New Member

[Tombetta]

Hi All, We have 4 fish tanks:
1 Cube with 2 fish, shark and a little red fish
30 gallon with 10 inch Axolotl, amazing aquascape and some other fish friendly to those weird creatures
40 gallon salt with a pair of clowns and a yellow goby and anemone and coral
125 gallon bow front with 30 gallon filter tank with:
-12 new Stendker discus, (yesterday)
-24 Rummy Nose (Captive breed)
-6 German Blue Rams
-4 Bronze Corys
-1 spotted plecos. Not sure of name but 4" max.

We have been fish tanking for 30 years and we scored an amazing deal on a used 125 tank and stand so we decided to learn about Discus and make this happen. We added water to the tank 3 months ago and started with Cory, then Rummy and Rams, then yesterday Discus and plecos.

-Our sump pump is 500 GPH
-Fluval light
-Bulk Reef Supply double titanium heaters with wifi controller
-Continuous water change system, dripping approximately 10 gallons a day.

Looking forward to questions, thoughts and opinions on the water change system.

[jeep]

Welcome to the forum!!! Let's see some pics!!!

[Iminit]

Lol nothing said till we see pictures :). Congrats on the new tank and discus!

[Iminit]

Lol I’ve been talking with you on Facebook. Jacob is also on here with some great pics of his Stendker. Jwcalson please read up on how he did his. Don’t think I’ve seem better Stendker discus than his!

[solasis]

I saw your discus on facebook as well! They look great, congratulations on the fish. Going to be joining you in the discus club very soon :)

[Tombetta]

Here is a short video with brief mention of water change system. Our tank cycled once or twice before we did this system and we are wondering if this system will be good or bad in the long term... No ammonia, nitrates, nitrites ever... the biological cycle may be irrelevant and is that going to be a bad or good thing?? No manual water changes is the biggest plus


Not sure why some of the photos are sideways in the preview....but you get the picture :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeOByZbQw8w

[Iminit]

Nice video! If you remove the s in https the video shows up here without going to u-tube :). All looks great. Only thing is I don’t think your drip system is going to help with discus. These fish and at the size you have will need 50+% daily water changes to develop correctly. Plus they will need to be fed a lot for a least the next 6 months. Once they reach the 6” size they should do better with your drip system.

[Tombetta]

Thanks! I will bump up the water to 60 gallons a day. will let you know how it goes...either way!

[Tombetta]

Curious, though, why 50 percent+/- if nitrates nitrites and ammonia are zero?

[Tombetta]

watching, How To Keep Discus, on U tube. wish I watched this sooner...lol

[jwcarlson]

Lol I’ve been talking with you on Facebook. Jacob is also on here with some great pics of his Stendker. Jwcalson please read up on how he did his. Don’t think I’ve seem better Stendker discus than his!

That's mighty nice of you to say, Tom (iminit)! Though I am not sure that's true. :). But thank you!
Here's my thread, but I am not sure how much help it will be!
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?138818-JWCarlson-s-first-discus-tank

Yes, I had a feeling this was the new Stendkers from Facebook. Glad too see you on the forum, Tom (tombetta)!

[Tombetta]

jw, your fish look dope! glad to be here.

[Iminit]

50% is what I did others do more. I also did mine in a planted 125. It’s not just for removing water and waste it’s the new water. People have tried the drip system and many other tactic’s but nothing is better than clean water.

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Tom, first welcome to the forum :D I watched your video and have one suggestion. Mount your power strip on the side of your stand. If you not want a live power strip in water should you have a leak. Are you only using RO water with your drip?
Pat

[Tombetta]

Hi Pat! Thanks for the suggestion. I have since tidied the electrical and tubing and all the other stuff. We are using city water with 20" filters the 1st one is a sediment filter and the next 2 are carbon filters. I just calculated on half volume on the ball valve 44 gallons an hour. I have played around with the Volume and Can manage to get a drip as low as 5 gallons A-day. I've several different chlorine test strips and drops and so far no measurable chlorine is getting through the filter system.. But I receive an electronic ultra low chlorine tester tomorrow and will be curious what it says in terms of parts per billions... This is one heck of an interesting and expensive experiment and I really hope it'll work.

[Tombetta]

Hi All, PH problem we are working on and any advice would be great... so we are going on week 4 and our chlorine block filters are measuring .006ppm chlorine so we will change them tomorrow and make it a weekly scheduled test with our ULR Chlorine tester. I was running the auto water change the last few days at 240 gallons of new water per day, I forgot to dial it back. We received our new electronic PH tester and calibrated it 2 days ago. The water going into the tank is PH of 7.55 the water in the tank was coming up with a PH of nearly 8.4. I turned off the air stones because my local fish store guy said that with 2 air stones I could be blowing the CO2 out of the water which would cause PH to rise. We kept researching other possible reasons for the high ph and looked at our media. We have Britewell Aquatics XPORT Bio Blocks from Amazon and their listing back then did not say these were for Marine use. Welp, they are for Marine use and will raise ph for sure, according to their plant manager who answered after hours and was totally informative. He is sending me the freshwater version which will not change PH and some other sample things which I will report back on once I figure out what he sends. I removed the blocks. After the filter change tomorrow we will do a slow water change as not to drop Ph too quickly and keep monitoring.
(Here is a video description. I keep trying to imbed these videos in the forum but have not learned how to correctly, so my apologies. I was told to remove the "S")


http://youtu.be/l-E5ovfWC2c

[jwcarlson]

The offgasing is going to happen with or without airstones. The airstones will accelerate it, though. This is why I age my water, it swings from 7 to 8.3. Using it aged hasn't been an issue. I even age/pre-heat for my other tanks as well. I have the facilities to make it easy, so might as well.
Not sure that helps at all.