Zero Water Change Planted Discus Tank Proposal???

[cubert]

I know I'm way late to this post....and I'm a rookie discus keeper......but ....that's a lot of work, effort, and just a ridiculous amount of time and anxiety to worry about a few water changes a week, and especially this thread was started years ago? Wow. Good luck dude.

[ynot]

Wow, after reading this thread my faith in God is restored. No matter how much,how few or even no water changes, look at how much goes into keeping an ecosystem going. I know for sure it takes a creator to keep this planet going!

[Jeff O]

Wow, after reading this thread my faith in God is restored. No matter how much,how few or even no water changes, look at how much goes into keeping an ecosystem going. I know for sure it takes a creator to keep this planet going!

This is the best post in this entire thread LOL

[Greghp90x]

This is one of my favorite thread. I believe this can be done with enough time and research anything is possible. Rome was not built in a day! Either will be a system that eliminate water changes for discus!

[a volar]

This is one of my favorite thread. I believe this can be done with enough time and research anything is possible. Rome was not built in a day! Either will be a system that eliminate water changes for discus!

And LOTS and LOTS of money.............. Just not worth it.

[Skip]

This is one of my favorite thread. I believe this can be done with enough time and research anything is possible. Rome was not built in a day! Either will be a system that eliminate water changes for discus!

Its easier jus to do the water changes

Of all the hundreds of threads of how to raise healthy discus. . People still come to this one and disregard the all the others..

Smh

[rbarn]

Lets says you live Arizona or Western Australia though and have a 400 gallon tank.

Frankly there is no reason this could not be done properly and easily. Reef guys have very delicate fish and do 10% per month water changes.
An insanely strong UV system, chemical filtration using Purigen, carbon and Chemi-pure and GFO reactors (just like the reef guys) with an ozone generator, refugium and nitrate reactor it should work fine. They only thing we would have trouble with is a protein skimmer since freshwater wont foam up like salt-water. But a good refugium and chemical filter system should take care of that. Is it expensive ? Hell yeah, just ask the reef guys, but it is very doable and if you live in a water restrictive area (say like Central Texas) it is also ecologically responsible.

[Kal-El]

Lets says you live Arizona or Western Australia though and have a 400 gallon tank.

Frankly there is no reason this could not be done properly and easily. Reef guys have very delicate fish and do 10% per month water changes.
An insanely strong UV system, chemical filtration using Purigen, carbon and Chemi-pure and GFO reactors (just like the reef guys) with an ozone generator, refugium and nitrate reactor it should work fine. They only thing we would have trouble with is a protein skimmer since freshwater wont foam up like salt-water. But a good refugium and chemical filter system should take care of that. Is it expensive ? Hell yeah, just ask the reef guys, but it is very doable and if you live in a water restrictive area (say like Central Texas) it is also ecologically responsible.

I agree... if you have the money you can have a very nice setup with a self balance ecosystem with very little WC.

[Chad Hughes]

Its easier jus to do the water changes

Of all the hundreds of threads of how to raise healthy discus. . People still come to this one and disregard the all the others..

Smh

I wouldn't say that ALL the other threads get disregarded. There's more than one way to keep discus. It's been proven. What works for some doesn't work for others.

Why? Well, I think it's all about what you're comfortable with. It's easy to change water. There is little to no research or knowledge required to change water.

Most people find comfort in easy.

[T_om]

Have you ever kept a large, fully planted tank? Not talking about the time spent on the fish, just the "show" tank with well thought out and well maintained landscaping? It takes more time than you would think. So much so that the additional time spent changing water is pretty small in the larger scheme of things.

Personally, I went the way of automated water changing since I, too, hated spending the time manually doing it. Discus in a fully planted tank that is well established do not need daily water changes. I got along perfectly well with two 50% automated changes a week for adults.

Tom

[Derelique]

Loving the widely varying views here, seems to all make for a solid debate!

Can't figure out if that creationist comment was meant genuinely, as that creates all sorts of problematic discussions and circular logic... Say you were God, would you create an 'intelligently designed' global ecosystem which manages to balance itself in a healthy circle of life and recycling of nutrients, or would you create one where you were constantly having to mess around with managing the lives of every organism including every speck of algae and bug, and were doing loads of manual water changes on its oceans?

Maybe these ideas are all going in the wrong direction though, this doesn't really need to be complicated or take any money or weird equipment. All it should take is the right plants and the right light. Depending on what your house is like and where you live you could probably just run the tank water through a reed bed exposed to full sunlight or a refugium with a decent metal halide light or LED's. That alone would take care of all the waste and keep the water entirely clean so long as it's the right size and it gets enough light. Then all you need to do is mow your reed bed/refugium now and then. Carbon might be a good idea still, but GFO isn't necessary as the plants would want and need the phosphates, not to mention nitrates and other byproducts.

[John_Nicholson]

LOL......I can't believe that this thread is still going......I have said all along that if this is what someone wants to do then please do it.....Do it for the long term and then bring your discus to one of the big NADA shows so that everyone can see you results. Trouble seems to be that either people realize that is does not work that well in the real world or their fish die....anyway we never get to see any real results, just a lot of talk that stirs new folks in the wrong direction for success.

-john

[plecocicho]

One option would be to have a small plant treatment plants, which work as artificial wetlands.In nature wetlands act as a natural cleaning station for the rivers and lakes. Both plants and different guilds of bacteria on plants and in the soil suck up nutrients, degrade detritus and dco, absorbe and adsorbe heavy metal, etc. So an oversized artificial plant could act both as a nutrient absorber, biological nad biochemical filtration. Soething about that was written in THF few years ago. Too much hassle but if you have to experiencve prolonged water shortage it could be an option.

[John_Nicholson]

The one thing people seem to forget when they want to design a zero water change system is that it really does not exist in nature......Every time it rains they get a water change.

-john

[SMB2]

Without doing a lot of research, I would only be guessing, but I suspect the surface area of the "refugium" would have to be quite large relative to the tank volume to support absolutely no water changes. Therefore pretty impractical for most hobbyists.
As always this discussion falls apart due to two different end points. Keeping adult Discus in a closed minimal/no WC system is completely different from raising juveniles to adults in the same fashion. I suspect most people with large show tanks and large adult Discus do fairly well with manageable (read: 1-2 per week) WCs. Still, taking it to the next step and all but eliminating WCs seems to be (like an old professor used to say) like Hobby Horse Manure. Often talked about, but seldom seen.