Challenging start, and "omega" discus don't fare well.

[SlimmSnake]

Greetings,

My husband and I just discovered discus fish a few months ago, and we just thought they are the most beautiful awesome fish and wanted to learn how to keep them. We've been off to a very rocky start,though, and would like to get your advice on this forum.

Specifically we've had a problem with the "omega" fish in the group (the one lowest on the pecking-order totem-pole) getting intimidated to the point of hiding, not eating, wasting away, and dying. A synopsis of what we've experienced so far:

- Started out with two 3-inch discus (bought locally from GlassCages on 8/29/15) and 5 juvy discus, about 1-3/4" to 2", ordered online from Mac's Discus, on 9/2/15. Put these all in our main 100-gallon display tank.
- The bigger discus were peaceful, didn't bother the little ones at all. Among the 5 small discus, they began to form their pecking order; over several weeks, one we called "baby blue" developed into the omega, the most timid one picked on the most by the others. The 4 other juvy's were eating well and growing, and baby blue was only eating a little, and hiding a lot, but his health didn't seem in danger.
- All was reasonably well, until we woke up one morning (10/11/15) and found one of the other juvy discus (one of the 4 healthy ones) had become entangled in an artificial plant and was stuck. We got her out but she died a few hours later. (Freak Accident casualty #1)
- The remaining 3 healthy juvy discus began then re-asserting their hierarchy, and picked on baby blue even more. Baby blue began hiding ALL the time, and rarely ate. We piped food into his hiding place to feed him alone, but he kept getting thinner and thinner. We pulled baby blue out into a separate QT tank on 10/25, but he died on 10/27. (Omega casualty #1)
- So the three remaining juvy's again began re-asserting their hierarchy, and a new omega fish was picked out - one of the three (called "baby red") began hiding and eating less while the other two chased and intimidated him.
- Realizing we had too few discus for a healthy group now, we ordered 5 more discus from Mac's Discus. In this new group (obtained on 10/29/15), 4 of the discus were larger, about 2-3/4", and one was smaller, about 2". We pulled the omega "baby red" out of the main display tank into a QT tank, and put the new smallest discus ("baby yellow') in with him. We put the 4 new larger discus into the main display tank (with the remaining resident discus: two at 3-1/4", two at 2-1/2"). So total of 8 discus in the main tank now.
- As the new pecking order established, one of the new 2-3/4" discus got pegged as the new omega of the group. Again, this one started hiding a lot, and eating little.
- On 11/4, we found one of the juvy discus (one of the original first batch of 5) floating dead. No explanation. He was totally healthy the night before, and was one of the semi-dominant fish, had been eating well and seemed fine. (Freak Accident casualty #2)
- On 11/6, our largest and most dominant discus (one of the original ones purchased on 8/29) very suddenly and for no apparent reason, darted frantically around the tank, banging into the walls; we pulled him out into a separate QT tank, but he quickly died. Also no explanation, totally insane. Went from normal and healthy to dead in the span of about an hour. (Freak Accident casualty #3) (We have questions about those two incidents, of course, but I'll save that for a different post.)
- So the remaining 6 discus are now reasserting their pecking order again. The omega one is getting picked on badly and is hiding more. The one vyying for Alpha dominance was being a seriously aggressive bully, chasing the others almost non-stop all day. So on 11/16, we pulled the bully out and put him by himself in a separate QT tank.
- The remaining 5 discus actually settled down, and seemed to establish a relatively peaceful hierarchy. With the bully gone, the omega discus seemed to improve somewhat, came out to swim near the others, didn't hide as much; however, still wouldn't eat. Over time, seemed to eat less and less. Yesterday, 11/29, we found the Omega discus dead. (Omega casualty #3)
- So now we're down to 4 discus in the main display tank. So far, these 4 get along well and seem to all be healthy and eating well... I am very nervous, though, about the small size of the group and who will become the next Omega.
- In the QT tank containing "baby red" and the other small "baby yellow" discus, they are both still alive. The "baby yellow" discus obtained on 10/29 is doing well - swims with fins spread up, eating a lot, growing, and I am hopeful that that one can be integrated into the main tank someday. Baby red, however, is Omega casualty #2; he has NOT gotten healthy in all this time, he still barely eats, only just enough to stay alive, he hides all the time, always has dark color and clamped fins. Every day I think I'm going to find him dead, but so far he is still alive. Hasn't grown at all in the 3 months we've had him. (No obvious signs of disease, though; no external symptoms.)
- In the QT tank containing "the bully" discus... he is fine by himself for now, eats like a pig, is growing rapidly. We want to try to introduce him back into the main display tank (after awhile, since then he'll be at a disadvantage being "the newcomer" to the territory, and maybe he won't be able to push around the other fish as much. But we won't let him stay in there if he causes chaos in the peaceful group. (Cross that bridge later.)

