New Discus arriving in a few days-have eco complete/gravel -ADVICE NEEDED

[djs]

I have 5, 5+ adults arriving from Kenny on Tuesday. I have a 75 rimless planted tank with an Eheim and a Wet Dry (getting a refugium and quarantine set-up tomorrow with the wet dry) will keep the canister too. I have perfect parms for months now and some community fish-got rid of about 14 of them. I have eco completee with some white gravel on top, about 2 to 3 inches.

I know that BB is best and then white Pool sand is tolerated with Discus-but I was committed to cleaning to keep my plants undisturbed. I was so busy with geting everything ready that I did not think about the substrate and now it is probably too late to risk losing bacteria to change to white sand before Tueday.
Is there a way I could start to change some of the substrate without risking beneficial bacteria? How about taking some of the eco and putting into pantyhose in the tank and putting in the sand, I could do 1/4 each week. The eco can seed the sand. I am concerned that if I wait to start this process that I could come across a pocket with gas that could poison the discus.

What about pepppering -is the change of color permanent or only while they would have a dark background and substrate?

Also I heard that Discus can jump out of the tank (if startled), so I am making a cover out of a screen with some invisble netting and tank lid clip.

[rickztahone]

My advice is if you are already thinking of ditching your current substrate for either sand or bare bottom do the following:

Remove your current substrate by lowering your water all the way down and scooping it out.
Then, place your plants in some form of planters, either ceramic/terra cotta/clear glass ones (we have many examples of these by fellow members). You can still keep the planted look without the substrate this way.
Then, after you have removed all the substrate, introduce the discus and do daily 60-75% water changes for at least a week. Check your parameters every day after that week to make sure you are good, and you have transitioned from a full substrate to none/sand within hours.

My advice would actually be to get the discus in. Leave them in the box, and change out your substrate. Remember to completely drain all your water after removing the substrate. Also, this goes without saying, but I will still say it, make sure your heaters/filters are off. You do not want any of that crud in your filters. When you refill the water back up, make sure it has been preheated to 82F. Then, turn on your heaters/filters and float your discus bags. Release the discus, and this whole transition would have been as if you had just done a 100% water change. Again, because you removed the substrate, you will get spikes, especially since you had such a small bio load prior. This is why I recommend heavy water changes for the beneficial bacteria colonies to have time to catch up to the current bio load. In fact, I'd say go a full 2 weeks with daily water changes at roughly 60-75%

[FishFanMan]

Great advice by Ricardo as always. Kinda sounds like you really didn't think this thru before plunking down big money for 5+ inch discus. I'd like to see a pic of your fish tank before saying what I would do. What kind of scape is it? I think if you have the know how to properly dose your tank and keep your nitrate to 10ppm max with WCs to keep your plants and discus happy, then you might not have to change your substrate. Have you kept discus before? Have you had a planted tank with heavy fish load while keeping nitrates low? It's easy to have "perfect params" with low fish load right? If this is your first set of discus, I'd take everything out, go BB and do big WCs everyday to keep those discus healthy. They are probably used to a BB tank and that may help them transition quickly to your tank. Then you can add some driftwood later, slowly. No need for QT also. Are you new to keeping an aquarium? Seem like it with this kind of question.

[FishFanMan]

And yes, discus can certainly jump out of the tank for lots of reasons. Bad water conditions, diseased, startled, fighting... They are very strong swimmers so be sure the screen is secured!

[rickztahone]

Great advice by Ricardo as always. Kinda sounds like you really didn't think this thru before plunking down big money for 5+ inch discus. I'd like to see a pic of your fish tank before saying what I would do. What kind of scape is it? I think if you have the know how to properly dose your tank and keep your nitrate to 10ppm max with WCs to keep your plants and discus happy, then you might not have to change your substrate. Have you kept discus before? Have you had a planted tank with heavy fish load while keeping nitrates low? It's easy to have "perfect params" with low fish load right? If this is your first set of discus, I'd take everything out, go BB and do big WCs everyday to keep those discus healthy. They are probably used to a BB tank and that may help them transition quickly to your tank. Then you can add some driftwood later, slowly. No need for QT also. Are you new to keeping an aquarium? Seem like it with this kind of question.

Good point. I will say this, I saw that OP was leaning towards possibly removing the substrate, I provided an example on how to do it. I didn't necessarily mean for him to do it. That is a decision he will have to make. I've had planted tanks, and I know how difficult it is to take one apart and not have a beautifully planted tank. It was an option. A good one if I may say so myself (;)), but an option none-the-less

[Tshethar]

Just thought to add two thoughts to the good advice above... (Disclaimer: experienced with fish, but not with discus!): 1) if for any reason, OP, you feel as though you're not quite as prepared as you want to be to receive your fish on Tuesday, you can tell Kenny and he will hold your discus. I wasn't sure where I was with preparation for my first set-up a couple of months ago (still preparing, in fact), and that's something he told me he can do, at least until he needs tank space to receive his next shipment. So, you can certainly buy yourself a week or two if you feel rushed or anxious about whether things have stabilized enough for your new discus. 2) You can also use some pretty inexpensive products to "overseed" your colony of beneficial bacterial, such as Seachem Stability or Micro-lift's Nite-Out II. If you want you can also add a few ml of pure ammonia (w/o surfactants or additives) for a couple of days, as people who are doing a fishless cylce will do, in order to build up a larger colony in your filter in anticipation of the larger bio-load you're going to get with the new, 5" fish. That may help you mitigate the ammonia and nitrite spikes you will otherwise get. I'd add that these are optional things you can do to minimize risk. If you stick to the large WC plan Ricardo suggested above and use enough Prime, Ammo-lock or what-have-you, you should be okay. Your filters have good biological capacity so you should be able to get them up to speed fairly quickly (assuming you don't break them down and clean them right now!) If it were me I would also feed very lightly for the first few days. Good luck!

[Mgus]

I went from Eco complete to pool filter sand in my tank. It's not that bad only takes a couple hours. I did it pretty much how Rick said to. I had fish in my tank so I put them in another tank with one of my filters then turned off the other two drained the tank and took out the gravel. With the tank empty it's a good time to give the whole tank a good scrubbing. And the sand and replant everything should be good. I did large daily water changes for the first week then went back to my normal routine. The fish were fine. Pfs is really easy to keep clean and it's cheap. When replanting try to lay out your scape in a way that is easy to clean and aim you filter returns so that most of the detritus stays on open bottom. It will make cleaning way easier. Good luck and enjoy the new fish.