Why so much water Changing?

[prew62]

If you have a quality cannister filtration system with additional biological filtration why is it necessary to change so much water so frequently? I understand the need for water changes but how do Discus survive in fish stores and pet shops?

I would think with the introduction of new water every week you are essentially throwing your tank out of balance (depending on your water quality). I'm sure this has been covered ad nauseam but I would like to hear from people who do minimal water changes and have success stories.

Every week....that's definately a no-no with this crowd. We are talking a minimum of 30% daily up to 100% a few times a day with a select few. We always used aged and heated tapwater to do this. If you have a barebottom tank then you will see how much waste these fish put out. If you change the water daily then your fish will half very clean water, just like the continuous water change they recieve in nature via the rivers. The results of people that do large water changes every day is quite evident. And you question about how they survive in pet stores....they don't.....it's a miracle. Just kidding. Discus can survive with scarce water changes, but they won't grow nearly as big when they have to wallow in their waste. Hope that helps.
brad

[Flexy]

I have seen people change water twice a week 30% maybe, even once a week, and their discus were breeding, pretty big size.

[prew62]

Brad,
I assume what your saying is as long as I'm going to be vacuming the bottom of my tank, I will inevetably (sp?) be changing 20% of my water. These fish sound like poop machines! Sorry I used to keep tetras?

[Ivan]

Just one thing. How can a Discus be compared to a Tetra. (Yeah I know some tetras are huge, but i'm not talking about those ones!)I don't mean to sound aggressive or flippant, but look at the difference in size for a start, then look at how much protein we stuff into them 4 times per day usually, in the form of beef heart mix, which polutes the tank quickly. Wow what a long sentance.
I personally try to effect 50% wcs per day.
Ivan ;)

[kevster]

About 10 years ago when I lived at a house with well water I would siphon off the bottom of the tank 3 to 4 times per week. At most I was taking out 2 inches of water each time. I had 5 pairs of breeding discus each in their own 29 gal tank. I had so many babies I couldn't sell them. No internet and pet stores would only take 5 or 6 fish at a time. Didn't know what kind of water quality I had, didn't have tds or ph meters, didn't care what I had . I only fed them like crazy with beef heart and blood worms.

Now about 2 months ago I decided to set up a fish room and get back into breeding discus. I spent about $1500 on linear piston airpump, R/O unit, tds meters, ph meters, pumps, water containers, etc.......
Oh and of course $250 for a breeding pair and another couple of hundred for a bunch more discus. Well I have "perfect " water conditions. tds 60 ppm, ph 6.8 , 40% daily water changes and quess what..........
no babies.
So the moral of the story is I don't believe you need "anything special" Whatever works for you works
Just feed these guys a couple times a day with good food and keep the tank clean. If you have a male and female I wager you'll get babies.

[Flexy]

I agree.

[prew62]

Thanks Guys,
It will be a planted tank so that will help as well. As for tetras I simply meant I know nothing about Discus cause I only used to keep tetras...and africans...and gouramis.

kevster,

I think the moral of the story is that you can't buy instant success with Discus. The final thing that you bought, "a breeding pair" could be the reason your fish don't breed. Proven breeding pairs are a tough thing to find for sale. They can stop breeding after being moved, or they could be an unproven pair to begin with. Perfect water won't make two males breed, and it won't make a real pair breed. But perfect water will increase the hatch rate when a pair decides to breed. Two months isn't very long to wait for something as awesome as a pair of Discus to breed. I doubt that when you first had Discus that your fish were breeding in the first two months, and if they were then you were incredibly lucky.

For me the moral of the story is that you must siphon the tank bottoms daily with Discus. The amount of fish that are typically kept in a tank and the amount & type of food fed produces enough waste that you can't ignore it for a week at a time. If you're going to siphon daily then you're replacing the siphoned water daily. Try doing a 50% water change while you're siphoning on one tank and a 0% additional water change on another tank. See how little incremental time you're spending to remove 50% vs 0% and the overall cleanliness of the tank vs the other tank after about a month. There's no way you'll prefer the tank that only had the crap siphoned out of it.

There's no scientific reason we change so much water. But it works. That's enough for me.

Dave

Well put Dave!!!

Another thing about discus is that it isn't always your exact water parameters, but rather getting your fish to adjust to your water conditions. Fish that you raise from a very young age will breed much more readily in the water they have been kept in for so long. I do not have first hand experience with this, but am repeating what Cary has told me, and he'd be one to know.