So my main question to this forum now, is Why are our omega discus unable to stay healthy? I understand that "somebody" has to be the bottom of the totem pole, but this can't possibly be normal, for the omega one to waste away so severely. The personalities and group dynamics of these discus are driving us crazy!

Thank you for reading all of this, any critique or advice would be welcome.
More info below, your "newbie questionnaire":



1) Please Introduce your self and tell us what your experience is with fishkeeping, give us as much information as possible as to how long in the hobby, what you have kept in the past and what you currently are working with.
- I kept fish as a kid (age 10-18), had a 20 gallon tank and a 30 gallon tank, loved them, but got out of the hobby when college and work and life got in the way. Always wanted fish again; now, 20 years later, finally plunging back into aqarium-keeping. Got big new tank in spring of 2015; got a few hardy fish to start out with, tank fully cycled and running well by June, prior to discovering discus. I'm not a "total" novice, but I havn't had any challenging tanks or species before, either. (These discus are schoolin' me the hard way.)

2) If you have no previous experience with keeping discus, have you done any research to properly prepare yourself, e.g. have you read any Stickies in this section of SimplyDiscus, or other material?
- Have been researching discus since summer, lots of internet research, discovered this forum around September and have been reading a lot.

3) Describe your tank, its size and dimensions, breeding or display. Include how long it has been setup or if it is still being cycled.
- Main display tank is 100 gallon, 24"x24" footprint x 45" tall. Has been set up since May 2015, fully cycled and stable by June, had a variety of peaceful community fish prior to getting discus.

4) Describe the décor for the tank; type of substrate or bare bottom (BB), whether the tank will be planted or a biotope.
- Gravel bottom (typical aquarium gravel, 2" deep), tall artificial plants, a couple of large tall gnarly pieces of natural grapewood driftwood. One large "holey rock" (white rock with large holes) standing up vertically, and a couple of other pieces of holey rock and natural stone forming a small shelter.

5) Describe your water changes planned or practiced, percentage and how often. Include if you age your water and use of tap/RO or mix.
- Regular schedule: Change 30 gallons on Thursdays with siphoning/vacuuming about 80% of gravel; change 60 gallons on Sundays with a thorough cleaning of all gravel and thorough cleaning of filter (so total change 90 out of 100 gallons per week). All tap water, no RO system.

6) Describe the type of filtration planned/used for the tank; sponge, HOB and/or sump. Also include the other equipment you are, or will be, using in your tank, e.g. heater, lighting, etc.
- Fluval FX6 filter, top basket has macro-filtration sponges and carbon (changed every 2 weeks), middle basket has bio-media, bottom basket has polishing pad and Seachem Purigen. (no other auxilliary filters.) Two AI Hydra-26 lights on a rack on top of tank, pre-programmed with a day-night cycle. Two 200-watt heaters. 5 different air stones on individual controller valves (range of different bubble types, from larger/faster bubble stones to fine wands with micro-bubble gentle curtain.)

7) If the tank is already setup and running, include the water parameters;

- temp = 85 d.F.

- tank ph = 7.4

- Ph of the water straight out of your tap = 7.8

- ammonia reading = 0

- nitrite reading = 0

- nitrate reading = usually between 5 and 15

- well water = none

- municipal water = all


8) Describe your current or planned stocking levels; number/size of discus and number/type of dither fish.
Where did you get your discus from or do you have a proposed source for getting your discus?
- As of 11/30/15, the main display tank contains:
(1) Pigeon blood discus, 3-1/2", bought 8/29/15 from Glass Cages
(1) mixed "Red-spotted Green" discus, 2-1/2", bought 9/2/15 from Mac's
(1) silver-blue-gray-mix snakeskin discus, 3-1/4", bought 10/29/15 from Mac's
(1) mixed "galaxy red" purple discus, 3-1/4", bought 10/29/15 from Mac's
Plus the following fish we already had, bought prior to July 2015 from local fish stores:
(1) pearl gourami
(1) Koi Angelfish
(1) Albino Veiled Angelfish
(1) Zebra Angelfish
(2) Dwarf gourami (not sure of the exact species)
(8) neon tetras
(1) King tiger pleco
(3) platys
(3) otocinclus


9) Describe your planned or existing feeding regimen. Include what and how often you are feeding on a daily basis.
- Feed 3 times per day. Feeding a variety of frozen foods, plus some dried Omega One flakes, plus occasionally dried tubifex worms. In the freezer are (either Hikari or San Francisco Bay Brand): Beefheart, Bloodworms, Brine Shrimp, Spirulina Brine Shrimp, Mysis Shrimp, and Cichlid Delight (a turkey-based mix). I usually pick two or three of these items for any one feeding, giving a variety throughout the days.

