Making Mistakes - 55g planted tank (mis)adventure

[Iminit]

I’ve got a thread running in the planted section.https://forum.simplydiscus.com/showt...ed-discus-tank. I started this tank before I joined this site in 2019. Tanks were great till a cross contamination in 21. Wrecked the tanks. Plants don’t take well to meds. That’s all there is to it. So much better bare bottom.

[ravvlet]

I’ve got a thread running in the planted section.https://forum.simplydiscus.com/showt...ed-discus-tank. I started this tank before I joined this site in 2019. Tanks were great till a cross contamination in 21. Wrecked the tanks. Plants don’t take well to meds. That’s all there is to it. So much better bare bottom.

Well heck. They look fantastic. Love the planters you got in there. Can’t believe I spent three hours rinsing and hauling sand. If I had known I could get a look like that with a fraction of the effort I would have! (ETA: sorry, not saying you didn’t work real hard, I mostly just meant I hate messing around with sand)

Ugh. Well. I’m gonna let it sit and stare at it and ruminate for a while again. Based on what I’m seeing in your set ups I can reuse almost all the plants in here besides the hair grass, unless I get real clever somehow. At the very least I can keep the wood, ferns, and put the val in pots. I love the look of the dang sand. I saved a bunch of photos of discus tanks that I thought were pretty and just assumed they were fine because they looked big, and based everything on those.

[fljones3]

Dang it to Betsy. With sand? Gravel? I know it’s the epitome of hubris to still wanna try growing them out when I know I’m doomed to failure. But it’s my favorite part of raising fish and other critters. I blame poultry. Chicken math has ruined me, and now I want to hand raise everything! Don’t ask me about the time I discovered coturnix quail… safe to say everyone on my street was eating quail eggs like it was going out of style.

I guess I could always strip the tank down, but then I’d lose a couple hundred bucks worth of plants - the sand was free, heh. I’m letting them sit in the hot tank for now to see who does or doesn’t melt. Some of the ferns have melted back a bit but are already greening up again, and the buce doesn’t seem to care. Hairgrass was in rough shape when I got it and hasn’t changed, swords, Val and hornwort seem to be thriving.

In my case, the primary cause was the sand. Did much better with daily water changes, bare bottom. I did spray the underside of the tank with a white-beige to give it the effect of sand and remove reflection.
Tom plants his in pots. The driftwood was fine. My discus used the driftwood as territorial markers when I had it. lol.

[LizStreithorst]

It's not the driftwood.

[Iminit]

Lol! They were so much easier!! Plus I can remove them to trim,replant, move to other tanks. So much easier. I put fluval aqua soil in the bottom of the pots with gravel on top. Plants have been growing well. Though I still have problems with sword plants. Another thing I do is the top plants. Pothos,and peace lily do great as does arrowleaf.F761EAE2-0851-4327-8311-4395541A0EAC.jpg

[jwcarlson]

I don't have a huge breadth of experience, but you can't go wrong with bare bottom, sponge filters, beef heart, and lots of large water changes. But you kind of need to really commit to it. If you're married to the tank looking great, then there's nothing wrong with putting a vibrant community of fish in there that will complement your desire for the tank's overall look while having their care better aligned with your goals. A good discus tank looks great too, but perhaps in slightly different ways. You'll notice a lot of the really nice planted discus tanks either contain really badly maintained discus or several thousand dollars worth of adults that someone else grew. You'll also notice that a lot of times those people have had the discus in them for only a short period of time and it should not shock you that they don't typically come back a year later and give an update.

My plan was to try a planted tank with discus initially. That morphed to "just a little sand" and quickly to bare bottom after seeing how big of a headache sand was going to be. It's OK to learn and do better!

As far as the plants go, I hope you have better luck than I have. I don't know what your water is like, but I've struggled with most everything you have planted in my hard water and high temperatures for discus. The anubias seem to do really well though. And pothos rooted in the water are nitrate eating machines and they do not seem to care about the water temp or anything else. I've tried potted plants, but frankly my particular conditions simply don't seem conducive to much in my discus aquarium other than pleco caves, anubias, driftwood, and pothos.

The good news is... I think you're in the right place to be influenced in the correct direction!

[ravvlet]

We have very soft water! Like, ridiculously soft. Actually came here to make a plant update!

So the plants have been in (with the exception of some of the val that I got this weekend) for a little over a week! This is my favorite part of planting a tank - the bit where we see who will “sink” or “swim”. So far I am very pleased with the results.

