sleonard
03-04-2006, 09:07 PM
Hi all, I'd like to introduce myself since I have been lurking here for a while now reading through as much of the forum before starting to post my questions. My name is Scott, I live in Tempe, AZ, am a Systems Analyst at a local community college, and I have been infected with a serious case of Discus Fever :)
I have an extensive background in electronics and one of my other hobbies/interests is whole house media distribution and home automation. I plan on eventually adding my tanks into my automation designs for when I start building a house (and possibly a nice size shed/barn/workshop type building in the back for growing a fish room) I also love flyfishing (kind of difficult in a desert :( ), camping, and homebrewing (ummmh, beer!).
The story of my falling in love with Discus is actually a very sad story so I'll spare myself and all of you with the details but some of it is integral to how my affair with keeping aquariums and my recent introduction to Discus came about.
I was first introduced to keeping aquariums by my best friend Mike about 15 years ago. Although his full time career was as a psychologist/counselor he had be an avid aquarist for nearly 20 years and ran a small retail fish store for many years on the side. His main specialty at the time was African cichlids and set me up with a 55 gal. Malawi tank which I had for many years and even was breeding enough to make it pay for it's upkeep with trade in food and supplies at the LFS.
Although Africans always occupied the majority of his tanks he also raised and bred a large variety of species including Discus. Several years ago he was diagnosed with cancer and during his long fight has had to slowly scale down his aquarium addiction. Last fall he could no longer keep up humping the the large quantities of RO water and shut down his two Discus tanks. One was a 125 g. that had 6 large adults. He converted it to an African tank and sold the Discus to his Oncologist (as well as setting up a new 70 g. tank for them in the doctors office. The second was a 29 gal. tank that had three 2-2 1/2" pigeonblood juvi's which he gave to me with the understanding that one of them would got to the doctors tank when they were full grown.
I set that one up, buying a stand, top, and light and used the Aquaclear filter he gave me with the tank. The tank setup went off without a hitch and all 3 were happy and healthy for about 10 weeks when they all got bloat that killed the smallest one. I treated w/ Metronadazole and the other 2 survived and were once again happy and healthy.
Mike had also given me an 80 gal tank but I couldn't afford to set it up with all the Christmas spending I had to do but did start buying the components a little at a time for several months. I got a nice oak stand and canopy, hinged glass, an Ehiem 2126 Pro II Thermofilter as well as some really nice molded fake driftwood and bulk sand for substrate. By the end of January I was finally able to start it up. I used some filter material from the 29 g tank for quicker bio buildup and filled it with 100% RO from a machine at the corner Circle K. I let it cycle for 24 hours to get it up to temp and then transferred the 2 discus plus a swordtail and 2 baby plecos to the 80. I monitored the tank closely with some 5 in 1 test strips several times a day and everything started up well.
After 2 weeks I noticed that both Discus seemed to be acting strange but was already late for work and left. That evening I go a call from my son saying that another discus had died. I brought Mike over and examined the tank and the remaing Discus. We determined that there had been a large drop in Ph and added 2 pitchers of tap water slowly. The Ph recovered and so did my last discus. He has remained happy and healthy looking and comes out to see me whenever I enter the room.
Mike had told me that because of the large tank to fish ratio that I should not do any water changes for several weeks and then start doing a 25% change every 2 weeks until I increased the stocking. Indeed, my Nitrate and nitrite level remained at zero and now nitrate is barely starting to show. I did change 15 gal after three weeks just so I could vacuum the sand. I had been overfeeding but I now use only a half of a bloodworm or brineshrimp cube twice a day and I may have to figure out how to cut them in thirds. I am also going to take the emphatic advice of many of the forum members and remove the sand as soon as I can and have a barebottom with just the fake driftwood for some comfort structure.
While cleaning the gravel last week and stirring up the detritus in the process I noticed a small, white, hair thin worm wiggling around in the current. I searched the SimplyDiscus.com information on diseases and medications and my best guess is that it was Capillaria. None of the fish are showing any symptoms but I am treating the tank w/ Metronadazinol and am going to follow a quarantine regimen of medications I also found there in order to insure that the tank becomes disease free. I am also going to remove the two plecos and replace them with a couple of bristlenose. When the Pigeonblood gets large enough I will order a box of nice discus (I am looking at fish from Rocky Mountain Discus and Discus Madness. Haven't made up my mind yet.) and give the Pigeonblood to Mike's doctors tank. This should allow me more than enough time to get this tank in shape for the expensive fish I'll be ordering.
One thing that is happening right now is that the Ph has risen to above 7.4 and I am unable to bring it down. I am especially puzzled since I used 100% RO water with about a half dose of Kent liquid RO Right and Discus Essentials. I should have a Ph of no more than 7. The 15 gallon WC brought it down to 7.2 briefly but it was back to 7.4 after 24 hours. BTW, comparison to an LFS water test showed that the Ph indicator on my test strips was way off so I bought a continous use electronic monitor by Pinpoint from Marine Depot. I also tried Ph down and that had no effect, Ph is still 7.4. I am not worried that this will harm the fish but I don't fully understand why my Ph has stabilized at 7.4 using pure RO water and a small amount of discus buffer. It could only be from two thing, the sand is raising Kh or my air pump is offgassing too much dissolved Co2. I just turned off the air pump and will start monitoring the Ph closely to see if there is any change. I was using the airpump in an effort to supplement O2 since I am using a closed canister filter so I will also closely monitor respiration as well.