10) What are your goals in this hobby? For example are you looking to keep discus in a planted community tank, or do you hope to become a hobby breeder of Discus? Do you want to raise Discus with the hopes of competing in shows?
- Just love to watch beautiful fish! Goal = personal enjoyment and beautiful centerpiece in the home. No plans for breeding or anything more complicated. (Keeping discus alive is proving to be complicated enough!)

[discuspaul]

Please forgive me for not having much in the way of good news for you.

I expect it will be of no comfort to you to learn that you have made a number of the mistakes that newcomers to discus have commonly made for ages, namely:

- Doing little or no advance research on the proper approaches to keeping discus successfully;

- Obtaining your discus from what I believe were likely questionable sources at the outset. I suspect the first batch was from a LFS, and was the second & later specimens obtained from Mac's Discus located near Seattle, Wa. ? (I am somewhat familiar with that source).

- Buying very small young discus whose immune systems were not yet well-developed, and which were therefore very prone to health issues from the outset;

- Raising those young discus under unsuitable conditions (e.g. aqua-scaped tank with gravel substrate);

- Not providing the necessary quality water conditions, i.e. insufficient frequency and quantity of water changes, and I suspect an insufficient tank cleansing regimen to go along with that;

- Adding discus of different sizes and from different suppliers together without seemingly doing the essential proper quarantining (there was no mention of it), - and the same thing applies to having added discus to a tank with other fish in it already, or vice-versa - again without proper quarantining. Some form of cross-contamination may have occurred, that eventually weakened the bullied fish to their eventual death.

I'll stop here - you've probably heard enough already to be upset, but I'm being completely candid as I feel the situation calls for.

Recap of the problems overall:

From time to time you've kept an insufficient number of discus together to more or less provide reasonable social compatibility, so you've suffered from them undergoing undesirably strong pecking order aggression which has caused some of the problems. The resultant bullying has led to some of the fish refraining from eating, and therefore falling victim to ill health as a result.

This has been compounded by your discus being kept in poor water quality & conditions, which has already likely resulted in some stunted fish.

What to do now ?
- There is no successful remedy for what has already occurred, but you might consider starting by removing the gravel from your tank & , along with any excess décor, wood, fake plants, etc, if there is a large amount of them. Increase your wcs to 50% or more, to a minimum of 3 times a week, preferably more often, and do a thorough tank cleaning & glass wipe-down with each wc.

This should provide a much more healthy environment for your fish and hopefully allow some to grow to a decent size - at least those that are not yet more or less permanently stunted and not likely to grow much more.
Over time this will help to provide good water quality & conditions in which your fish can do well.
In time you could consider adding a few more discus, obtained from a known reputable source for supplying quality fish, to form a more compatible social grouping that you can enjoy with the others on an ongoing basis.

Good luck to you - I hope this experience has not soured you on discus, and I wish this could have been a warmer type welcome and introduction to this forum.

P.S. Should you ever decide to do this over again, and do it the right way, get a minimum of 6 good-sized discus ( 4" or larger) only from a very well-known reliable & reputable source for providing qood to high quality discus, and maintain a proper routine of frequent large wcs from the outset..

[SlimmSnake]

discuspaul,
Thanks very much for the reply. No offense taken at all - honest critique is always welcome. I know we've made a number of mistakes (obviously by our tumultuous results), and we're trying to learn how to make the situation better.

Regarding your advice to remove all decorations, I understand removing the gravel (to make tank vacuuming a lot easier, no place for gunk to collect), but what is the rationale behind removing the driftwood and fake plants? I thought the discus like having vertical driftwood in their environment and items to divide up the tank into various regions where they can go to get away from the others if needed? What harm are the fake plants and driftwood pieces contributing to?

If you have more comments, by all means, I am listening.

[strawberryblonde]

Oh my goodness, I have a hard enough time reaching the bottom of my 32" tall tank. I can't imagine having to vacuum gravel on the bottom of a 45" tall one!