I was a bit worried about not running CO2, but IMO unless you’re set on doing a thick carpet or something like the Monte Carlo I have in my other tank it isn’t necessary. My nano snowball shrimp tank and my nano betta tank have “easy” plants who are all thriving with medium light, ferts and no CO2.

Back to this guy. I expected and am seeing plant melt. The ferns were first, but they are already bouncing back and are a nice dark green. I expected the hornwort to shock and lose all its filaments or whatever they are called - it did that in my 5.5 and crashed the cycle hilariously - but they are THRIVING! Some are almost to the top of the water line. They seem to love the heat and the light. My light is a 70ish watt full spectrum LED from Hygger, running a 12hr cycle, which is a lot, but I have enough spare floaters for four more tanks so I’ve been adding and removing top cover as needed.

Not everything is going as hoped, of course. My ludwigia is losing some leaves here and there but has kept a nice dark red color; it remains to be seen how it does. The swords and buce are largely unchanged, although I have occasionally had to resettle them due to being run over by my overambitious mystery snails. The money wort seems pretty unhappy but it’s kept its leaves.

The biggest surprise, however, has been the dwarf hair grass. I thought for sure it would melt, but I got three MASSIVELY OVERGROWN bundles of it at PETCO for $6 each so I wasn’t too fussed- and today I am seeing lovely, healthy new bright green shoots. That stuff was 80% brown when I got it and had been languishing in their live plants only display tank for who knows how long, and I had figured it was too far gone and the heat would kill it, but no! It’s very happy looking.

Parameters wise I am dealing with a somewhat expected cycle crash. The load of melted plants plus adding 30 shrimp in one weekend, although their bioload is low, caused a small (< .25ppm) nitrite spike. I dosed with Prime and added a little more Fritz 7 & I am gonna drop another piece of my other established filter’s media in there. The shrimp are behaving normally so far, but honestly most of them were free and I knew throwing them in this early would be a crap shoot. On the one hand, they are doing a fair job of tending to the melting plant bits!

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Here are some of the little orange fellas hard at work on my floating pennywort.

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One of the two resident snails trucking along.

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Ludwigia (at least - pretty sure it’s ludwigia repens high red or something like that). It’s kinda funky but I’ve seen it look worse.

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Glorious hair grass! I swear it was mostly brown before!

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Shrimp onna rock!

[jwcarlson]

I've had great luck cycling with Prime + Stability. And water changes. Even with fish in. The wonky part of cycling with plants is possibly depriving them of nutrients and further stressing them. Then the plants decaying can further create nutrients in the water.

[ravvlet]

I've had great luck cycling with Prime + Stability. And water changes. Even with fish in. The wonky part of cycling with plants is possibly depriving them of nutrients and further stressing them. Then the plants decaying can further create nutrients in the water.

Yup! It seems very danged if you do, danged if you don’t. I’m going to keep testing in the morning and if the nitrite goes higher do a water change, but I don’t want to take out the food for the bacteria in here. I do plan on doing frequent WC in the future no matter what I end up with in here, but I made the mistake of frequent WC on my nano tanks while cycling and it made the cycle take foreeeeever, and melted all my plants. Thankfully they grew back!

Oh! And re: top cover out of tank plants, I can’t do pothos or peace lily because of the cat and parrots, but phalaenopsis orchids can be partially grown in water, and I’ve got a collection of them from getting them on a discount at the grocery store. They’re also not toxic to other pets! I want to get a riparium basket for the non-HOB side and throw in a few of my orchids with a clip grow light and see how they do. I believe since it’s not a truly epiphytic species I will need to sometimes pull the roots up and let them dry, otherwise they’ll rot and regrow over and over. We will see!

[ravvlet]

You know what, I figured I’d take one of the orchids who has been doing poorly and set him up there. He’s got most of his roots in the water with his “air roots” holding him over the lip of the tank. I’ll probably end up just taking a regular orchid basket and attaching it to the lid so I only have a few submerged roots in there.

Also having the worst time with my lids. I have access to a CNC router and a laser cutter so I made custom ones but didn’t account for the heat and humidity from the water and both of them bowed up. I’m hoping to use some aluminum sheet metal to reinforce the edges as soon as I confirm it’s tank-safe!

Edit: wow, ok, aluminum is a big no no apparently. Well dang. Back to the drawing board. Or I can just stop DIYing it and buy a glass lid, haha.

[ravvlet]

Been asking everyone I can find to figure out how I can have my cake and eat it too, and it’s looking grim, haha. (It isn’t that I don’t believe you guys, it’s just the prospect of having to either have a second 55 gal on my floor or tear everything out of this one is beyond daunting).

