RolnwitdaDISC
01-05-2015, 01:13 AM
First, Hi all!
My name is Anthony. I'm new here, and I just jumped into Discus by surprise kinda......
Little back ground on my tank, I have a 150 gal XH tank currently, with the dimensions of 48"W x 24"D x 30"H. I was running a planted, rimless, 45 gal cube until I was in Petsmart and their 125 gallon and 150 gallon tanks were both on sale. Now both of these tanks included the stands, glass tops and lights. The price 330$ for the 125 and 365$ for the 150!!! WHAT?? I immediately started to call the wife to beg and convince her this was the right time to get into a large tank. I had just bought myself a play station 4 that morning and that was the compromise she made with me, the tank or the PS4. Easy choice IMO, FISH TANK!! I had just been in the store a few days before trying to decide if I would ever be able to own a large tank due to the prices, 765$ for the 150 and 680$ for the 125. So seeing the amazing sale prices I went for it. The only hard decision of the day then was the 125 or 150??? I just felt like everyone who gets into large tanks has or had a 125. I have only seen one 150XH setup in my life. A local store where I grew up had an awesome planted tank. I just remember how tall the plants were and how much I loved the neons.
So my current setup is a 150 gallon eXtra High.
Lighting: I'm using a finnex marine light with a actinic strip and a 10k strip. I saw the light in action at a LFS, on a discus tank of course, loved the color it gave off and offered the guy 80$ on the spot and he said ok. Also Im running an LED light that's a fairly new company I think called Elive. I HATE this light. I bought 2 48" strips lights, and these lights use PODS, little 1 watt inserts that allows you customize your lighting to meet your needs blah blah blah. I have filled these fixtures with pods at somewhere between 6$ and 9$ depending on which pod you buy and it has gotten ridiculous.
Filtration: I have a Fluval FX6, running just biomedia in it, with the stock sponges that wrap each basket. This filter is holding all the eheim bio media the little balls, that filled 3 of the 4 media baskets from my Rena XP4, all the bio media it came with which wasn't much, and all the bio media I had in 2 AC 110s. I'm impressed. Except I needed something to polish the water, and I do like using carbon, I'm a reef guy and like it, but I'm not convinced I do not need it on the freshwater. So I picked up an Eheim Professional 2, the 2028, running one basket of eheim biomedia and then foam, and other mechanical filter media, which made my water much more clear.
Temp: Currently using 3 Hydor Theo 300 watt heaters. I was using them vertically but after seeing many tanks with the heater horizontal I gave it a try. Its working out kinda. I don't like that I cant adjust them very easy if needed. The tank is 30" high and my face basically goes under water to do that. I also added a aquatop water circulator, just 660 gph to keep the sand clear.
Substrate: Pool filter sand, and being a reef/saltwater guy it was so cool to buy 12$/50lbs sand for my tank.
Livestock: 20ish glolight and blue neon tetras, down from 70ish thanks to the 2 pictus cats in there, 4 cory cats, 1 Raphael striped cat, 1 lace cat, 1 albino and 1 orange long finned bushy nosed plecos, 1 reticulated loach, another loach I cant remember the name, 9 serpae tetras, 5 white high finned tetras, 3 blood fin tetras, 2 dension barbs, 3 harlequin rosabaras, 1 rummy nose down from 15 (pictus :/ ), 3 angels, 3electric blue rams, 3 blue rams, 1 angel blue ram, and 13 rainbows. Im letting nature take its course and leaving the pictus in until the neons are gone then they are going to a buddy with a bigger tank. I know this seems heavily stocked but it doesn't look like in person and almost all the fish besides the rainbows and pictus are tiny. This also explains the need for the heavy volume biomedia, and I do daily water changes now that I have discus. Ill explain.
OK....
So I have been researching and thinking about discus for a while now. I went out of town for several days, leaving my wife to care for the fish. She is awesome about the tank, she likes to feed the fish, help me pick out the fish, help me decorate the tank, and does no water changes, or cleaning what so ever. :) I came home sunday evening and she was there to surprise me with something. Well I noticed from the driveway there was a bright orange discus in my tank, but wait there was a yellow Marlboro, a baby blue diamond and baby blue snakeskin. Also a red turquoise and blue turquoise maybe. WOW, "surprise babe!", she said.