As Paul said, you have several problems going on with your current setup and choices of discus.

You may hear people telling you to cull and start over, but I feel like this is a good learning opportunity, so if you want to keep them and try to raise them out as a learning experience, here's what I'd do.

1) They are still quite small, so grab a 45 - 55 gallon tank. Paint the outside bottom and back white.

2) Add a heater and 2 hydro sponge filters - the bigger the better.

3) Add water and heat it to 83F.

4) Pull ALL your discus and place them into the tank.

5) Do a 50% water change in the morning and a 90% water change each night till the tank has cycled. Then reduce water changes to 90% per day.

6) Only feed beefheart or other frozen foods one hour before a water change. Then be careful to siphon out any leftovers.

7) Feed at least 4 times a day (I prefer 5-6, but I'm at home all day). The rest of the feedings can be a variety of discus flakes (good source of vitamins and minerals) and freeze dried blackworms.

8) If you absolutely want some sort of decor in the tank, add a small piece of driftwood that you can easily remove for weekly scrubbing and that you can shove out of the way when you are vacuuming the bottom each night.

Discus are bred and raised in bare bottom tanks with no decor, so not having any won't stress them out. If you give them places to hide...they hide. lol

I noticed that you have a large shift in pH from out of the tap to in the tank, but I'm not sure if that's because you aren't doing regular water changes. To be safe, fill a bucket with tap water, add an air stone and leave it overnight, then test it after 24 hours. If pH has dropped significantly, you might want to consider aging your water for water changes. I don't age mine...because I change water so often that it never has a chance to drop in the tank. But it's a personal thing whether or not you choose to age the water.

I hope all of this helps. The most important thing is to get the discus out of your current tank, which isn't set up properly for discus and then to feed more often and more carefully, and to change LOTS of water on a daily basis till they reach about 5".

[discuspaul]

Re: your question about the driftwood & fake plants.
You'll note I didn't say it was essential to remove it all - just removing some of it if there was an excess, i.e. heavily decorated.

To explain:
In a bare-bottom tank you can pretty much keep the tank bottom squeaky clean with vacuuming. Not so with a lot of clutter in the way of any décor - the more you have - the more difficult it is to clean all the wastes and detritus under & around them - so the less decor you have, the better job you can do to provide very clean conditions where little or no undesirable bacteria can build up with decomposition of the various matter that accumulates.

The preferred approach may well be what Toni has suggested ( i.e. a 55 gal tank), although I would expect some (maybe all) of your 4 fish are already stunted to some extent or another, and I have my doubts that these would ever grow well to reach a 5" level.
So this exercise may not have the result you might be expecting.

Some discus-keepers might prefer the approach of culling those you now have, and starting over completely fresh with new fish as suggested in my P.S., which Toni also mentioned doing.

[SlimmSnake]

Thanks strawberryblonde, I appreciate the advice.

So about water changes: what exactly IS IT in the new water that helps discus so much? We do these water tests for Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, gH, kH, phosphate, etc etc etc... when all the results are favorable, then why do you still need to change a ton of water anyway? (I'm not questioning that it certainly helps the discus, but I want to understand WHY.) Is it trace minerals or other elements or toxins that cannot be measured?

[SlimmSnake]

Oh, regarding the pH.... our tap water comes out at 7.8 or 7.9. We have a large clean trash can on wheels that is our official water mixing bucket. We load up 30 gallons at a time in there from the tap, and then treat the water with Seachem Prime, a capful of API's Amazon Extract, and 2 teaspoons of API's pH Down, to get the pH to 7.4 before adding it to the tank. In the main display tank, the pH holds at 7.4 really well, it really never varies off of that number.

[SlimmSnake]

Ok a few more questions, as I re-read over your posts above:

- paint the bottom and back of the bare tank white: why? My guess about the bottom would be visibility of waste matter, but I can't guess why the back panel also?

- "If you give them places to hide, they hide." So... could too many hiding places be contributing to my pecking order problem, where the omega discus hides too much? Do you think that if the omega didn't have a place to hide from the others, that he would stay with the group and cope better?

- Yes, the tall tank is a challenge to clean. We've custom rigged Python tubes and various pumps and valves for cleaning. With long tubes of varying diameters, and valves to control the strength of the flow, we actually can reach all parts of the tank and can siphon the gravel all the way to the bottom. We remove about half of the decorations at every cleaning, in order to reach as many nooks and crannies as possible. Anyway, do you think the tall shape of the tank is contributing at all to the discus group personality conflicts? Like there's not enough horizontal swimming space for the group to be comfortable?

