My Heaven in the Home, 75G Planted Discus

[jimmyjoe]

Very, very beautiful layout you have there, how long did it take to set it up and eventually look like this. I mean to ask from day one of putting the plants in how long til these pictures. jim

[Larry Bugg]

Absolutely stunning tank!! I was into planted tanks before I got into discus. I just took my 3 high light tanks down because they weren't in the fish room which meant they got neglected. I am in the proceess of shopping craigslist for a 4' (75, 90 or 120) to set up a high light planted tank in the fish room. What you have is very close to what I would like to end up with. Can you give us a little more details on your set up? You mentioned wishing you could go bigger................I considered that but too much bigger and the height of the tank gets taller than I want to work in.

[Disgirl]

Beautiful tank with equally beautiful fish and plants!
Barb

[bonsai dave]

wow great job with the tank. It looks amazing.

[cfi on the fly]

Thanks for all the great feedback. Not many people in my life understand the planted tank, discus hobby, and its nice to share some of this with people who appreciate it.

To answer some of the questions...

The current tank was set up just about a year ago after I spent the summer building a custom stand for it. The tank has been doing well for about the last 7 months, with good growth and now Im able to grow just about anything Ive tried. The thing that made it so much easier was the addition of pressurized co2 with an inline difuser. After this addition things really took off. Its almost feels like cheating, but good co2, like so many say over at plantedtank.net, is really the key to control the algae. Ferts and lights are important too, but the co2 is key.

As far as other fish, Ive got 4 Discus, 2 Siamese Algae Eaters, 1 Bushy Nose, 1 otto, about 20 neon tetras, 6 Amano shrimp, and probably about 100 red cherry shrimp- with more babies every day. Also have 5 olive nerites snails, and a variety of "other" snails that Im trying to eradicate


The shrimp do an amazing job getting left overs and I see them in the finer textured plants cleaing up too.

Oddly enough, even with all this life in a relatively small 75g tank, I don't do all that much cleaning. After I figured out how to position inflow and outflow, I havnt had to vacuum the tank in the last 6 months. I do about a 60-70% water change once a week and clean one of my two cannister filters every other week...so each one is cleaned 1 x per month. I have a eheim 2217 and a 2236 which keeps everything very quiet...a must for the wife.

I do use a mixture of Ro water mixed with my tap about a 70 to 30 mix.

One thing that I would like to see happen is for my discus to spawn, though I know this tank is not condusive to fry, still I would like to see it happen at least once.

Im trying to get better at aqua scaping so any feedback is welcome...

[Jennie]

you can't get much better than that?!! awsome tank.

[Larry Bugg]

Im able to grow just about anything Ive tried. The thing that made it so much easier was the addition of pressurized co2 with an inline difuser

I have always used a Rex Griggs style on the output side of my cannister filter. What kind of difuser are you using?

I do about a 60-70% water change once a week

Are you doing EI dosing?

I'm trying to get better at aqua scaping so any feedback is welcome...

You can find a lot of show scapes out there but most of them cannot be maintained over a extended period of time. Not what I want. I think you have done an excellent job scaping your tank and you have been able to maintain it for over a year. I like the look of yours so much that I will look at it much closer when I find the tank I want and start my new one. I was going through some of the AGA show tanks the other day looking for ideas and I found it here, lol.

Is sand your only substrate? It doesn't look like it is very deep. Is the back of the tank painted? What color? No hardscape that I can see?

[cfi on the fly]

Yep, I use the Rex Grigg style, if that is the one that you build out of pvc piping....works awesome, no bubbles of co2, just complete difusion.

I used EI dosing to begin with to get a start on things. Lately though, I just pour the ferts right from the bag into the tank and eyeball it...probably putting in more ferts than ei actually calls for, but no ill effects as I believe its hard to overdose of ferts if you co2 is sufficient.

Sand is the only substrate I am using, and its pool filter sand. I have found its excellent for the plants and very easy to move plants around in. Its about 3 inches in front to about 5 in the back. If I did it again I would make it a little deeper all around. I forgot to mention that I also put is some root tabs from time to time, probably every other month. I have used root medic tabs from a guy on plantedtank.net and total tabs from aquariumplants.com. Most plants came from swap and shop on plantedtank.net


The back is spray painted a flat black. One thing I found to work well is to first spray the back with a "frosted" coating. This gives the glass some texture and grip for the "black" paint to adhere to. Otherwise I was always scraping away paint on the back when I was moving hoses around back there.

I used to have a mopani wood stump in there, and it looked very nice and natural, however it took too much space and cast some serious shadows, and I wanted more vareity of plants to try. Might try and get some thinner pieces later on.

I think a 125G would be really nice to have, long length for fish to swim and alot more room to get creative with. However, nothing will ever be big enough for me Im afraid, so ill probably just stop with a 75g.

Id be gald to answer anything else, not that Im any kind of expert, but I had and still do have lots of help along the way too...mainly Eddie on here and the plantedtank.net guys

I have always used a Rex Griggs style on the output side of my cannister filter. What kind of difuser are you using?



Are you doing EI dosing?



You can find a lot of show scapes out there but most of them cannot be maintained over a extended period of time. Not what I want. I think you have done an excellent job scaping your tank and you have been able to maintain it for over a year. I like the look of yours so much that I will look at it much closer when I find the tank I want and start my new one. I was going through some of the AGA show tanks the other day looking for ideas and I found it here, lol.

Is sand your only substrate? It doesn't look like it is very deep. Is the back of the tank painted? What color? No hardscape that I can see?

[Larry Bugg]

Thanks for the answers. In the past most of my plants came from the Swap and Shop on plantedtank, but now our local Aquarium club has a big group of planted tank nuts. We have a small auction at the end of each monthly meeting and 2 big auctions a year. You can almost always find any kind of plant you need.

I also use the total tabs from APC. When I have done major builds I have ordered all the plants I needed from them. I have always found their plants to be excellent and they are good guys to work with.

I have not posted much on plantedtank since getting into discus. I need to get back there more often.

Larry

[TURBOFROG]

Thats a great looking setup you have there!!

[Discus-n00b]

Very nice. I can't really keep plants to save my life, yours look great.

[Eddie]

Thanks for all the great feedback. Not many people in my life understand the planted tank, discus hobby, and its nice to share some of this with people who appreciate it.

.

I hear that my friend, we are definitely a minority. So many people don't understand it at all. Someone comes into that house and says WOW, those are some nice fish but what they think, is that we bought the fish and just tossed them into some water. When you tell them about the daily upkeep/care and the foods we feed, their jaw drops. The same phrase "Oh my god, thats way too much, I could never do that." And we think, thats right. It takes a special "gene" to do what we do, and we love it!

[jimg]

Very nice!

[discuspaul]

Superb discus tank ! Great job - It's awesome !
You'll have lots of wannabe copiers.

[exv152]

...It takes a special "gene" to do what we do, and we love it!

Gene? or a need to be constantly busy (my case). The discus thing is quite time consuming and labour intensive, but add to that a planted tank and you practically almost double your workload (ferts, CO2, testing etc). The reward for me is seeing a vibrant and colourful display (both plants and fish) that's constantly evolving.