Sump design help for a 100gal

[Arcturus]

Hello. So, I have a 100gal project, and I want it to have a very good sump to minimize the % of water changes. A guy I know has a 100 gal with 6 wild discus and other fish and uses an FX4 and Fluval 307 cannisters and does 10-15% WC weekly. I want to top that with sump filtration, if you can provide some ideas. I wanna keep it at 20% max weekly. Reason is, I travel a lot and need a cleaning lady to do the WC. 20% of 100gals is 20gals. It would take 2 hours for the RO to produce those 20 gals. Anything more than that I don't think the cleaning lady could wait that long.

[danotaylor]

No offense but your water change is really not suitable for discus. Biological filters do not remove nitrates, they create them. Discus don’t like nitrates persistently >10. A 20% weekly water change will have your nitrates constantly climbing and your discus will suffer. Your water change schedule needs to mitigate the nitrate production in your tank for the discus to be healthy. If you started w adult discus and every other week could do a large 90% water change to bring your nitrates right back to near zero it may work. Unless your source water is poor quality you actually don’t need RO, even for wild fish, but especially domestics and they are very tolerant of even high pH & high TDS water. The big things that harm discus is ammonia & nitrite which the biofilter deal with, but also nitrate which can only be removed effectively by water changes, not the filtration.
Your cleaning lady might wait if she’s paid by the hour
Hope this helps!

[Iminit]

Lol I’m going to be blunt! Why have discus? Really the cleaning lady? This can’t be for real.

[Arcturus]

I get it. Yes. My ph is 7.8 ppm 175. Do you think that would work? It's just that every year I spend 3 months away....

[jwcarlson]

I think you're going to have really bad luck with discus and a 3rd party doing the water changes. Not to mention not being able to observe them for that time. I think I'd save the cleaning lady some time and skip out on them. 20% a week is probably setting you up for failure anyway.

[Arcturus]

If I can use tap water I could do 50% WC, but like I said, would have to keep them fed with automatic feeders and 2xweekly supervision from the cleaning lady for 3 months Would that work?

[Charlyc11]

If I can use tap water I could do 50% WC, but like I said, would have to keep them fed with automatic feeders and 2xweekly supervision from the cleaning lady for 3 months Would that work?

I am sorry if I am blunt but I guess you haven't taken the time to read some of the threads on this site. If you did you would have had your answer a long time ago and give up the project. As far as can tell this is not a real conversation. My take.

[mleibowi]

Oof… if you are a newbie, discus can be a little unforgiving as you learn how to care for your discus. Even the most experienced discus keepers have crashes, cross contamination etc… I’ve left mine for 10-14 days but that’s after 3 years experience. I wouldn’t think of doing that from the get go, personally let alone months at a time. Consider a planted community tank! Cardinals, rummy nose, corys, loaches with lots of plants would look very nice and you can leave them and not worry that your $$$ fish are dying.

[Arcturus]

I do have a planted tank with tetras and plenty of tank experience, even reef tanks. If the feeding is automated and checked 2x week and 50% WC weekly, what can go wrong?

[jwcarlson]

what can go wrong?

Plenty.