Thanks again for all the advice.

[strawberryblonde]

Hi again! =)

Ok, let's see if I can answer some of your questions.

1) Why paint the bottom and back white. You want to paint the bottom white so that the discus don't see their reflections. If you look at a bare tank filled with water, there's quite a glare down there and the discus are uncomfortable with it. So the white bottom takes care of that. The back is white or beige because pigeon blood discus will try to blend in with dark backgrounds and substrates and can get a lot of peppering as they grow as a result. I've also found with my blue turq type discus and my brown based reds that they try to blend into a black or dark background too, which doesn't show off their pretty colors.

2) The places to hide. I don't know that your low man on the totem pole is the result of having places to hide. I suspect it's more that the group was too small, the conditions in the tank stressed them out and they all piled onto the one discus who quickly became ill and then hid till it died. With larger groups they tend to spread out the aggression and they have stronger immune systems so the ones who do get picked on can handle it without getting sick and hiding.

3) I'm not sure about whether or not the tall tank is a contributing factor in the issues you're facing, but I do know that I wouldn't feel comfortable placing my discus into a tank that's only a 24x24 footprint. A fully grown, healthy discus will be at least 6" long and many are much larger than that. My largest run around 8"-9", so they wouldn't have much room to move in your tank. But I also have a tall tank and I don't see any problems with that. My discus enjoy swimming up and down as well as back and forth.

4) Thank you for the info on the pH! There's no need to add the pH down when you do water changes. Discus are just fine in higher pH, so long as it remains stable, which it does if you're doing daily water changes.

5) The daily water changes. This one is a big change for most fish keepers. Discus are very hardy fish, but they can't handle nitrates and/or high levels of pathogens in a tank. Even though they normally fight off the pathogens, anything that causes them stress (like higher nitrates, fighting, nudging, dirty substrate, etc) will lower their immune system and then they are at risk of illness. If you look at the Amazon river where they originate, it has the highest water turnover rate of any river in the world. The water is slow moving, but high turnover, so discus in the wild don't have to deal with a build up of bacteria, nitrates and parasites.
The other thing I need to mention here is that growing discus require minerals like calcium in order to grow properly. They get a lot of it from their water. And once they've used it up, they begin to suffer till they get another water change and there is a fresh supply for them. If you check out the breeding section of these forums you'll see that most breeders use RO water to breed discus, but as soon as the fry go free swimming they switch back to tap water in order to provide the minerals for growth and health. The newer people who don't know about switching will often end up asking why their discus are deformed and dying. And that's the reason - not enough calcium and other minerals in the water column.

For me, personally, I raised my first few batches of sub-adult discus in a bare bottom 50 gallon tank till they were 5", then moved them to my 120. You're at a bit of a disadvantage because you purchased juveniles instead of sub-adults (discus over 3"). The group you have will probably never reach full size, but if you want to use them to practice and learn before dipping your toes into higher quality sub-adults I understand.

Your other option is to cull the entire group, set up a bare bottom tank, add a chunk of driftwood if you want decor and then purchase a full group of sub-adults. The sponsors on these forums are all vetted by Al, the forum owner and you can trust your purchases here. You'll get high quality discus in good health.

[John_Nicholson]

Lots of solid advises given so far. I wish you good luck but ear you have a long hard road ahead of you. When you buy fish from an unreliable source you never really know what they bring with them. It makes it hard because what do you do now? If you add fish from a quality source they will just end up exposed to whatever the other fish have. The weakest did not die because it was picked on. It was picked on because it was weak. Chances are it would have dies anyway. Unfortunately it will probably continue to happen. The best you can do is to use this as a learning experience. I saw where you had tested your water. While those test are fine it is kind of like taking the temperature of a person with a failing heart and deeming them healthy because their temp was ok. Your water is made up of thousands of things. The problem most aquarium fish suffer from has to do with DOC's. Do a search here on the forum or on google and you will find plenty of info on them. Here is an example......Many years ago a friend of mine brought me some plecos. In one of the bags was a molly. That fish lived in one of my 120 gallon discus growout tanks. It ate beef heart and had large water changes everyday. People would see it and wanted to know what kind of exotic stain of molly that it was. It was well over 6 inches in length and was huge. Moral of the story is that poor water conditions affect all fish and the only real way to correct it is with water changes.

-john

[John_Nicholson]

Oh and not sure where you are located but in July the huge North American Discus Association will be in Chicago. Discus experts from all over will be there. We will have a fish show, World famous speakers, give a ways, and lots more. You can learn more about discus in that 3 day event then you can in several years of keeping them.

