Need some help with angry and stressed discus.

[invertMASA]

Hey everyone. So I have 9 discus in my 125. All pretty good sized but one small one. I know he should not be in there the size he is but I had no choice. He is eating and doing ok. They have 1 german ram that I did not really want as well and some tetras. The PH stays around 7 and temp around 86. I do a water change every weekend and do about 40 percent. I fill a spare 40 gallon tank up with hot water and let it cool down and age a bit till it reaches the same temp as the tank. I also treat it with water condetioner as well while its cooling down. It is a planted tank and I do have CO2 running but not that much and add a some ferts in every other day. Its running on a SUNSUN canister filter and I clean that out every few months. I also feed them frozen brine shrimp once a day and some colbalt flakes once a day. So around noon(brine shrimp) on my lunch and then after work around 4-5ish(flake).

So all my discus show sings of stress with peppering or stress strips from what I understand. And they are very aggressive with each other. I used to have just 6 and got a few more cause I thought they would do better with more of them. And so far that is not really helping.

Any info would be great, I will also attach a picture of what the tank is like. I have more plants on the way to finish out the right side.

[Jenene]

Hi Kevin,
I am no expert but I can start with the most obvious and I am sure the others will pipe in. Once a week water changes are not nearly enough. For your fish to thrive you really need to increase those. I do every day about 60-75% just because I can. If you could do 50% every other day I am sure you would notice a big improvement. Maybe even a tiny bit less since you have a big tank which is slightly under stocked. I bring this up a lot- if you make the changes as easy on yourself as possible you will find yourself doing more of them. I use a 55 gallon Brute trash can on a dolly and a cheap pond pump. Others use the Python hose. Anything you can do to streamline will make healthy discus keeping a breeze.

Also, the filter should really be cleaned more often. The media and sponges should rinsed in tank water. I do half at a time so I don't wipe out too much of the bacteria at once.

Planted tanks and discus are a tough combo. I guess it can be done but I have never tried it. The substrate really collects a ton of debris that will affect your water quality. Have you tested your parameters lately?

Also peppering and stress bars are different. If you have pigeon blood based fish they would tend to pepper with the dark background. If you go lighter you will see a dramatic difference in them.

Your tank is really gorgeous. Hopefully with some more water changes your fish will perk up and you can find a balance between the plants and the fish. Good luck and let's see what the others have to say to help you out.:)

[invertMASA]

I will start doing more water changes. I can do 50% twice a week. You think cleaning half the filters once a month is good?

And thank you. Waiting on some more plants right now, but they took a detour and ended up in WA, and I live in IA.....I have a feeling I will have a box of dead plants.....

[Ryan925]

I'd say it's a very nice looking tank but not ideal for proper growth and appearance of your fish. I believe part of what you see is stress from too few water changes and partly do to the dark substrate.

Having a substrate that thick, with all that dwarf sag, make it essentially impossible to keep the tank clean enough to provide the discus with what they need.

Take it from someone that had their fish in a similar tank. I eventually changed it to hardscape and am very happy I did. Had I not I'm sure I would have ended up with potentially stunted and poor looking fish

Can you also provide better pics of the fish. The yellow fish on the far left looks to be very skinny but tough to tell with the poor quality pic

[Bizarro252]

I would just like to add I am not sure the use of hot water is a good idea. Water from water heaters can pick up metals from sitting in that tank. Also unsure if you have taken a look at the difference in tank PH vs the WC water, you may need to measure your water out of the tap and again after 24 hours aging with an air bubbler to see if you have a PH swing - if large you should age the water for 24 hours before using.

I run a canister and open it up and clean it once a month, but so far it has had almost no gunk in it, I run a prefilter however and will start cleaning it less frequently after I slow down on the feedings. I would high recommend a prefilter :)

Tank looks amazing, but as other have said, growing discus in a planted tank is possible, but much more difficult.