illumnae's 600 gallon planted tank

[AquaticNerd]

If you want to try and wean them on a new food, sometimes a little 'tough love' can help.

I used to exclusively feed FDBW, but wanted to add different dry foods to their diet in the cases where I would forget to reorder Al's FDBW in time. Fish can go a long time without food. I think it was around the 4 or 5 day mark consistently feeding flake and pelleted foods that they realized those were yummy options too.

[illumnae]

If you want to try and wean them on a new food, sometimes a little 'tough love' can help.

I used to exclusively feed FDBW, but wanted to add different dry foods to their diet in the cases where I would forget to reorder Al's FDBW in time. Fish can go a long time without food. I think it was around the 4 or 5 day mark consistently feeding flake and pelleted foods that they realized those were yummy options too.

I'm trying to leave that as a last resort as I only just got them to start feeding again after they refused to eat upon arriving at my place and being placed in quarantine. I understand what you're recommending though and will do that when I'm really left with no other choice. I've been hoping that leaving the pellets soaking in bloodworm juice and garlic guard would entice them to take a bite and try it, but no dice so far.

In better news, the display tank got planted today! It doesn't look like much now as the plants have alot of growing in to do but it's great to finally see progress in the display tank. I love the botanical mulch in the sand bed in place of the usual aquascaping gravel for detailing. I think it makes the tank really look more like the flooded forest theme that I was going for.

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Sorry for the cloudy water, the tank was just filled up. Hopefully it will clear overnight.

Now to wait another 2 weeks for the plants to settle in before either adding more plants or finally adding the fish! Hopefully the discus will be on pellets by then.

[danotaylor]

The tank looks great!
If pellets is your ultimate goal as the primary food the discus really need to be eating them consistently and prior to settling on the bottom before going into your beautiful display as there are so many crevices and places for uneaten pellets to settle unseen and spoil your water quality. It’s also a difficult task in such a tall tank to locate and remove detritus from amongst the rock work and dense plant groups.

[illumnae]

The tank looks great!
If pellets is your ultimate goal as the primary food the discus really need to be eating them consistently and prior to settling on the bottom before going into your beautiful display as there are so many crevices and places for uneaten pellets to settle unseen and spoil your water quality. It’s also a difficult task in such a tall tank to locate and remove detritus from amongst the rock work and dense plant groups.

Thank you for the advice! The aim is to have the discus fully on pellets and gobbling them from the water column as you said. The aim in the tank is to have the flow direct the pellets and detritus to the open sand area where the botanicals would have cultivated enough microbial life to act as detritivores. I also dose sludge eating bacteria every 2 weeks to help with the breakdown of detritus. Lots of XL amano shrimp and neocaridinia shrimp will be going into the tank next week to establish themselves as waste consumers as well. The discus will definitely eat a fair number of the neocaridinia shrimp but I'm hoping that the plants, hardscape and 3d background will allow them to breed sufficiently to maintain a decent population. The XL Amano shrimp should be too large for the discus to comfortably eat - I successfully kept them with my wild discus in the past. Tankmates also include bottom feeders like corydoras and dwarf cichlids to eat leftover pellets.

[brewmaster15]

This is just me here but if that was my tank I would not feed pellets at all. You would be better off sticking with frozen foods and get them on freeze dried and maybe try flakes.. Discus really dont eat pellets from the column.. it just sinks too fast. Flakes,frozen and freeze dried will say suspended for a very long time.

If the intent is to feed the clean up crew..pellets are fine but if you want to feed the discus pellets work best in bare bottom tanks.

[illumnae]

This is just me here but if that was my tank I would not feed pellets at all. You would be better off sticking with frozen foods and get them on freeze dried and maybe try flakes.. Discus really dont eat pellets from the column.. it just sinks too fast. Flakes,frozen and freeze dried will say suspended for a very long time.

If the intent is to feed the clean up crew..pellets are fine but if you want to feed the discus pellets work best in bare bottom tanks.

Unfortunately this isn't possible for me. I run an overflow system into the sump and given the size of the tank the combined flow is approximately 20,000 litres per hour (it sounds like a lot but it's less than 10x turnover hourly). Any fish food that doesn't sink immediately goes straight to the overflow and into the sump where it's caught by the filter wool and rots till the weekly wool change. I've even had to change pellet brands because the old brand I used to use changed formulation and about 20% of the pellets didn't sink fast enough. I've always used to feed my discus pellets when I kept them previously and the wilds actually seemed to enjoy pecking them out of the sand.

[brewmaster15]

Unfortunately this isn't possible for me. I run an overflow system into the sump and given the size of the tank the combined flow is approximately 20,000 litres per hour (it sounds like a lot but it's less than 10x turnover hourly). Any fish food that doesn't sink immediately goes straight to the overflow and into the sump where it's caught by the filter wool and rots till the weekly wool change. I've even had to change pellet brands because the old brand I used to use changed formulation and about 20% of the pellets didn't sink fast enough. I've always used to feed my discus pellets when I kept them previously and the wilds actually seemed to enjoy pecking them out of the sand.

Thats too bad but I see the problem. Have you tried Forrests pellets?

[illumnae]

I don't think Forrest sells into Singapore despite being just an hour drive across the border. I pmed him on Facebook twice in the past couple of months to try and purchase discus from him but he was reticent the first time (and never got back to me after promising to check on sensing the discus to me) and just totally ignored me the second time. I met him almost 20 years ago in Singapore as we had a couple of common friends back then (and that's why we happened to ge friends on Facebook too).

I'm currently using Northfin cichlid formula 1mm pellets, and also have some leftover Northfin veggie formula 1mm pellets leftover from my Tanganyikan omnivore cichlid days. I have also had good experience with Fluval Bug Bites previously with wildcaught South American cichlids.

[illumnae]

2 of the discus in the top tank ate pellets today and 1 in the bottom tank seemed interested but I didn't see for sure that pellets were consumed. I've been feeding exclusively pellets for the past 2 days.