Nitrates, Discus, and Plants

[brandonppr]

Hello everyone. First post here. I have never had discus but I have been researching them and want to change my fish to discus in a few months but I want to make sure everything is good first.

I plan on having about 12-15 rummynose and about 6-8 cory cats as well as the discus.
The tank holds about 65gals including sump after accounting for things that take up space.

I have been using regular tap water but I just installed RO water to do changes. The changes are automatic. There is a pump in the sump that currently pumps out 2 gallons and then fills 3 times a day.
I had it set higher but my plants started looking bad. They seem to be looking better after lower the water changes to 3 a day.
3 water changes makes about 9% water change after 1 day, 17% after 2 days, and 25% after 3 days.
Will that be enough with plants? I don't have a current pic the impatiens have grown a bit since this picture, probably about double the amount now.

I'm wanting adult discus. How many do you think would be ok in this set up.

Even with the lowered water changes, I am showing 0 on nitrates right now.
This is my first tank with plants so I also was wondering with RO water do I need to add anything for the plants?


117650

[smsimcik]

First of all, I like your tank design a lot.
But why are you using ro to do partial water changes? Why not just continue to use tap water?
I would continue to do the daily partial water changes but would also recommend a weekly larger water change with a gravel vac to get detrius out of the gravel.

Since you're asking how many adult discus I would recommend the answer would be none. This tank set up is not ideal for discus. They will do ok for a while but not thrive unless you step up the water changes and keep the gravel clean. I personally would go with the 6-8 cories and maybe 30-40 rummies or cardinals tetras and leave it at that. A large school of small fish would look much better in there than 4-6 large discus. But that's up to you.

As far as additives for the plants, you absolutely need to be using plant fertilizer. The best one I have found is Greg Sages' aquatic fertilizer on his Select Aquatics website. I would also dose with a carbon supplement like Flourish Excel once or twice a week unless you want to go with CO2. If you continue to use ro water to do water changes, you will need to dose with Replenish or something similar to keep the water hardness and ph stabilized.

Good luck. Your tank has a lot of potential.

[JamesW]

Another option for plant fertilizers is GLA using PPS or EI dosing. Pretty cheap and shown to be fish friendly.

There are instructions for reconsituting RO water on the PPS-Pro google site for plants.

Personally, I think discus would look stunning in that tank. That said you should get a solid handle on growing plants first. Then get the adult discus when you know you have a stable regimen in operation. Or pull the tank down and do the vice versa.

[Paul Sabucchi]

If you decide to go ahead with swapping the fish to adult discus and corys I think you should also swap the substrate to just a thinner layer of sand

[Tshethar]

Love the aesthetics of the wood and plants above the water line. It's a beautiful tank. Seems to me you're getting great advice above. If you can get a good nutrient balance/fertilizer regimen established, limit the substrate, and figure out the right water change schedule for the load, it seems like you could do well with some mature discus in that tank if you decide to go that route. Agree that RO water may not make the most sense, given the likely need to remineralize. Depending on your water supply it might make sense to prefilter your water through a sediment and carbon block unit, especially if you're automating and don't want to manually dechlorinate, but usually people here only use RO when trying to hatch eggs in hard water.

Hope you have fun continuing to think through your plans.

[smsimcik]

Another option for plant fertilizers is GLA using PPS or EI dosing. Pretty cheap and shown to be fish friendly.

There are instructions for reconsituting RO water on the PPS-Pro google site for plants.

Personally, I think discus would look stunning in that tank. That said you should get a solid handle on growing plants first. Then get the adult discus when you know you have a stable regimen in operation. Or pull the tank down and do the vice versa.

GLA fertilizers are a good option but it requires frequent dosing. Select Aquatics fertilizer is dirt cheap to dose and only needs to be used once every 2 weeks. I use it once a week in my tanks that I do more frequent water changes in and it works great.
Here's some more info on it. http://www.selectaquatics.com/Plant%20Fertilizer.htm

[Filip]

I've never seen an impatiens growing on aquarium lights and without soil before .
This tank is so unique and nice looking it would be a waste to rearrange it to accommodate the strict discus water quality needs .
Just pour plain tap water and include regular daily
EI method fertilizationn and Co2 injected and this tank and impatiens should flourish in a couple of months.

[plantbrain]

I agree with what's been said prior. I'd likely remove the fish you have if you wanted discus, a hodge podge of species rarely looks good and you seem to want to take the tank to the next level.
Discus will do better, you might have a school or rummy or Cards, cories on the bottom etc.

I agree with a thin layer of sand in place of the gravel.

If the emergent plants have a ledge etc, something that offers a cave like refuge for the fish, that's ideal.

If you want to run things lower nutrient wise, consider pennywort up top, it'll turn pale and yellow under low N.
It'll respond faster than the other plants to N. So it makes a good "test" if you will.

You can also use TDS for ferts, measure the tap and the tank, do a water change, add the ferts.
Take the reading right away after adding the ferts.

See how far down they drop over the week or water change frequency.
This will give a ball park estimate of the nutrient consumption.
Fish waste will also, so you can run a week without ferts adding just fish food to see what that does to TDS etc

Then combine the two totals etc.

Still, simply watching the fert relative TDS should be enough for most cases.
And plant health and experience also play a good way to test.

So there's 3-4 things you can do to manage nutrients and plants in this system.