illumnae's 600 gallon planted tank

[illumnae]

I've been fishkeeping since I was a really young kid in the 80s and fell in love with discus since I first saw one in a book when I was 9 - I think it was Bernd Degan's book where I saw my first discus. I even visited a local discus breeder's farm (I'm from Singapore and this breeder bred beautiful turquoise discus and imported wild cardinal tetras) when I was 11 to interview him for a school project that I did that year. Discus is my first love in fishkeeping but I never dared to keep them at that time due to the literature reporting them to be super delicate, plus I was never allowed a large enough tank by my parents.

Fast forward almost 15 years and I finally had a 120 gallon tank to set up and of course a discus planted tank is what I opted for, stocked with domestic discus from local breeders. For a first timer that tank went surprisingly successfully and 2 of the discus even paired up and laid eggs regularly every couple of weeks. The fry never survived though. Another couple of years passed and I got married, and my wife's wedding present to me was another 120 gallon tank at our new apartment. That became a high tech planted tank with wild heckel discus which began my journey into wild discus for the next few years. After I lost the heckels due to the local waterworks dumping too much chemicals into the water during the time that I was doing a water change, I got in touch with Hudson who was interested in breaking into the Singapore and Asian market, and introduced him to a local importer. From that, I set up the 2 tanks that have been my favourite tanks in my memory - a 120 gallon Curuai blue/brown tank and a 240 gallon Nhamunda heckel tank, both done biotope style:

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After these tanks I moved away from keeping discus and since ventured into keeping other South American cichlids, marine fish and corals and most recently Tanganyikan cichlids. During covid I moved to a larger house which enabled me to set up a man cave with a 600 gallon display tank that has a fish room behind it containing the remote sump of the display tank, working space and a rack system of 6 40 gallon tanks to act as quarantine tanks or project tanks for breeding of dwarf cichlids (my wife has since commandeered 2 of the 6 tanks for her own use - keeping ranchu goldfish and her own planted tank). You will see wild discus in the picture below but that didn't work out and I instead kept other South American cichlids like altums, eartheaters and pike cichlids in that incarnation of that tank, followed by Tanganyikan cichlids.

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Towards the end of last year, I decided that Tanganyikan cichlids just weren't fun for me and I made the decision to switch back to keeping discus again later on this year. Fortunately or unfortunately, the display tank developed a fault where the back glass separated from the top bracing (tank maker didn't do the silicone work well enough when building the tank) and thus had to be drained and repaired. This brought forward my plan and now that the tank has been repaired, I am embarking on my new journey to return to my first love of keeping discus again.

I'm starting this tank journal to document and share my journey with everyone here and hopefully get good advice along the way as well so that this tank can be successful in the long run!

[brewmaster15]

Excellent Background info! Thanks for sharing! Those were some very nice fish and tank set ups you had there. Looking forward to the next stage. Oh and I have to commend you on the setup in that last pic.. Particularly Intrigued and jealous of the Chair and Fan set up in front that tank. I'd likely not ever the house.

[gimaal]

Excellent Background info! Thanks for sharing! Those were some very nice fish and tank set ups you had there. Looking forward to the next stage. Oh and I have to commend you on the setup in that last pic.. Particularly Intrigued and jealous of the Chair and Fan set up in front that tank. I'd likely not ever the house.

Really! I'd never leave the chair! What a fabulous set-up. Congratulations!

[AquaticNerd]

Like Al, I'm also looking forward to seeing the next stage that you've got planned. If I had a setup like yours, I don't think I'd ever be able to leave that chair.

[jpm995]

Fantastic setup. Who needs a tv when you can look at that?

[illumnae]

Thank you everyone for your kind words! My man cave was many years in the making and very much the culmination of my dreams. It is actually a staircase landing that I sealed up into a small room by putting up glass panels and a sliding glass door so that I could install air conditioning (Singapore is a really hot country - summer all year around). When my wife and I were looking for a house to purchase and we were viewing this one, I immediately zeroed in on this staircase landing and visualized having my man cave right there, knocking down the wall and installing a display tank there and converting the bedroom behind the wall into a fish room. We went on to view many other houses after this one, but eventually came back to purchase this one, thanks in no small part to the perfect layout.

As the tank is too tall to properly scape without climbing in and given that I'm way too old and overweight to be climbing in and out of the tank myself, I engaged a local aquascaping company to scape the tank for me. The brief that I gave to them was that I wanted a scape primarily of vertical wood and plants in clusters with an open sand foreground scattered with woodland mulch - the look would be what I imagine an Amazon tributary river would look like just when wet season starts. I showed them some example tanks I found on Google and YouTube, with the most famous being Takashi Amano's home altum angelfish tank (but with less plants and more open areas). This is what they have come up with so far and I am quite happy with it:

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They fixed up the hardscape last week and came again to fill the soil substrate today. The plan moving forward is to allow the wood to soak fully and expel all the "new wood fungus" over the next 2 weeks before coming back again to plant the tank and have it finally ready to be stocked. I'll be cycling the tank over the next 2 weeks with the aid of the ammonia released by the soil substrate and Fritzyme 7 to have it ready for stocking once it has been planted.

I need some advice on which type of discus to choose as the star attraction of the tank, but I'll post my dilemma and thought process in another post. As you may have realized by now, I tend to be rather verbose in my postings.

