Tell us about yourselves....Please

[danotaylor]

G'day Megan, welcome to SD mate. Love to see some pics of your tanks when you get a chance to post them. I see in your avatar pic you have some domestic discus, are all you discus domestics?

[Iminit]

Welcome Megan!! I too keep planted discus tanks. Looking forward too some pics! Maybe you could start I tank thread.

[Millwright]

Hi my name is Jason. My wife and I live in Brunswick just south of Cleveland Ohio. I am a Millwright/Welder by trade. I have always had a fish tank for as long as I can remember. My first introduction to Discus was in the late 80s early 90s. After moving out of my parents house I took a break for a few years and started a saltwater tank after purchasing my first home many years ago. After setting up a new reef tank in a larger home and having room for more aquariums My wife and I decided a Discus tank would be the next adventure. We decided to go with a 125 planted Tank for the Discus. Since August we acquired a Marineland 125 dual overflow tank, sump, Seltz D 2400 Controllable return pump, Two 36” Finnex Planted+ 24/7 HLC lights, three 300 watt Eheim Jager heaters, Finnex temp controller, Bubble Magnus filter roll large, 100lbs Caribsea Mountain Stone, 60lbs CaribSea Eco-Complete in planted areas, 60lbs Seachem Fluorite Onyx Sand, 65 gallon water storage/aging tank and four 10” city water prefilters (5 micron sediment, GAC, MATRIKX CTO 5 Micron Carbon Block, MATRIKX CTO 1 Micron Carbon Block). The tank has been planted and cycling for a little over six weeks yesterday. Yesterday we also acquired our first ten 3 1/2 inch Discus.
Besides Discus we also have a few other tanks and animals. We have a 90 gallon mixed reef, 60 gallon cube Anemone/Clownfish tank, 50 gallon Seahorse tank, 35 gallon cube planted Ram tank, 2 four gallon planted Beta tanks, 2 Dods, 2 Cats, Veiled Chameleon, Jackson’s Chameleon, Black and White Tegue, and 3 Redfoot Tortoise’s.

[Johnny95132]

Welcome Jason, nice to have you join the forum. The aforementioned 125 gallon sounds like a pretty well thought out setup as you're using equipment from high quality manufacturers like Finnex. Hope to see pictures of your setup, as a 125 planted sounds really nice. You should have no problem raising discus given the other exotic pets you're keeping. I've heard seahorses and chameleons are quite finicky and particular in care requirements.

[peewee1]

Hello all!
I've been a lurker of Simply Discus for some time and felt it was due time I join in the chats and make myself known.
From what I've seen, I am very fond of this site, the community and forums. I am genuinely excited to share in it.
I keep and have kept many types of fish, but the soft water, low pH types such as South American Cichlids are my favorite.
It took me many years before I felt ready to bring home Discus, and it quickly became a wonderful new obsession. There's always something new to learn, and what fascinating, beautiful fish!
I currently have 5 tanks, but only my two largest have Discus. I keep heavily planted tanks, despite the tempting call of the easier BB tank method. I simply can't resist the look of my fish swimming through beautiful plants. And as many of you know there are many pros and cons to any of these methods. My feelings on it are this, if your fish are healthy and you like it, then it's the right setup.
Looking forward to chatting with y'all!

Which discus do you have living in your tanks, Megan?

[Iminit]

Welcome Jason and good luck with your tank. I too am a fan of planted tanks. No fan of flourite and eco-complete is as I like to say completely worthless. Maybe I got a bad batch but I’ve now got 120lbs in a gopher hole . I keep it simple and just use gravel. Where did you get your discus? At that size they are growing so you will need a lot of water changing. Pics will be needed . I’ve also had both of your chameleons. Mated and grew out the veils. Toughest creatures I’ve every owned. Turned black whenever anyone but me went up the their cages. So if your keeping them discus should be fun. But still more work.

[4orceracing]

My name is Mark and I live on 3 1/4 acres in the hinterland behind the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. I've been keeping mainly freshwater fish for most of my life and, whilst I have always been an avid Discus fan, I have been too scared to try keeping based on the cost and horror stories. My plan is to only have a display tank, no plans of breeding at all. I have just bought a tank 3'(L)x1.5'(W)x2.5'(D) and am planning to limit myself to 5-6 fish. Other interests include motor racing (circuit), slot car racing, remote controlled planes and pretty much what ever has a motor.

A couple of queries both setting up the tank, and I am assuming I may read threads that cover this in time, are:

Firstly, we are not on a main water supply, we have just under 14500 US Gal of water storage so all of our water is from rain. We use no chlorine but feed the house through a double filtration system and any water we drink is also run through a ceramic filter. I'll get the water tested by an aquarium but, what issues are we likely to encounter with the constant water changes?

Secondly, how long after setting the tank up should we look at putting fish in? We do intend to buy all fish from the 1 breeder and all at the same time. We are hoping that we do not have to introduce any further fish any time soon.

