balanced out. Algae is almost no problem anymore (knock the wood)… water continue to look super clear and fish are growing though different individuals at quite different rates. Had the biggest one I mentioned before… he kind of slowed down now but another one is catching up quickly. Very interesting to watch them grow. I also think they are becoming less and less “beaky” (obviously we all think about our fish better than they are). Few pictures from Friday.

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[brewmaster15]

Adam,
All looks great. Looking at your fish I see alot of males.. not sure i have seen females.. do you have any you think are female or have your seen any spawning behavior?