Is my planted tank ok for Heckel?

[bearnuc]

it's been a year since i set up this tank and waited for shipment of my long awaited blue face heckel. Finally, it's here today. Sorry about the image quality, my camera is tugged somewhere at home. Will post more photos of them soon.

On a side note, i'll b setting up a grow out tank roughly 36"x24"x18" (laid with sand obviously) since they are quite small at roughly 3".

[Knot~]

Hi Ted (P'Bear)

your tank is so nice and suit for ur heckels, today i just go to the shop and see the big one, pity me i falled in love with them already.

[rich815]

Just curious, why MH lighting when all you have is ferns and mosses?

[bearnuc]

Hi Ted (P'Bear)

your tank is so nice and suit for ur heckels, today i just go to the shop and see the big one, pity me i falled in love with them already.

Go get it knot!

Just curious, why MH lighting when all you have is ferns and mosses?

My tank Height is 24" and I would like some flexibility in arranging moss at a ground level with good growth.

[Apistomaster]

You do have a very beautiful planted tank but it really isn't an environment in which Heckel Discus will do their best.

Heckel Discus are odd fish, even by wild Discus standards.
I don't know if they are just recently added or have been in your tank for several months but I can see several which are very emaciated as many wild Heckels are when they are recently imported and the group's general comportment indicates they are not very happy.
The dark substrate doesn't directly harm them but it does make heckels take on a darker shade than most people want and that can also make it harder for an inexperience heckel keeper to recognize or evaluate their condition. Remember, all ill or discomfited wild Discus will turn dark.

Heckel Discus are much happier over a light colored sand substrate and the emaphasis on furishings should be on the wood and much less on the plants. Truly aquatic plants are almost never found growing within the Heckel biotope. The extent of plant growth shown in your 2st photo taken at an earlier stage had about the maximum amount of plants I use in a Heckel tank. I am not such a purist as to go completely without some plants but now, as shown in this latter photo, the plant growth has become excessive. Heckels prefer a lot of open swimming space and your wood is very well suited for them. They would freely swim in and among these branches but they also need broad ares of bare sand to pick sand sift through for food. Some floating plants like Brazilian Pennywort is a good choice.

Heckel Discus will show there best colors over light colored fine grain sand. Their colors will also be best if you keep their water pH at 4.0 to as high as 5.0. I would keep them in mostly RO water with less than 25 ppm Total Dissolved Solids This low of a pH and softness is not very good for Amano Shrimp so I would consider them very optional or forget about them altogether. There are many other species of fish native to Heckel biotopes which make beautiful and peaceful tank mates. One of my favorites are to keep a group of common Checker board Cichlids, Dicrossus filamentosus. When they are kept in very soft acid water the adult are among the most beautiful of the dwarf Cichlids and they are not as much of a bottom hugging species as are the Apistogramma species.
Despite their small size, the Green Neon Tetra makes an excellent Heckel Discus tank mate when they are kept in a group of 30 to 40 specimens.
I recommend changing about 70% of their water every 4th day as adequate. However, I do not feel it is wise to change more than 50% of their water if you elect to change water daily. I think daily water changes are enough to take all the fun out of keeping Discus so I never do it unless I have a lot of fry crowded into a grow out tank and am feeding them very heavy for rapid growth but I digress, as that is in the realm of domestic discus breeding and Heckels are not domestic discus.

I think you need to begin feeding your Heckels any and all of the live foods you can get or culture in your area. They love live California Black Worms, Tubifex worms, White worms, Glass Worms and Blood Worms. Adult live brine Shrimp and Daphnia are well received but are not nutritious enough to make up the main live foods you should be using. Heckel Discus also like earth worm and Spirulina Stick foods. The latter is especilly good for filling the vegetarian portion of the Heckels' diet. They also like a good discus pellet food. I use Tetra Color Bits. Not for enhancing their colors; it won't, but it is a food they like and a good source of vitamins and trace nutrients Discus need. Any Discus pellet made by a reputable manufacturer is just as good. I cannot over stress the benefits of feeding your Heckels plenty of live food. Heckel Discus also like a good commercial or home made beef heart mix but beef heart is a difficult food to feed much of in a planted tank since whenever you feed beef heart often you must do more substrate vacuuming.

I would give some serious thoughts about treating your Heckels for various parasites with metroniadazole, flbendazole and praziquantel for a about 3 weeks. You may be able to save those which are presently wasting away and prevent others from doing the same in the future.