[kevster]

Dave
I always get negative comments when I say I bought a breeding pair. There is a discus breeder in Pennsylvanis named Joe Rutkowski (not sure if I spelled it right.) He is selling everything due to health reasons. He has or had about 500 tanks, thousands of discus and angels and about a dozen pair of breeding discus when I was there. Pretty elaborate setup to con me out of buying 1 pair of discus.

"There's no scientific reason we change so much water. But it works. That's enough for me." Thats exactly what I said. Whatever works for you works but it is not neccesay to change all that water.


Dave I did not say this "produces enough waste that you can't ignore it for a week at a time" I said "I would siphon off the bottom of the tank 3 to 4 times per week. "

So again you not have to do 50% water changes daily, if you want to go ahead.

Kevster

Just curious....why do you think the majority of the successful discus keepers/breeders on this site, and all over the world for that matter, change so much water if its not nessesary

Tony

kevster,

I didn't mean to imply anything negative about buying a breeding pair. I have bought 2 pairs in the last 3 months. I was simply saying that buying a breeding pair does not guarantee success with breeding. And if the pair does not breed it is not necessarily a result of your water treatment.

No one "has" to do 50% water changes. I've tried all kinds of ways of keeping my tanks & water clean. Doing a daily 50% water change has been the easiest way so far. I'm sure you could achieve the same results using different methods and given your history I have no idea why you'd change. Whatever works for you is all good.

Dave

[kevster]

Tony and Dave
The guys that are breeding discus for a living want optimum results and I am sure changing all that water helps but I am just trying to point out you don't have to. The 17 year old kid with 1 or 2 tanks that doesn't have money for all the fancy stuff can still raise and breed discus.
A buddy of mine went with me and also a breeding pair along with about a dozen 4 in discus. Well he has 3 pairs laying eggs for the past month. I brought my tds an ph meter over to check his water and the tds was 475 and the ph 8.5. He doesn't have an r/o unit but he has tons of filtration on his setup and feeds them like crazy.
Now this forum is great and full of great useful info but not everything is etched in stone. He is having good results with water condition that don't sound ideal for discus.
Heres another thing I like to point out that I don't read anywhere. I read all this info about wattleys special fry food and eggs yolk and what you need to kep these fish alive the 1st few days.
Well is everyone sitting down. Thats all bs. Sure it works but you don't need to. These discus fry will eat brine shrimp from day 1. If you can raise angels you can do the exact same thing for discus. It took me about 8 months of my discus fry dying before I realized this...
The brine shrimp is growing so if you hatch brine shrimp a day or 2 before the babies are swimming they won't be able to eat it but If you hatch the bs to be ready at the same day they become free swimming they can eat it.
I am not trying argue with anyone but it doesn't have to be that "scientific" to breed and raise these guy.
Later
Kevster

Thanks for the response Kevster....you just answered all the question's That were running through my mind.

Tony ;D

I agree Kevster, it doesn't have to be complicated at all. If you saw my setup and saw how little time I spend doing my water changes you'd be surprised. I have 13 tanks totally 700g. I change water in 1/2 of the tanks in the morning and the other 1/2 in the afternoon. I spend 25 minutes on each chore and that includes feeding them and cleaning some filters, wiping some glass. I'm not a big-time breeder but the investment that I've made in the fish & equipment warrants the time I spend.

If I had a single tank and couldn't afford all the gadgetry I'd still do a 50% water change daily. It's the cheapest thing you can do and will have the biggest effect on the health of your fish. I could set it up for a 50g tank for about $40 Cdn and given the cost of 7 Discus in that 50g tank it would be worth it. I don't use RO water for growout but find that the breeding pairs do better with better water. My pairs have spawned successfully in my tap water but have a higher hatchrate in RO/tap water.

There is no "right" way to do it. But there are better ways. We don't have to agree on what's a better way, all we can do is state what has worked the best for us. I'm doing what works the best for me and when someone asks I tell them. That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong if you do it a different way. So when I say that 50% daily water changes have led to healthy, large Discus in my tanks I'm saying you "must" do this too, just that it has worked well for me. Anyone who reads that can do as they please in their tanks.

Dave

I find it hard to believe that any eggs at all could hatch at 475 ppm or 950 microseimens. That should be way over the limit for the egg shell to be ruined, is it not?

[kevster]

No he doesn't have a good hatch rate at all. Only 1 batch is alive right now with about 25 that have yet to become free swimming. I suggested to him to just buy a couple of gallons of distilled water to hatch them out but he is leaving them in the tanks to get the parents to raise them.
But they are laying eggs every 10 or 11 days in hard, high ph water.

[Smokey]

If mistakes were not made. how would people learn ???

