what is so hard about keeping plants?

[SuAsati]

Take BIG fish quit feeding. months later it goes shrink.
now feed again it grow full size.
Give good food and good water fish grow full size plant
or no plant. i grow 7inch fish with one a
month water change. feed 2 time a day sometime I forget.

[digthemlows]

I'm just getting back into all of this, but 10/15 years ago I kept 6 discus in a 55 gallon with a small canister filter and an undergravel filter with very large gravel, a big lava rock in the center and swords, that grew and grew. I did 20% water changes once a week........The discus were probably 5.5" to 6" after 2 years and I ended up with 2 breeding pairs that on the second round gave me 91 babies that made it to the size of a quarter (after which I sold them because it was more work than I was looking for) I kept 8 of the babies and raised them to about 5" with water changes every 30days or so and never had problems. Now I'm sure I was somewhat lucky, and my tap water at the time came out at 6.4 for PH........I also didn't have the internet to get good advice from and I'm sure things would have been easier, bigger, and brighter.......

[GrillMaster]

I had to post this in regards to Polor Bear, Jeffery, an Larry's comments.

If you have a very large tank planted heavily with a minimal amount of discus that are eating veraciously. You can actually feed the crap out of em (4-6 times a day) an feed the plants at the same time dosing absolutely nothing.

This being said, I am talking about 1 discus per 20 gallons with alot of plants. Alot of plants being the key. The food an waste will fert the plants, an 50% WC's once a week will keep the N03, an P04 down.

So in retrospect you are all right. It boils down to the tank size, the fish load, the plant load, an even the lighting.

Smaller fish tanks just dont have this luxury. Waste builds up just to quick for this to be a reality.

The pic of my 75G tank is fairly heavily planted. I have a huge fish load in it at the moment. The balance in this tank is great. I feed heavily, an do not dose anything. I dont have discus in this tank though. Would I put 5-6 juvies in it? Yes I would, if they were the only ones in it with maybe a little school of neons or whatever. They however would outgrow the tank pretty quick.

Now lets say ya have a 90G tank...This scenario would work great IMO. The plants are gonna get fed, and the discus have room to grow.

As long as there is a maintained balance in a heavily planted tank, growing juvies in it should work out ok as long as the tank is large enough to support both the plants and the Discus...

tc
Mark

[GrillMaster]

I guess I forgot the pic...