It is obvious that you put a lot of planning and effort into making a beatiful aquatic garden but you didn't put the same degree of preparation into the best ways to receive, treat then maintain heckels in good health over the long run.

[bearnuc]

Thank you for yr thoughts, i've done a lot of research about Heckel myself but for now it will have to go into this planted tank. Couple of plans are as follows:

Tank
36x24x20', Heckel Grow out tank with sand substrate and for easy maintenance. This tank should arrive after new year ( a week/2 to cycle tank) expecting a move in during end of January.

Food
Redundancy of Frozen Bloodworm in my area along with Beef Heart (of which they haven't accepted yet) Btw, more discussion of heckel Live food in a new topic which i would like some input from you all as well. Additionally, i've tried to introduce some Tetra Bit Complete for them to peck on when they had nothing to do.. Mind u, the same lot of Heckel at my LFS had already gobbled up some tetrabit!

Water Work
No problem with RO water as i do have 4 RO Units at home for our own consumption as well as for these babies.

Quarantine
These fishes were ordered from Japan with estimated resting of about a month. My LFS has done the job of further quarantine for another 3 weeks with medications so that wasn't my issue for picking up these babies

Future plan
I would convert this 48x24x24 to b a show tank when the heckel has grown up (obviously with sand substrate and lightly planted), Canister filter might be discarded and Sump Unit (might convert from 36x24x20') will be used with a section for heavily planted area in the sump itself to eliminate excessive Nitrate in the water (like refugium in Reef Tank)

I've deeply fallen in love with heckel!
Any more ideas are much appreciated

[Apistomaster]

Since your Heckels came from a Japanese supplier you undoubtedly have a small fortune wrapped up in them.
Their most pressing need is getting them more and mainly live foods.

Heckels, indeed, all wild Discus are often difficult to switch to new non-living foods quickly so it normally takes them some time to acquire a taste for the new items in their diet.
Live foods in good quantities is the quickest way to get them to put on weight and resume growing well.
Once you overcome solving the live food problems(if any exist) the next thing that is desirable to do is to get your Heckels accustomed to eating the widest variety of foods as you can. This shouldn't be done when they are not already well fed and fattened up.
The best way to broaden their diet is to continue using mostly live foods and introduce small amounts of new prepared foods along with the living foods. Eventually they will accept all the foods you plan to use with equal enthusiasm but this process does take time.

You cannot rely on what your supplier may or may not have done in the way of comprehensive parasite treatment while they were in their care. They do not normally keep any particular group of discus long enough to do a complete course of parasite treatment. The majority will begin selling their discus as soon as they can. They do not like to feed discus due to be shipped out the next day yet they can not let them go unfed. This means the discus tnd to be chronically underfed since their first day of capture until they reach your tank at home, aperiod that can easily be 4 to 6 weeks of chronic malnutrition.
I can see that among a couple of your fish as I'm sure you have, too. Any which have the slightest pinched look above their eyes are poorly nourished. The outline of their skeleton and sunken gut are further confirmation. These specimens are extremely difficult to restore to perfect condition. Often it depends mostly on the will to live of a given fish placed in a much more caring environment. Without that will to live there is no chance of restoration of full health.

[bearnuc]

Couple of shots, sorry for the quality of the shots.. they are taken from my mobile phone for now.

[erikc]

Okay, so you stuck with the balck substrate and the plants. Your blueface Heckels will never show their true colours in such an environnement.

As Apistomaster said, you fish due look emancipated. You will have to treta for both gill flukes and internal parasites. That means that your lush vegetation is not going to like it and will die off (it's a choice).

The eyes are dark and cloudy on all of your fish. Aereate well the water and treat them as soon as possible before the damage is irrevocable. Only once have I have managed to fill out an emanciated Heckel out of pure chance (I still do not know why).

Finding food they will eat is urgent, the will always accept bloodworms so do try to find some. I always use corydoras in my Heckel tanks, they seem to entice them more to eat other foodstuffs, but that will be at a later date.

For the moment I would urge you as soon as possible to treat them for the above mentioned parasites. you have invetseted a lot into these fish and they truly are fascinating fish to keep so please do not ignore the warnings you have received.

