Hello from California!

[dylamos]

Hello everyone! I wanted to drop by here and ask a few questions. For a quick backstory I just bought a discus, this purchase was very stupid. It’s not that I’m not ready or anything like that I’ve been ready for years. However I made the purchase at Petco who was severely mistreating this tank. Normally I don’t buy from places like this and buying it is just supporting bad practice stores. The water temperature was at 74 like all their other fish tanks and it was clear they use the same parameters across all their tanks. The fish wasn’t doing well and was clearly not going to make it in this environment. So I decided to do the stupid thing and buy it. In my tank he immediately peeled up and started to color up. As of today he’s very active and exploring his much larger space, to my surprise he’s not very shy and accepted food only 2 hours in the tank.
I’m not sure what color he actually is but regardless he shows great potential as a good fish with good personality. I’ll post pictures soon!114638

[Sabrina]

Hello back from Australia! Welcome to the boards..
You sound just like me, I did exactly the same thing as you, I brought a lone discus from a pet store it had sat in for weeks alone, I just had to save him. Sadly I contributed to his death only a few days ago, but that's another story.
I see the photo, he is so cute!
There is lots of advice to give you at this stage, but firstly id like to ask you about your tank at home. What size is it, what temperature, what are the water parameters, what other fish are in the tank and any décor or plants? Tell us as much as you can so we can help and guide you in the right direction :)

[dylamos]

Sure! I did my research before getting discus fortunately as i was preparing for a little discus troop.

37 gallon quarantine - Pre cycled 2 months ago - This is the tank he's currently in. Current tank mates 5 Sterbai Corydoras Current Decor is 2 pieces of 6 inch Malaysian Driftwood and 1 smooth rock, No substrate.

75 gallon main tank - Nothing in it yet.

My temp is at 83f degrees, or about 28c
PH - 7.4
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
I did a water change before adding him

I generally don't test for water hardness but i did research on my tap source. More info here https://www.hayward-ca.gov/services/city-services/water-quality

He's doing quite well! Swimming, exploring, eating still.

[Sabrina]

All sounds good, I'm glad he is perky and eating for you. If you need to ask questions ect there are many very experienced members here that can help :)

[dylamos]

Temperament wise i know the fish vary, i notice he likes to poke at the cory, Do you think I should remove the corys to my other quarantine tank? I'm afraid he's going to kill them or poison himself since corys do release a toxin when threatened.

[Sabrina]

No, there is no need to remove the cories, this is funny because its exactly what happened to me with my lone discus and cories! The reason he is pecking at them is because he is bored and doesn't have other discus to school with at the moment, as soon as I added more discus to my tank the lone discus left the cories alone. He is just showing the cories that he is the boss of the tank and they are to fall in line, they will be fine don't worry :)
Here is a video of my lone discus bossing my cories around:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSR2ZOCQof4

[dylamos]

sounds great! So what do you think his color will be? and how many adult discus do you think can fit inside my 283 liter aquarium long term?

[Sabrina]

Well, I am not an expert of discus strains but looking at the photo of him he could be either a Blue Diamond or a Cobalt Blue discus, normally the Blue Diamond is more common to find, but don't take those as gospel I'm only guessing from the photo.
With fitting more discus into your tank a safe number to suggest would be 6-7 in total, is it a 5 foot tank? I have a 4 foot tank that is 224 liters, so I'm assuming yours is a 5 foot..

[dylamos]

It's a 4 foot long, 18"L x 48"W x 21"H so a bit taller, and maybe a bit wider than what you have. I was going for maybe 6 but was thinking about 5 most likely anyway. I don't plan on doing much scaping on it, as i hear it's easier for me to watch the water parameters that way. He's coloring up very fast which is a great thing to watch. I'm hoping for him to live long and be healthy.

[Sabrina]

Ah a tall 4 foot, cool.. I have 5 adult discus in my display tank, being a 4 foot and only 182 liters I think that is enough for me, I don't want to over crowd them. I also have another 4 foot with 5 baby discus in it that are 3.5 months old at the moment, so you could say ive got my hands full.. You sounds like you really care about your fish so I'm sure he will live long and happy in your care :)

[Pices]

I don’t know what he is, but his name should be lucky! I just wanted to wish you luck and also tell Sabrina, nice tank! Keep us posted on your little one. He’s a cutie.

[dylamos]

Here's an update! He's doing fantastic. He's very friendly and likes to nip at me whenever I'm cleaning his tank. Also upon doing some research on him, it's very likely just an assorted mixed with random strains. He's interesting looking because you can clearly see blue and some pattern, and a whole lot of dark.

https://imgur.com/a/tKORs
https://imgur.com/a/tKORs

[CliffsDiscus]

The color similar to a 5 stress bar cobalt
very common before the BlueDiamond
were developed.

Cliff