I had been showing her the endless pictures online of the discus I liked and looking for local discus breeders, such as Chicago discus. I had failed to mention the fact that I wanted to get a new 75 gal tank, stand and glass tops that will be going on sale at a LFS for 300$ in two weeks. Only because that was the last little piece. I had to get her on board then explain how it was much more appropriate for these fish to be in a species specific tank, with a bare bottom, and come from one source. So its kind of my fault.
So here they are, Im not sure on what some of them are. If anyone wants to help me id them that would be great. I think I know but I would rather some one with a good amount of knowledge id them so I will truly know. Also Im a little disappointed with the quality. I wanted to get much higher quality discus, and different strains. But, I CAN NOT TELL HER THAT. So can everyone just be honest with me and give it to me straight? Please. I just want to know. How are they from the best physical assessment anyone can give. Im a little worried about the "blue turquoise" that has the stress bars in most pics. I know he is thin. And Im wondering about him/her being stunted. Eyes look big to me but maybe its because of being skinny. He is eating anything and everything though and in the week he has been in there has fattened up. Also I know the colors aren't going to be good at this age so that gives me hope, because the snakeskin is a little brown in the center of his body. Now the red and yellow Marlboro were in the show tank at the LFS she got them at. The orange has been with them for 9 months and the yellow for 4. The other 4 had been at the store for 2 months. They are a smaller store and have a tank setup for just rams and discus. We have bought all of our rainbows, rams, and actually almost all of our fish have come from there.
All of the discus are actually doing very very well. They are eating out of our hands, there is little aggression, and they all are pooping well. The colors are typically very nice, only getting dark once in a while when the yellow guy decides to be a jerk and chase someone else. I am feeding frozen blood worms from omega one and Hikari, Mysis, and plankton. They are getting freeze dried bloodworms from Hikari and omega one. Flake from Fluval, ocean nutrition, and new life spectrum pellets. Also feeding a few different types of the chips from Aquadine. I picked up a pound or so of a special discus diet from a buddy who buys it and feeds it exclusively to his Beautiful 9 adult discus. I plan to continue to expand my food collection. But they are eating literally anything I give them. She said they actually were eating and consuming not spitting bloodworms within minutes of being in the tank. We feed after adding new fish to distract the current stock of fish.
Ok Im sorry this post got so long, I hope everyone reads it. Thanks in advance for the help.
My computer is acting up pics are coming just want to get all the text up before I lose it.
My name is Anthony. I'm new here, and I just jumped into Discus by surprise kinda......
Little back ground on my tank, I have a 150 gal XH tank currently, with the dimensions of 48"W x 24"D x 30"H. I was running a planted, rimless, 45 gal cube until I was in Petsmart and their 125 gallon and 150 gallon tanks were both on sale. Now both of these tanks included the stands, glass tops and lights. The price 330$ for the 125 and 365$ for the 150!!! WHAT?? I immediately started to call the wife to beg and convince her this was the right time to get into a large tank. I had just bought myself a play station 4 that morning and that was the compromise she made with me, the tank or the PS4. Easy choice IMO, FISH TANK!! I had just been in the store a few days before trying to decide if I would ever be able to own a large tank due to the prices, 765$ for the 150 and 680$ for the 125. So seeing the amazing sale prices I went for it. The only hard decision of the day then was the 125 or 150??? I just felt like everyone who gets into large tanks has or had a 125. I have only seen one 150XH setup in my life. A local store where I grew up had an awesome planted tank. I just remember how tall the plants were and how much I loved the neons.
So my current setup is a 150 gallon eXtra High.
Lighting: I'm using a finnex marine light with a actinic strip and a 10k strip. I saw the light in action at a LFS, on a discus tank of course, loved the color it gave off and offered the guy 80$ on the spot and he said ok. Also Im running an LED light that's a fairly new company I think called Elive. I HATE this light. I bought 2 48" strips lights, and these lights use PODS, little 1 watt inserts that allows you customize your lighting to meet your needs blah blah blah. I have filled these fixtures with pods at somewhere between 6$ and 9$ depending on which pod you buy and it has gotten ridiculous.
Filtration: I have a Fluval FX6, running just biomedia in it, with the stock sponges that wrap each basket. This filter is holding all the eheim bio media the little balls, that filled 3 of the 4 media baskets from my Rena XP4, all the bio media it came with which wasn't much, and all the bio media I had in 2 AC 110s. I'm impressed. Except I needed something to polish the water, and I do like using carbon, I'm a reef guy and like it, but I'm not convinced I do not need it on the freshwater. So I picked up an Eheim Professional 2, the 2028, running one basket of eheim biomedia and then foam, and other mechanical filter media, which made my water much more clear.
