My Planted Tank with Discus - RESONATE

[Aquadaft]

Hi All,

I set up a planted and have put in 3 Discus fish into the tank. Now at most times I get feedback that a planted tank is not good for discus fish, but from this forum it is obvious that this is not the case. Here are some pics of my tank with the fish in them. Please take a look at the fish and let me know if they are in good condition. I get feedback that they are not looking good. In case you find them not looking good, let me know what I can do to take care of them better. Appreciate any help that you could provide me. I Plant to put 3 more Discus in there but I first want to be absolutely sure that I am taking good care of the ones that I have in there to start with.

http://i892.photobucket.com/albums/ac121/san22san/RESONATE/DSC_0073_FTS_01_zps1f00551a.jpg

http://i892.photobucket.com/albums/ac121/san22san/RESONATE/DSC_0087_Discus_01_zps1f8dfff5.jpg

http://i892.photobucket.com/albums/ac121/san22san/RESONATE/DSC_0088_Discus_02_zps336b55ce.jpg

http://i892.photobucket.com/albums/ac121/san22san/RESONATE/DSC_0092_Discus_03_zps5b5dd376.jpg

From what I can see now, they are out in the open 90% of the time. They have a good appetite and I feed them BioGold, BHM. They are active and dont hide easily. Initially, they used to hide when I put my hands in. Now they are used to the hand in the tank but no sudden movements or they hide. I have been checking their forehead and it has been consistent and there has been no thinning. There has been only slight peppering if any.

Thanks,
Sam

[Skip]

super nice set up!!!

[CrazyAngels]

Hello Sam, welcome to the forum, I must say that is an impressive planted tank. Congrats

As for the discus, they are young fellows and in order to reach potential, you'd have to feed them way more than you probably are doing which would most likely ruin your planted tank.

Hence the reason for people always suggesting bare bottom tanks for growing out juvenile discus, specially feeding BHM. I truly doubt that you can clean all left over mix from your tank with so many plants, this will lead you to have water quality problems before you know it. Don't take me wrong as I love your setup, but I think it would have been better to have gotten mature discus that you don't have to feed so much.

[rbarn]

What he said. See if your LFS will take them back in exchange for buying some mature 5-7" adult fish.

Tank looks great.

[Aquadaft]

@ Warloc and Jorge, Thank you - I have been working hard on the scape. I will post more details on tank soon.
I plan to buy two to three more fishes and they are going to be adult. This set I got from someone who travelled onsite and I can sell them or exchange them. I promised the guy that I'd take care of his fishes. I quite frankly like the three guys. The small one is the cutest, he does his dance in the morning and is quite active. I'll post videos when I have a chance to. The middle one is the most aggressive, keeps on chasing the samll one away especially at feeding time. The larger one is quite but doesnot hide and goes at the the middle one once in a while when he gets too irritating.

As for the food - there are no left overs at any point in time. The tetras, rummynose, lemons and denisonies etc clear up anything left behind. I thought BHM was food for the Discus only to find out that the others relish it to. The discuss feed on the flake food that I put for the other fish also.

Feeding is currently two times a day. Do you recommend increasing the frequency? How much should I feed the Juvies? Is there a way to measure?

[dkeef]

U should feed several small food sizes per day.

[Aquadaft]

I have started feeding them 3 times a day from the beginning of the week. The big one has show improvement in color. I checked the ph of the tank it was on the higher side due to tanin in the filter. Cleaned that out and the ph is back to normal around 6.8. I have asked for 3 more discus fish - reds - mardarin passion, marlboro red, red melon. I should get them in a couple of weeks time. The supplier gets it from singapore and therefore the wait period.

Will post pics to the end of next week or later when I have had growth in the tank.

[rbarn]

The reason we say to get adults is because juvi's must be fed 5-7 times per day to reach quality size. you are under feeding your juvi's. You're tank will become a mess in short order if you picked up the feeding schedule to what it needs to be to go those guys really growing.

[DerekFF]

Auto feeder. Also you're scape looks great. It doesn't however use the rule of thirds should you ever look to do show style scape stuff, but its more than pleasing to the eye. Good job.


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[Len]

Awesome job. Can you give us some more details about your plants and setup?