Thanks for developing a place for someone like me to come and get information. Whilst I'm not new to aquariums, I am very green to Discus... Mark

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Mark and welcome to Simply, if I did the math correctly your tank is about 84 gallons. The first question I would ask myself is do I have enough water for my needs plus the fish. For simplicity if you did 100% water changes daily (said 80 gallons and worst case scenario) is there enough water for household uses plus fish. Remember to plan for the time of year when you have the least rain. You will want to know the TDS of the water in case you need to add minerals to the water.

You may want to research doing a fishless cycle to your tank once it is setup. This will prepare your filters for live fish. I would suggest starting out to do a bare bottom tank to get a handle on the care and needs of discus. You can add other stuff later.
Pat

[4orceracing]

Hi Mark and welcome to Simply, if I did the math correctly your tank is about 84 gallons. The first question I would ask myself is do I have enough water for my needs plus the fish. For simplicity if you did 100% water changes daily (said 80 gallons and worst case scenario) is there enough water for household uses plus fish. Remember to plan for the time of year when you have the least rain. You will want to know the TDS of the water in case you need to add minerals to the water.

You may want to research doing a fishless cycle to your tank once it is setup. This will prepare your filters for live fish. I would suggest starting out to do a bare bottom tank to get a handle on the care and needs of discus. You can add other stuff later.
Pat

Thanks Pat. Fortunately we only have 3 people in the household and have only once gotten to 50% storage. We can also buy water if needed. The water we take from the tank will go through the house bio system and then be used to watering the garden. When we get rain we really get rain with us receiving 20 inches in 6 days last week. Keeps the tanks turning over ensuring good quality water, though it does have tannins from the leaves we can never keep completely off the roof.

You've used a couple of terms I will most certainly need to research. My first task will be to relocate my current tank with tropicals to another room, most likely my office, so I cab put the new tank pride of place. I've admired the Discus for MANY years so am keen to get started, but started right.

Thanks again, I'll start to peruse the forum topics now... Mark

[Patrick M, Bodega Aquatic]

Hello! I used to have 4 discus and am looking to get back into the hobby. How do I make a new thread?

[LizStreithorst]

Click the section you want to start a discussion in, click "Start new thread", title your thread, write what you have to say, then click submit new thread. Welcome to the forum.

[Mshane95]

Hello! My name is Marcus Smith. I’m kinda new to the forum because this is the first thing I’ve posted. I’ve read and learned many things from here. I’ve been keeping fish for about 8 years now and about a year and a half ago I started getting into discus. It’s been a big learning curve and after 3 of my 6 original 2” died I had to bunker down and figure what I was doing wrong. I found that y’all have been so right about DAILY water changes! I had those three discus in a 65 gallon tank for about 4 months and they were doing great, other than one being stunted and not growing any bigger. When the worst happened and my tank started leaking, so I put those 3 in a spare 20 gallon I had til I could re seal the old one. After about two weeks they were back in the 65 gal.... for another month til the tank started leaking again! So I bit the bullet and bought an acrylic 125 gal tank. It took a month for it to get here and when it did I transferred the filter media along with substrate from the 20 gallon to it and within a week my water was just right. So then I bought 4 more 2” discus for the big tank. Been feeding heavily and doing daily water changes of 50 percent. After one of my water changes a few weeks ago I realized the next day that I forgot to turn the filter back on.... so upsetting. Checked water parameters and was .25 ppm ammonia 0 nitrite and 0 nitrate. That reading was three weeks ago and every reading I do now is 0,0,0. I have no BB in my tank and nothing is helping. I’ve been dosing the stability in my tank like crazy and it seems it’s doing nothing. Am I doing too much water changes to get BB started again? I am so lost and upset by this if anyone has any advice I would be honored to hear it. Thanks guys and gals!!

[Iminit]

Ok your first bad reading wasn’t that bad. As long as the filter was wet you wouldn’t have lost all your bb. How are the discus? 50% daily water changes will keep your fish healthy. At 2” they will do well with your water changes. Your going to be changing water for a few month so don’t worry about your cycle. Or put the discus in a smaller tank 30g or bigger and grow them out in that tank while your 125 cycles. In the 30 it will be less water your changing. You could do as much as 25g a day and still be less than half the 125.

[Mshane95]

Thank you so much for the reply! The fish are acting very normal and healthy, just concerned with my water readings as if there is no ecosystem at all in the tank. Do the discus need that if the ammonia is zero? If so how do I get the bb to grow with so many water changes?

[Iminit]

The bb will grow but slowly. The fact that your changing so much water is keeping them healthy. Now as the fish grow you can reduce water changes. When they hit the 4-5” size you can reduce to every other day and when a year old and at the 6+ size you can reduce to every 2 days. That’s where I am in my older tank. My newer tank is at every other day. As you start reducing water changes your bb will grow faster because it’s now established and it’s now getting more to eat. It’s really just a fish in cycle.