How many in 135 litre tank

[troy]

Hi

It is time to rearrange my fish and tanks as i am getting too many discus.
Wanting to know how many discus i can put in my small tank of 135L and will they reach full size in this tank , the discus are young and about 4-5 inches, will be doing daily water changes.

Troy

[Luca]

Hey Troy, I will gladly take some off your hands if you're getting overwhelmed What kind of discus ar they? do you have pics of them?

4-5inches is quite large isn't it? That equals 10-12.5cm, maybe you ment 4-5cm??

Your 135L tank = 34.615384615384615384615384615385 gallons (actual calculator result of division of 3.9L to a gallon)

so if the rule is 10gallon per adult discus, then you could keep twice as many if not more younger ones in there till they get bigger.

Do you have a storage tank to do water changes with or does it buffer ok by itself?

It's ultimately up to you how many to put in there but i guess you would sacrifice growth with over-crowding. I'm keen to hear other opinion however....

[troy]

Hi Luca

The fish size are in inches , i am trying to see if people can grow there discus to full size in a small tank and how many they put in those tanks . I grew 4 discus in this tank which are now 6 inches, did 30% water changes approx 3- 4 times a week.

[Luca]

Riiiight. Yeah i think it's a matter of regular water changes to keep the water quality high but there must be some experts out there with some experience/ideas???

So you don't have any juveniles for sale? I actually don't have any yet, i still need to buy a bare bottom tank to grow them out in and get rid of the disease in my 70gallon planted.

I'm thinking about using Metro on the tetras to see if that works. I know it attacks parasites that most other meds can't and i've tried most of those meds! What's the name of the product that you buy? I need to see if we have it up here.

Thanks,
Luca.

[troy]

Hi Luca

Sorry no babies for sale yet, i just last month gave the last of my babies away , did not sell them as they were inbreed , 60% of them looked ok though. In a few months my other fish will be ready to breed and will pair them up with my other discus.

Sorry to hear you still havn't got rid of that parasite, have you tried formalin baths .
Does this parasite burrow into the the fish?
Metro i use is called Metronidazole from the vets.
If you cannot destroy this parasite then i would start over and disinfect eveything. it sounds like you need to do this to your tank and gravel anyway even if you cure your fish as the parasite can be protected by mulim and meds will not reach them .

[Smokey]

Luca - are you sure it is a "parasite" ???
Please be carful; when medicating, for something you are not 100% sure of. Perhaps it is a bacterial infection .

Disease are difficult to diagnoise -- most times we only see the secondary infections.

If " ANY " fish has open wounds/sores - DO NOT USE FORMALIN !!!


Smokey

[Smokey]

Troy- reguarding the # of discus in a 135L tank ; two male/feamle.

As fry -perhaps as many as 15. W/C - daily.

Mind you - this advice is only for raising heatlhy discus.
Other wise - pack the tank as tight as possible. who will care??

Smokey

ps - discus live in a flowing river; not a sleaue!

Take care Troy
Good luck.

[Luca]

1stly: smokey, thanks for your concern, much appreciated I am careful with the medicines i do use. I don't have the intention of using formalin because it doesn't like it would cure the disease. And thanks for the pointer, it does have an open wound in the tail so i definitely won't use it.

umm i don't know what the parasite would look like troy if it was digging in?? the parasite is black (which baffles most people straight away) and spreads over the body and tail fin, eventually eroding the tail (which i assume is a secondary infection/effect of the parasite.
i don't even know that it is a parasite! i have thought about taking them out, treating the whole tank and see what happens. how do you suppose i treat the entire tank though? It is a large 70gallon planted. Perhaps potassium permanganate?

Troy, next time your fish pair up give me a bell via email and we can sort out transportation later Hopefully by then the parasite/bacterial infection/fungus is sorted!

Smokey: if it is bacterial, how do u suppose i treat it? i have tried a few meds but they're commercial and have proved useless. I'm open to suggestion. Another thing that is recent is the mouth goes all dark (like the rest of the parasite on the fish's body and tail fin). It appears to be cyclic. i have lost one lemon tetra to it now and the next one is showing exactly the same characteristics.

Cycle: small dark patches -> increase -> rot tail fin -> mouth darkens -> belly swells (no.1 reason for me thinking it's parasitic) then fish explodes and is found belly up (and has probably spread the parasite further)

sorry for the long post, any help would be appreciated, thanks

[troy]

Luca

I have had a similar problem when i first started in fish , i bought an angle with black specs which ended the fish and spread to others causing some of the problems you mentioned , nothing cured the problem not metro ,formalin or a couple of others i tried. Belly swelling sounds bacterial, but i am no disease expert. Have you posted in the sickness area to find help. There is a med for internal bacteria problems. I would be pulling my tank down if no meds work and use bleach to sterilize it.
Tell me about you tank set up , how long has it been running , water changers , amount of food and fish etc , would be interesting to know.

[Luca]

Hey Troy, I seem to have finally defeated the parasite/bacteria more by chance than anything else! I am still hesitant to say i have defeated it but anyway,

one lemon tetra had it then burst, then it spread to another lemon, this one i removed to a bucket and treated in isolation with Malkon. It died a nasty death a few days later appearing to also rupture. But now i haven't seen any remnants of the disease and i bleached the bucket (and heater/airstone that i had in there)

There were Rummies, Cardinals and Glowlight tetras in big tank but i removed them to try to save them from the disease. This appeared to work and i have now returned them (fingers crossed i don't see any more signs)

[troy]

Good to hear Luca.
I have never heard of fish exploding before , sounds bad .
Hope all continues to go well .