There ya go. The only reason I mess with my water is to increase the hatch rate. A batch of 25 wrigglers are usually eaten by the pair, even they know it's not worth the effort. If your buddy lowered his conductivity by mixing pure water with tap his hatch rate would go up.

My growout tanks are all straight tapwater, pH 7.5, conductivity of 240ms. No reason to alter that water in my opinion.

Dave

yup....just alter the water for the breeders. I think he'd have a lot more success if he did a 90% wc with pure RO water and then maintained that conductivity though.

Brad

[prew62]

Okay,
You guys are just too intense! I'll set up a water treatment facility in my basement temperture regulated of course and then I'll start my aquarium set up. Based on what I've learned in the Simply Discus forum, in order to be able to maintain a discus tank properly and have water changes be somewhat automated I would invest more in setting up the room to take care of the water then I would the aquarium which right now I'm figuring is going to run about a $1500. They should call this forum Discus Complication or maybe Discus Big Water bill.

Actually most of us don't treat our water at all, we just use tap water. Many of us store it in garbage cans that sit next to the tank. I have a Rubbermaid container under my 180g tank for storing water. That cost me about $8. The heater in the container was $15 and the water pump was $12. So for $35 I did 10% water changes on that tank while it was a planted tank. You can make it sound as complicated as you like but holding water in a garbage can while aerating & heating it ain't rocket science. Nor is it particularly expensive. I love not having to worry about getting the temp of my tap water right or having to add dechlor products to my water. I don't see how storing water complicates my hobby, if anything it makes water changes so simple it's laughable.

Dave

p.s. you said in your first post "I understand the need for water changes but how do Discus survive in fish stores and pet shops?". I own a petshop and I put some of my Discus in there from time to time. I can tell you now that a Discus in a LFS is a depreciating property. The longer it sits there the more likely it will become a runt. We have bare bottomed tanks with sponge filters for our Discus but water still only gets changed weekly and the result is obvious within a month. Sure we should turn them over more often then that but the average customer doesn't have $50 to plop down on a fish and try to convince them to start with a school of 6 or more... it's a tough sell. So the Discus do survive in the LFS but the goal of the average poster here is to do better then have their fish survive. Our goal is for them to thrive. So many of us change water daily. Feel free to change your water on a schedule that suits you.

Dave

Prewitt,
It's not so much a necessity but rather about convenience, as far as water changing goes. I am a super-busy High School student and don't have time to change 80 gallons every day using 5 gallon buckets, so I have a setup as follows:
RO/DI filter: $140
55 gallon holding barrel: free (my gf's dad owns Ruth's Salad, this was a maionaise (sp?) barrel with plastic lining in it.
Auto water-shutoff valve: $7
90 ft. Python: free (came with my used tank)
TDS meter: $25
30 feet of hose for filling: $10
500 gph pump: $30

Total: $212

you really only need to spend $47 to have waterchanges that are virtually automated. The amount of time it saves me is well worth it!!! Something to consider, because when you're really busy and could spare 15 minutes and not an hour and a half for waterchanges, your fish will be healthier in the long run!!!

Brad

[prew62]

Thanks Dave!
I guess what it boils down to is how easy I want to make it for myself. I live in a 97 year old house and the basement is full of coal soot in the rafters. It isn't really an optimal place to store water. Probably blowing all this out of proportion but I want to do this ONCE and do it right. Don't care about breeding unless they do. If having a display tank of Discus becomes a chore I'm worried my investment will end up at the LFS. Assuming I'm correctly interpreting what LFS stands for. Our local LFS has Jack Wattley Discus they are trying to sell for $100+ each. It's a small southern town in Virginia with a population of about 50,000. Guess what aren't flying out the door?

Prewitt

[RAWesolowski]

Prew,

LFS does mean Local Fish Store, a much maligned but often visited entity by the denizens of this board.

I maintain two planted show tanks. Each is overstocked with discus by board standards. However, I am a discusholic. Water changes are daily due to fish density and I have been very happy with the growth rate on the fish. The daily change is 25%, about half tap and half RO. The tap half is directly from the tap via a python.

I recently visited the LFS where I bought my 2 inch fish 3 months ago. His fish remain 2 inch as mine are over 4 inches. Part of the reason is the water changes and part of the reason is the food and feeding.

No drip system, tanks that I can show off in my office... does it get better?

[piranhafreak]

i had piranhas and im sure they are alot more messy then discus i had 8 caribe in my 220g with 2 ac500 filters and 1 emp 400 a water temp of 84 ph of 6.8 and did water changes once a week about 60g and had no traces of ammonia nitrates or nitrites so im going to do the same for the discus and will see what happens aand let you know