[illumnae]

My initial plan for this tank was to finally keep the third species of wild discus that I haven't kept before - green discus. My friend who's an importer of fish managed to find out that Aquarium Glaser had some Tefe green discus available. However, after much back and forth, we have concluded that it's really hard to find 25-40 pcs of green discus that are nicely spotted, properly round and not stunted in size (large eye to body ratio). Amongst the 100+ pieces of green discus that we saw videos of, there just weren't enough show quality pieces to fill my tank. If my display tank was 120-240 gallons like at my previous apartment it would have been perfect but unfortunately it seems that this isn't meant to be.

My original backup plan if I couldn't get green discus (which I now can't as explained above) was to keep domestic discus instead. Albino red discus were a must and I was thinking of having albino panthera or some other form of albino spotted as well. The main reason I picked albino variants was firstly because I was advised that I would need to do so to avoid having constantly black or peppered discus in a planted tank, but also secondarily because I do not want to deal with the hassle of having breeding fish in my display tank. I have read that albino discus are harder to breed and are bad parents generally so even if they did breed I wouldn't have to deal with any baby fish.

However a friend told me yesterday that even if my fish didn't breed or successfully hatch/raise any fry, even having pairs form amongst the group would cause havoc in my tank as the pairs would attack all other discus and basically the group of discus would not look nice as a display feature. So even with albino discus I would still face the same problem and so domestic discus would generally be a bad idea in my tank as domestic discus pair alot more easily than wild discus.

This leaves me with only the option of keeping heckel discus in my tank as Rio Negro heckels are readily available, and heckels don't have the same problems with shape and patterns that green discus do. Heckels are also generally much harder to pair in home aquaria and would never breed in typical community aquariums as they need rather specialized blackwater conditions to do so.

So I just wanted to ask the advice of more experienced folks here - are heckels really my best/only choice given my desire for a peaceful community tank with discus as the feature fish, or am I still able to keep the more strikingly coloured domestic discus (whether albino or otherwise)?

[Discus Fever]

Fantastic setup. Who needs a tv when you can look at that?

That is his TV, and I can watch those reruns over and over again. Great setup love the way you have it set up. Like everyone else looking forward to seeing more pictures down the road.

[gimaal]

I cannot speak to the domestics--I've never kept anything but wilds or F1 wild discus-- but I believe greens would make for the most stunning display in this wonderful aquarium. You say there were not enough quality greens to fill your tank. Why not get the ones you liked and add more over time? Take a look at some of the Tefe Green threads on this forum to see some spectacular large schools of greens for inspiration. I love Heckels but they are more subdued and I don't think they will dazzle the way the greens will. This is such a magnificent naturalistic setting. It just seems right that wilds should inhabit it.

[danotaylor]

Beautiful tank. What are the dimensions?

[Second Hand Pat]

I would do wild greens also. Not every fish has to be "show quality". They are after all "wild fish" and larger eyes is part of being wild. Also there is an nice variety amongst wild greens. They do not all have to be RSGs.
Pat

[brewmaster15]

So I just wanted to ask the advice of more experienced folks here - are heckels really my best/only choice given my desire for a peaceful community tank with discus as the feature fish, or am I still able to keep the more strikingly coloured domestic discus

You will run into breeding issues with most discus in that tank.. however its also a big enough tank where you should be okay. The issue is really if you are looking for that "classic" look of wilds swimming back and forth in a group. .. that look really isnt natural thoug unless thet are feeling threatened. What you will most likely see is discus taking up territory as cichlids do. That tank is large enough for a pair or two discus breeding without too much disruption. If that risk is ok with you then any discus is suitable and its up to your tastes.

If you want no breeding for fear of disruptions then Heckels are your best bet for the reasons you stated. Least likely to breed.

[illumnae]

Thank you everyone for your feedback and suggestions. I really wanted to make the wild greens happen, to the extent that I was going to book an impromptu flight to Hong Kong to bring back a batch of wild greens in my luggage to add to the numbers when I heard that a shipment had arrived there. However after a long discussion with my importer and more importantly with my wife, I have decided to pull the plug on that dream and go with domestic discus instead. I have confirmed and put a deposit on a batch of 20 jumbo sized albino leopard snakeskin and ring leopards that should be arriving next week. I just cleared 2 tanks in the fish room over the weekend to quarantine them when they arrive. After this batch goes into the display tank, I will get another 20 albino red covers into quarantine. I'd have liked for everything to go into the display tank at the same time to minimize the risk of cross contamination and aggression, but unfortunately I simply don't have enough available tanks to quarantine all 40 discus at the same time.

Here's the specs of the tank, I realized I haven't posted them yet:

Tank: 7 x 3 x 4 ft custom glass aquarium (19mm glass with all around bracing) with an external overflow box utilizing beananimal piping
Filtration: 6 x 2 x 1.5 ft remote sump filled with about 70 litres of Sera Siporax
Return pumps: 1x Abyzz A200 (running at 65%) + 1x Sicce Synchra HF 12.0 (my other Abyzz has been giving off a rattling sound so I'm going to send it for servicing. I installed the Sicce until the other Abyzz is fixed but it actually produces higher flow than the Abyzz at 65%)
Lighting: 3x Chihiros Vivid II 10th Anniversary Edition
Aquarium Computer: Neptune Apex EL
UV: Oase Vitronic 36W with a Sicce Synchra 5.0
Decor: Aquadecor 3D background, spider wood, granite rocks, ADA Amazonia II, decorative sand

Any other details that anyone would like to know?

[illumnae]

Here's a sneak peak of some of the discus I ordered, sent by the breeder:



And here's the rest:

[mleibowi]

Just beautiful! My upgrade was a 55 gal as a in the early 90’s to a 120 in 2021 to now a 150 gal in 2023. I look forward to seeing the evolution of your tank. In the meantime- I’d love to see your fish room and sump for the 600!