-john

[ericNH]

Hi SlimmSnake, I'm chiming in here to say my start with discus was almost exactly like yours. It took me a very long time to finally remove most of my substrate and clean up the plants and decor for my discus. I should have done it sooner. Speaking for myself here, doing this is far more about long-term maintenance than it is about alchemy. Simply put, it's easier to clean, therefore I keep it much cleaner. If you're interested, you can check out before and after shots of my tank here. (http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?122017-My-first-step-towards-BB) And maybe it'll cheer you up knowing that there are others out there who screwed it up as badly as I did in the beginning. :) Good luck!

[SlimmSnake]

Thanks very much for all the advice folks! Very helpful indeed. We've definitely got some changes and decisions to make with our current discus/tank situation.

John - thanks for the head's up about the Discus convention in Chicago! I will definitely look that up! I bet there's some cool sights to see in that gathering.

Thanks again all for the help.

[fishtanktenderfoot]

Welcome, SlimmSnake! I just wanted to give a shout out to a fellow discus keeper in Nashville! Good luck on your journey... there is a lot to learn with these fish, but they make it worth it. I started with my batch of 7 about 15 months ago, and I still feel like I don't know much. :-) But you've gotten great advice so far, so you'll be just fine. BTW, I bought my 93G tank from GlassCages, so I've been there! (But I didn't buy his fish, I went with a sponsor here that was well reviewed.) And I started with 4.5" and larger to minimize the work required for a beginner. The smaller fish you buy, the harder the work to maintain. Adults can be more forgiving, so they say, even though I'm still changing 50% water every day. I have plans to slow that down, but I guess I enjoy it too much!

[SalsaMom]

Hi SlimmSnake - I am just outside Nashville and am considering Discus. Just got a new 65 gallon tank - think for now we are going to skip Discus. For what it's worth if you stick with Discus and want to check some out locally - Aquatic Critter has Stendker Discus. I was in there last week and they were beautiful, nice size (though still smaller than what I'd want to start with) and seemed like fat, happy fish. They had them in tanks that were not on the same filter system as the rest of the store, temp was up where it needed to be etc - so I think they take good care of them (could be wrong - but from what I've learned researching Discus - they seem do be doing right by their Discus). I researched Stendker after I got home from that excursion. Suffice it to say - someday - if we do a Discus tank I'm going to plunk the money down and get 5" Stendker from Discus Hans. I think that way I will get healthy, high-quality fish and with that bigger size hopefully their immune system will be stronger etc...and they will be a bit more forgiving with me if I don't do everything perfectly.

Sorry you've had such a rough start. Good luck moving forward.

[SlimmSnake]

Hey fellow Nashville fish-keepers!

fishtanktenderfoot - I checked out your posts with pics of your discus... really nice! Glad your discus seem to be doing well! I was kind of surprised to read that your discus started pairing off to breed almost immediately after you got them - yowza, I guess that's one thing to be aware of when buying adult discus instead of sub-adults! As a novice discus keeper, I would NOT have been psychologically prepared to deal with the prospect of eggs and babies!

SalsaMom - Yes, we're well familiar with Aquatic Critter. We've talked to the staff there repeatedly as we've been working on our tank this year, and they've given us an in-depth look at their discus tank setup, filtration, cleaning schedule, etc. They do seem to take good care of their fish for the most part, but they aren't really trying to grow the fish (ideally they'll only be in the store for a short time before being sold) or perfectly optimize their conditions, and so they don't do the level of work that a lot of discus keepers do. So their advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Thanks again for the encouragement!

[farebox]

I made the same mistake you did when I got started too, welcome to SD, and please don't give up the hobby. Once you get off on the right foot, it all comes easy, all the folks here will not let you fail. So get cracking and enjoy the king of aquarium fish. God luck in the future.

[warblad79]

I never seen anyone here would write that long but welcome to Discus world.

Few advice
1. Water Change 50%-100 daily or every other day
2. Good Source
3. Stay away from planted tank

[Jack L]

spend some time reading through here....
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/forumdisplay.php?48-Discus-Basics-for-Beginners

but they have already distilled it for you.

you don't have to follow their basic rules, but its simpler and it is an easy formula for success and less headache to do so. good luck.

i had a tall tank 20 years ago, discus were fine in it, i got tired of the hassle, sold it. didn't buy any more tanks that required a step ladder or getting water in my ear when reaching to bottom.

hang in there.