Did you kill your first Discus?

[DREW]

Just wondering how many people here failed at their first attempt at keeping discus? I bought four adults cobalts from a local wholesaler I worked at 10 years ago for $15.00 each. I hauled them up to college and tosed them into a 90 gallon tank. For the first few months they ate frozen brine,bloodworms and flake food. I went to cub foods and bought distilled water for them. It was bare bottom tank with potted plants. Well college activities soon took over my intrest and I stopped doing water changes as often. I stopped buying distilled water and using aged tap water. To my surprise all four paired up and soon spawned under this mistreatment. Of course the eggs didn't hatch but I had to be doing something right, right. Well not soon after two of them turned very dark and became very ill. In a matter of 10 days all were dead and my first attempt to keep these beautiful fish ended in failure. Now I'm trying again but this time I'm doing everything slow and hopefully informed thanks to this website and others. In Dec I will be purchasing some adults again. What was your first attempt like?

Thanks
Drew

Not only the first one. May be the first 100. I wiped out completely at least 4 times with over 50 adults each. Mostly due to different committments in life and change in priority . Some caused by disease and stupid mistakes. The last one being the worse was a 4L. muriatic acid felt into my show tank with the top open.

Jimmy.

[keno]

6 years ago the ph had to be 6.5 or under!!! I bought a few jugs of acid buffer so everytime I did a water change i would just throw some buffer into the water after i added straight from the tap. My ph was 8.2 coming out of tap.

So my discus would go from Ph of around 8 to 6 in a matter of minutes. Well you can imagine how they reacted to my stupidity, I was on Discus-l at the time and found lots of help there and soon stopped my bad ways, I even have a pigeon blood from 6 years ago although I have no idea how she survived my learning curve.


Ken

[DarkDiscus]

And the difference between back then and now is that information is much more available and much more specific. Thanks to my friends here and lots of reading, I still have 9 of the first 10 fish I bought and all are happy, healthy and still eating like hogs.

Hopefully they will be breeding soon as well, as my BD pair has been managing more and more eggs with each try and seem to be getting it down.

What I want to do is thank all of you who lost your fish, learned from it and spread the wealth so that people like me and many others here have much more success from the start!

Thanks, guys!

John

[Rick_May]

My first attempt was back in 88, I was getting bored of the same old selection of fish. I'd seen pictures of discus and they always were in nice planted tanks. I thought 'heck I'm pretty good at this fish keeping thing' so I found a place in northern Cal, had them shipped to me and the fun began. I had setup a nice planted 55 gallon tank, lots of plants just like I had seen. The fish were fine for the first few weeks them they began to get sick. (I think I seen this same situation about 100 times on these forums). I tried treating the tank several times with all kinds of LFS recommended meds and they kept getting sicker. I killed off all the plants with these meds. Didn’t replant wanting to get my fish better first. I finally took the sickest put it in a 10 gallon bare bottom and was surprised that within a week it was the largest and fattest out of the group. One of the things I noticed is this fish got most of his food off the bottom. So being a slow learner I put him back in the planted tank and put the next sickest fish into the bare bottom 10 gallon. I thought was just to feed foods that didn’t sink. This worked better but by the time all six fish had gone through the bare bottom 10 gallon the first was sick. During the process I had lost only one of the six I started with. Them I had a stroke of enlightenment ‘why not make the big tank bare bottom?’. Things were great from then on. I always made sure I changed 10% once or twice a week. I kept those fish for over three years before I had to sell them to a LFS because I was in the Navy and was transferring to sea duty.

[DREW]

I think simply's most helpful forum is the disease forum. I have never learned so much reading about the different meds and different methods of treatment. I feel comfortable if something happens the people here will bail me out of trouble. ;D

Drew

[larry lob]

Hi

having kept tropicals for 8 years and then marines for 4 years i thought hmmmmmm discus !!!!!

bad purchasing and silly water mistakes took out the 1st tank of 10 juvis.

such was my disgust i threw the tank into a skip dismantled all my other tanks and took up fishing.

after a year or so i decided i missed my tanks and thought i would not be beaten.

soooooooo i set up all over from scratch and yes lost the next batch of fish.

this being my 3rd attempt and a sucsess as to having kept all fish alive for over a year including bad purchasess and bad travellers.

Larry

[BLUEKNIGHT]

I started with 6 ABD and had them for about 6 months until my brother threw some angels in there lost all of them in a matter of days.

[Kap]

About 3 mos ago I purchased my first 6 discus - 2 each of emerald green, blue diamond, and marlboro red from a local breeder, all about 1" in size. The two greens never thrived among the others. They ate voraciously at 1st then just stopped. Yes, one at a time they turned dark, moped in the corner. The med did not help. I just laid the 2nd green to rest this past week. Others thriving. Have a 55 WITH gravel, power filter, temp 86F, 7 tbs. salt/wc with 50% wc 2x week. Variety of frozen and flake foods. Having been in the hobby all my live with other tropicals of all sorts, these by far have been the greatest challenge! I may end up taking the gravel out but the tanks look so barren. Sly gave me an idea w/his posted pics w/his recent interview - put a picture behind tank! Looks good! So my experience is mixed but 2/3 successful thus far.... any suggestions would be appreciated!

[TheDiscusKid]

Yes I have killed my first discus. Killed probably my first 10. ut with information that there is now and with forums like this one, i am succesful for keeping these fish.

[keno]

Kap, in your shoes I would.

Remove the gravel
Increase water changes to every day with stored water with exactly the same ph and temp of the tank water.
Feed live blk worms from a proven sorce with your other foods.


Ken

[korbi_doc]

Well, started a year ago, lost 90% of the 1st batch; then 60% of the next batch, used that time & experience, read lots & lots of post here & elsewhere, or should I say "elsewhere & here". Feel much more comfortable with what I'm doing now , thanks to all the help from the more experienced of us who have gone through their mistakes & taken the time to help us out. A 90g has 8 fish from the 1ts 2 groups, the 125 has 6 Wattley babies, & 9 Carey's, all growing well exc for 1 melon, but he's cute anyway. A big thanks to all for the help over this time, Dottie : : : : : : :

[EthanCote.com]

Hi Kap,

Once you have detected a problem with your Discus, in your case, they "They ate voraciously at 1st then just stopped. Yes, one at a time they turned dark, moped in the corner. " Then I suggest looking for disease and/or check water condition and food.

There is always a solution to a problem.

As long as you catch it early, normally you can get your Discus back to normal again.

And as a rule of thumb, don't start treatment until you know what the disease is. Also if you are feeding them say 3-4x a days, then perhaps you might need to change your water a bit more than 2X a week. And you do not always need to add salt to your WC, only use salt for stress or to rid your Discus of small fungus infect such as tail or fin rot. Treat salt as a general medication and do not use it unless you have to...same goes for raising your temperature.

Those were just pointers I learned while on Simply.

Wish you luck with the rest of yer fish.


Cheers,

[RAWesolowski]

I assume that any death after 4 years can be labelled as due to "old age", either the fish or for me.

So far, so good. I kept discus for 6 years with two successful breedings back in the late 70s. All the fish lived over 4 years. Out of the current 10, I have one fatality - a suicide. The smallest guy jumped out of the tank when I was changing water. Of course, my back was turned and I was hauling buckets.

By the time I noticed that he was missing, he had turned into a potato chip behind the aquarium and stand....

[EthanCote.com]

Only live up to 4yrs? I thought they can live up to 5-10yrs under ideal condition.

Guess the little bugger got carry away when he was playing hide and seek.


Cheers,

Chi.