[gerbill]

Hello Bearnuc,
Just like to add my agreement to Larry and EriKc earlier comments,I think your planted tank looks fantastic, but you have to make a decision between plants or Hecklels at the moment,the plants look to be thriving ,the Heckels are struggling.
You seem to have a large group in your tank, if they were my fish I would split into two groups in separate tanks and raise the temp to 82/83 c.then monitor the fish,treat with medication as all ready stated and feed little and often ,live food is always best it seems to stimulate them to hunt.
I would ditch the plants for now,these are only my opinions
I wish you all the very best
Bill

[bearnuc]

forgot to elaborate that LFS guy (whom is a good friend of mine) had already treated them with Aquapharm No.1 (worm out) for 3 weeks since their arrival from japan. I'm not sure whether they should be treated for internal bacteria as well. Most of my fish undergone this QT/medication (my fish guy has more tanks/equipment than mine) prior to being added to my tank. Appreciate any input here as i don't feel quite comfortable medicating them for a prolong period.

As for food, it has been FBW for the past few days and they enjoyed those red worm so much that they are willing to take a bite of feeding cone during the morning and Forceps during evening when i'm around (i rather use forceps than my hand as i'm a bit hygenic towards my fish) atm, they are doing great, 2 blocks per meals, 4-5 meals per day (1 before i went to work, and 3-4 meals (planned) depends whether i get back home early). No sign of weight loss, between eyes are still curved and not concaved, slightly on a lean side for some of them. Mind you, i only had them since Christmas day and my fish guy had done a great job caring for them prior to my pick up.

Their Feces looked ok, dark and hard until they broke off into those worm casing when they did that pelvic fin flapping thingy to get rid of their feces.

They swam around the tank quite often, though i've noticed a bully amongs this school of heckel. Too bad, he/she has a good body shape and doubt i'll trade it for a new heckel ( though there are a few nice looking ones at the shop)

There are a few scratches and torn fins here and there (no deep cut/open wound) but i'm not that worried about it cause nature will take it course to heal itself.
A few issues about their eyes due to some rough handling somewhat, some of them had a slight cloudy eyes (not inner eyes but outer part), any ideas whether the condition will wear off over time with some TLC?

Love all the inputs from you all..
Just had a good news about the growout tank, it will b arriving at my front door on 6th jan.

[Apistomaster]

My recommendation would be to place all your Heckels in a bare quarantine tank and begin treating them simultaneously with metronidazole+praziquantal+flubendazole for one month. I would keep them in quarantine until they have healed all wounds and regained all their body weight. This could take about 3 months. I don't recommend using any antibiotics.

If you insist on trying to restore your Heckels to full health in your planted tank I think you will end up loosing most of them and those that survive will not be as well recovered as if they had been given the recommended treatment.

I have been using this treatment regime to all my new wild Discus and fancy plecos for several years with very good results. It does not harm the fish and they have gone on to be productive breeders.. Not my Heckels because they are just an intrinsically very difficult species to breed. I would highly recommend using very soft water with a TDS of only about 25 ppm and pH of 5.0. They are much more disease resistant when kept in water similar to their natural environment. While it is commendable they your source began treating them you can't rely on that as being sufficient. It seems obvious to me they were not given enough time to recover their lost body mass.

[AlexR]

I made quite the same experience (coloring issue, not the medical). I post picture for you. The same group of young wild caught Tefe.

First on dark substrate (Amano) and then the same group on white sand...

Alex

[erikc]

My recommendation would be to place all your Heckels in a bare quarantine tank and begin treating them simultaneously with metronidazole+praziquantal+flubendazole for one month. I would keep them in quarantine until they have healed all wounds and regained all their body weight. This could take about 3 months. I don't recommend using any antibiotics.

If you insist on trying to restore your Heckels to full health in your planted tank I think you will end up loosing most of them and those that survive will not be as well recovered as if they had been given the recommended treatment.

I have been using this treatment regime to all my new wild Discus and fancy plecos for several years with very good results. It does not harm the fish and they have gone on to be productive breeders.. Not my Heckels because they are just an intrinsically very difficult species to breed. I would highly recommend using very soft water with a TDS of only about 25 ppm and pH of 5.0. They are much more disease resistant when kept in water similar to their natural environment. While it is commendable they your source began treating them you can't rely on that as being sufficient. It seems obvious to me they were not given enough time to recover their lost body mass.

This is some very good advice indeed. I would do the same and don't forget that with Heckels this take time, patience and a lot of care.

[poconoboss]

You mentioned getting a growout tank and putting sand in it.

If you are going to go through the effort to have a seperate growout tank, it should really be bare bottomed. I completely understand people not liking bare bottoms in their main display tank (I know I don't).

However, a seperate tank specifically meant to grow out your fish (hence, heavy feeding) should really be BB for ease of cleaning.