So far the closest thing I can find to a compromise, is to buy the biggest size I can afford (we bought a thousand-dollar-plus parrot this year, so I’m skating on thin ice with the missus, LOL, although we love and adore our new little guy and he’s buddies with our 35 year old Amazon), and run them in a spare 20g L tank I have for quarantine for at least a week or two, bare bottom, doing daily water changes. I know you should quarantine no matter what anyway.

Golden state does an assorted lot that is 3-3.5, but that seems awfully big to QT in a 20g L, and I’m guessing 3-3.5 is still small enough that they’re going to have a lot of issues in a planted tank?

Ok, enough questions for today. Appreciate y’all taking the time to answer, if you do. Here are some photos from earlier today instead.

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new leaves at the top of my ludwigia repens, which means hopefully it’s happy in there!

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The lily is looking perky too. I remember it being a bit smaller when I tossed him in here, so that’s nice.

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The shrimp are loving all the space also. Watching them swim around has been kind of fun, even though they’re impossible to see at a distance. I need to go pick up some 5.5 gallon tanks while the sale is going at Petco so I can fish out some orange shrimp before I add fish and have a back up colony, haha. I’ve got blues and reds in my goldfish tank who are outbreeding the goldfish’s appetite, and I’ve got a 5.5 dedicated to snowballs. Eventually I’d like to have one 5.5 for each color, so I can just throw the extras into the 55 whenever the shrimp population starts to dip.

[bluelagoon]

Some folks just don't like the answers there are looking for. Some folks take heed to the answers but still there are folks that treat discus as they would the usual mix of other tropical fish. You will need pristine water for discus. A planted discus tank has a lot more maintenance rules than your usual tropical fish tank. Especially, the substrate.

[brewmaster15]

I can tell hobbyists many ways to not keep discus .Ive tried quite a few. Example:This is going back a WAY WAY long time. My very first Discus Tank was a used 45 gal Hex. It was a tank a neighbor gave me and I kept it in my living room. At the time my basement was filled with Salt water 55s and 75s .
The 45 gal hex tank had a deep gravel bed and under gravel filters.. I had used it for various fresh water trops including angels. Some of the older fish keepers probably had hex tanks too. The tank had a piece of driftwood and plastic plants. Yes, it even had a pirate ship that bubbled air. A friend offered me a pair of discus as he was leaving the hobby. .. I cleaned out the 45 g Hex and plopped them in.They barely had room to swim
It was the wrong tank... wrong substrate....wrong everything. The fish lasted awhile and even had fry..which of course died. Not sure how long I had them in that 45 hex before they died... but it was long enough to get the discus bug.. The truth is I failed those Discus as a keeper.I did not keep them with their best interests and needs in mind.

My discus keeping has certainly evolved over the years. I'm one of those people that has to try things myself..doubting Thomas really. I learn best by experimenting... risky way of doing things.

RAVVLET, I can tell you a step by step way to keep discus and end up with very healthy long living Discus. Problem is you won't like it because it focuses on the Discus needs. Your focus is on a planted tank. You obviously love these and are good at them. If you had a 125 gal or maybe even a 75 gal you could probably with compromises make it work. On that 55 gal, its just not going to have a high success rate.

Going back to your intro posts .. my advice was a few discus in a very sparsely planted 55g largely open in the foreground since that was your limit on tanks.. ..go with a few adults same gender. I still think thats your best bet if you really want discus in that tank. My advice though is to not do discus in this tank. .. maybe down the road if you have the ability for a bigger tank you can make it work. I currently have a group of 5 adult discus that are not huge and are older than dirt and they are cramped in a bare 55 gal.

If that planted 55g were mine I would put fish in it that really worked with it. I would hate to see you not have a good experience with discus and we lose you to the hobby for good and contribute to discus having a bad reputation.
Hth,
Al

[LizStreithorst]

I'm afraid that he wants to do what he wants to do. Giving good advice is futile.

[brewmaster15]

I'm afraid that he wants to do what he wants to do. Giving good advice is futile.

Liz I am sure that its not that they dont recognize the advice is good... its really because the advice conflicts with alot of whats been pasted as pics into books and magazines. And on social media where discus are shown in these kinds of tanks frequently... though theres no real log of how well they do long term. People see discus in a certain light and want to.emulate that.

Its really unfortunate but the truth is that Discus being the magestic looking fish they are often used as eye candy in planted tanks that really are not best for their long term health and growth.

It takes alot to make discus in a planted tank work and its just adding a huge handicap if the tank is too small.

Its something that has been an issue forever on forums.

Al