Originally Posted by
ExReefer
Here is a simple story. The story begins with feeding your fish (something you can’t avoid). Some of that food gets absorbed by the fish as nutrients and some of it turns into waste. Some of it goes uneaten as well. Over time, uneaten food and waste will build up and degrade water quality. It does not “go away” if you use filters and it would take a great deal of fast growing nitrate hogging plants to make a dent in your nitrates. Basically, the waste gets removed by cleaning filter media and replacing water.
If you want to make it harder on yourself by trapping uneaten food/waste in your substrate, rocks, decor, etc. then you will have more work to do in this hobby. Again, it’s just more work, but it can be done. Many of us chose to go an easier route by using one or all the following methods:
1) bare bottom tanks (easier to locate the waste)
2) no decorations in the tanks (easier to locate the waste)
3) avoiding hard to clean filters (easier to squeeze out a sponge filter than it is to open up a canister filter)
4) feeding “clean” foods (beefheart is messy, freeze dried black worms are not)
5) keeping smaller populations of discus per tank (more fish, more food, more waste, more frequent cleaning)
The end.