[pastry]

Hey, if you do enough WCs then you'll still get good growth out of them. Everyone on here will always give you the map to growing your discus to as large as they can potentially get but if you're fine with them not being the biggest but just putting on some moderate growth then there's no problem with that too. It's not a bad thing to have discus in a planted tank... just tough to grow them in a planted tank.

Yep, grab 3 more soon but make sure you have enough water space dedicated to them. Tetras may be small but still add plenty to the bio load (subjective to filtration set up) when you have a solid shoal of them. Also, with tank bred fish now then as long as your PH is steady then it's fine if it happens to be over 7 (as long as it's not crazy crazy high). If you keep up with the WCs for a year then you should at least be able to get them to 5" all around.

Well thanks for the pics of your tank!!! Looks really really good! If you don't mind, would love to see updated posts with pics from time to time!

[Aquadaft]

I spoke with the supplier and he will check if he can take the three small ones that I have and give me 4 big ones 5/8 inches. This is however tentative and I will keep posting progress.

Here are the tank details:


Dimensions

Tank Size - 48"*24*21 ~ 350+ L ~ 90 Gal (After deducting volume taken up by substrate)
Co2 - Pressurized (2bps)
Substrate - Layered - Aquaclay; JBL Aquabasis plus; ADA Amazonia
Lighting - LED - Provides about 3watts at the substrate level (actually the measure is in lumens and it is a bit tricky. The guy who did the lights for me knows and it meets the requriement. I had Glosso growing straight upwards earlier, when I had the T5 HO)
Filter - Ehiem - 2217 & 2213 running in Tandm
Fertlization - MCI - Kno3, ADA Step 2

Fauna:

Rainbows (Bosemani,
Tetras (Cardinals, Lemons, Rummynose)
Discus
Plecos
Otocinclus (Not in the tank right now. They keep uprooting my foreground plants)
Denisonis
Shrimps RCs

Flora:

Anubias (coffeefolia / Nana/ Butterfly)
Staurogyne
Glossostigma
limnophila aromatica
Ludwigia Peruensis
Ludwigia Ovalis
Echinodorus Tenellus
cryptocoryne wenditi
hydrocotyle tripartita

I started out with a totally different scape and this is the final layout that you see. I had a lot of issues along the way and had to change the scape accordingly. I will fill you in on the whole story when I get some time to get typing.

[BigWave]

I love your setup. The only thing I would do is instead of returning 3 and getting 4 total discus, is I would try to get a total of 6. That seems to be the smallest number you can have to keep aggression to a minimum.

Keep updating with pictures though, it looks great!

[Aquadaft]

Here is the latest pic of the Tank.

http://i892.photobucket.com/albums/ac121/san22san/DSC_0317_FTS_x2_zpsf81a26ea.jpg

I had a mishap in the tank and lost one of the fishes. I dont know what happened, but there was signs of struggle. I had done a major trim and changed about 50% water, dosed the same or slightly less after waiting a day. There could have been a spike in Nitrate or amonia. I found the fishes in thte morning and had lost one of the fishes. I did a quick water change and measured the amonia and nitrate levels. Amonia was 0 and Nitrates was slightly higher than 20 ppm. Though according to me this could not have caused the death, it could have been that sometime during the night after I had dosed, the amonia levels might have spiked.

I have started dosing in the mornings now before lights on and am sticking to 30% water change at a time. Also have got myself a solution of nitrifying bacteria.

[wannafish]

Hey

Are you aging your water?

If you do a water change and not aging water, the city puts
chloramines in the water and the fish will die overnight.

Do you use C02? After you turn off the C02 and lights out,
you need to put on an air hose with oxygen. I have noticed
the C02 will affect the juveniles more than the adults.

[Aquadaft]

Hey

Are you aging your water?

If you do a water change and not aging water, the city puts
chloramines in the water and the fish will die overnight.

Do you use C02? After you turn off the C02 and lights out,
you need to put on an air hose with oxygen. I have noticed
the C02 will affect the juveniles more than the adults.

You bring up a good point - I do not age the water but it comes from an overhead tank that we pump to and therefore it is aged to a certain extent. What is the recommended aging required in days?

Co2 might have been a cause because I had done a heavy trim, but I didnot find the other fish at the surface fo the water, I am getting a solenoid so that Co2 is turned off during the night.

Again, it looked like the fish trashed around a bit and from what I have read, its more like an electric shock but cant figure out how that could have happened and that is why I changed the routine.