Temp: Currently using 3 Hydor Theo 300 watt heaters. I was using them vertically but after seeing many tanks with the heater horizontal I gave it a try. Its working out kinda. I don't like that I cant adjust them very easy if needed. The tank is 30" high and my face basically goes under water to do that. I also added a aquatop water circulator, just 660 gph to keep the sand clear.
Substrate: Pool filter sand, and being a reef/saltwater guy it was so cool to buy 12$/50lbs sand for my tank.
Livestock: 20ish glolight and blue neon tetras, down from 70ish thanks to the 2 pictus cats in there, 4 cory cats, 1 Raphael striped cat, 1 lace cat, 1 albino and 1 orange long finned bushy nosed plecos, 1 reticulated loach, another loach I cant remember the name, 9 serpae tetras, 5 white high finned tetras, 3 blood fin tetras, 2 dension barbs, 3 harlequin rosabaras, 1 rummy nose down from 15 (pictus :/ ), 3 angels, 3electric blue rams, 3 blue rams, 1 angel blue ram, and 13 rainbows. Im letting nature take its course and leaving the pictus in until the neons are gone then they are going to a buddy with a bigger tank. I know this seems heavily stocked but it doesn't look like in person and almost all the fish besides the rainbows and pictus are tiny. This also explains the need for the heavy volume biomedia, and I do daily water changes now that I have discus. Ill explain.
OK....
So I have been researching and thinking about discus for a while now. I went out of town for several days, leaving my wife to care for the fish. She is awesome about the tank, she likes to feed the fish, help me pick out the fish, help me decorate the tank, and does no water changes, or cleaning what so ever. :) I came home sunday evening and she was there to surprise me with something. Well I noticed from the driveway there was a bright orange discus in my tank, but wait there was a yellow Marlboro, a baby blue diamond and baby blue snakeskin. Also a red turquoise and blue turquoise maybe. WOW, "surprise babe!", she said.
I had been showing her the endless pictures online of the discus I liked and looking for local discus breeders, such as Chicago discus. I had failed to mention the fact that I wanted to get a new 75 gal tank, stand and glass tops that will be going on sale at a LFS for 300$ in two weeks. Only because that was the last little piece. I had to get her on board then explain how it was much more appropriate for these fish to be in a species specific tank, with a bare bottom, and come from one source. So its kind of my fault.
So here they are, Im not sure on what some of them are. If anyone wants to help me id them that would be great. I think I know but I would rather some one with a good amount of knowledge id them so I will truly know. Also Im a little disappointed with the quality. I wanted to get much higher quality discus, and different strains. But, I CAN NOT TELL HER THAT. So can everyone just be honest with me and give it to me straight? Please. I just want to know. How are they from the best physical assessment anyone can give. Im a little worried about the "blue turquoise" that has the stress bars in most pics. I know he is thin. And Im wondering about him/her being stunted. Eyes look big to me but maybe its because of being skinny. He is eating anything and everything though and in the week he has been in there has fattened up. Also I know the colors aren't going to be good at this age so that gives me hope, because the snakeskin is a little brown in the center of his body. Now the red and yellow Marlboro were in the show tank at the LFS she got them at. The orange has been with them for 9 months and the yellow for 4. The other 4 had been at the store for 2 months. They are a smaller store and have a tank setup for just rams and discus. We have bought all of our rainbows, rams, and actually almost all of our fish have come from there.
All of the discus are actually doing very very well. They are eating out of our hands, there is little aggression, and they all are pooping well. The colors are typically very nice, only getting dark once in a while when the yellow guy decides to be a jerk and chase someone else. I am feeding frozen blood worms from omega one and Hikari, Mysis, and plankton. They are getting freeze dried bloodworms from Hikari and omega one. Flake from Fluval, ocean nutrition, and new life spectrum pellets. Also feeding a few different types of the chips from Aquadine. I picked up a pound or so of a special discus diet from a buddy who buys it and feeds it exclusively to his Beautiful 9 adult discus. I plan to continue to expand my food collection. But they are eating literally anything I give them. She said they actually were eating and consuming not spitting bloodworms within minutes of being in the tank. We feed after adding new fish to distract the current stock of fish.
Ok Im sorry this post got so long, I hope everyone reads it. Thanks in advance for the help.
My computer is acting up pics are coming just want to get all the text up before I lose it.