Mike was transferred to Hospice care today and he is leaving me his remaining tanks and aquariums supplies. There is another 80 gal central american planted tank. These all do well in our local tapwater and my neighbor has an unused hex tank he wants to set up. I am going to give him these fish and help him set it up and then set up the 80 for Discus. There is also a 125 and a custom 90 that is very tall. Both have Africans and I will leave them African for now but eventually the 125 will also be for discus and I'll keep the best of the Africans for the 90. I'm also going to put the Ehiem canister on the 90 as it suits the africans better and start using Aquaclear power filters for all the discus tanks.
Since I'm on a narrow budget, it will take some time to get both 80's and the 125 setup, running, and full of juvi discus so I am going to continue to hump RO water for now but want to setup my own RO unit continously supplying fresh RO water to the discus tanks while the RO waste water will continuosly supply fresh hard water to the africans. Tank waste water will go to the flowerbeds.
These 4 large tanks and the 29 are going to require some very creative living room rearrangement and won't be viable for long so I have broke down and started looking at purchasing either a fix-er-upper on a decent parcel of land (1 acre would be nice, 2 even nicer) or just an empty parcel and build a house. In either case I'm planning on building a large shed/barn/workshop type of building split between a dedicated fish room and a workshop but that's a loooong ways down the road.
In any case, I'm patient and dedicated to this wonderful new hobby of mine and for right now just intent on learning the basics of Discus care. I have a feeling that I'll be learning a lot from the great people here and hope that I'll be able to contribute back to this community.
Oh, and I'm sorry for the long winded introduction, I can get carried away and I wanted to give everyone an accurate picture of how far along I am and what I have learned so far.
Scott
I have an extensive background in electronics and one of my other hobbies/interests is whole house media distribution and home automation. I plan on eventually adding my tanks into my automation designs for when I start building a house (and possibly a nice size shed/barn/workshop type building in the back for growing a fish room) I also love flyfishing (kind of difficult in a desert :( ), camping, and homebrewing (ummmh, beer!).
The story of my falling in love with Discus is actually a very sad story so I'll spare myself and all of you with the details but some of it is integral to how my affair with keeping aquariums and my recent introduction to Discus came about.
I was first introduced to keeping aquariums by my best friend Mike about 15 years ago. Although his full time career was as a psychologist/counselor he had be an avid aquarist for nearly 20 years and ran a small retail fish store for many years on the side. His main specialty at the time was African cichlids and set me up with a 55 gal. Malawi tank which I had for many years and even was breeding enough to make it pay for it's upkeep with trade in food and supplies at the LFS.
Although Africans always occupied the majority of his tanks he also raised and bred a large variety of species including Discus. Several years ago he was diagnosed with cancer and during his long fight has had to slowly scale down his aquarium addiction. Last fall he could no longer keep up humping the the large quantities of RO water and shut down his two Discus tanks. One was a 125 g. that had 6 large adults. He converted it to an African tank and sold the Discus to his Oncologist (as well as setting up a new 70 g. tank for them in the doctors office. The second was a 29 gal. tank that had three 2-2 1/2" pigeonblood juvi's which he gave to me with the understanding that one of them would got to the doctors tank when they were full grown.
I set that one up, buying a stand, top, and light and used the Aquaclear filter he gave me with the tank. The tank setup went off without a hitch and all 3 were happy and healthy for about 10 weeks when they all got bloat that killed the smallest one. I treated w/ Metronadazole and the other 2 survived and were once again happy and healthy.
Mike had also given me an 80 gal tank but I couldn't afford to set it up with all the Christmas spending I had to do but did start buying the components a little at a time for several months. I got a nice oak stand and canopy, hinged glass, an Ehiem 2126 Pro II Thermofilter as well as some really nice molded fake driftwood and bulk sand for substrate. By the end of January I was finally able to start it up. I used some filter material from the 29 g tank for quicker bio buildup and filled it with 100% RO from a machine at the corner Circle K. I let it cycle for 24 hours to get it up to temp and then transferred the 2 discus plus a swordtail and 2 baby plecos to the 80. I monitored the tank closely with some 5 in 1 test strips several times a day and everything started up well.
After 2 weeks I noticed that both Discus seemed to be acting strange but was already late for work and left. That evening I go a call from my son saying that another discus had died. I brought Mike over and examined the tank and the remaing Discus. We determined that there had been a large drop in Ph and added 2 pitchers of tap water slowly. The Ph recovered and so did my last discus. He has remained happy and healthy looking and comes out to see me whenever I enter the room.
Mike had told me that because of the large tank to fish ratio that I should not do any water changes for several weeks and then start doing a 25% change every 2 weeks until I increased the stocking. Indeed, my Nitrate and nitrite level remained at zero and now nitrate is barely starting to show. I did change 15 gal after three weeks just so I could vacuum the sand. I had been overfeeding but I now use only a half of a bloodworm or brineshrimp cube twice a day and I may have to figure out how to cut them in thirds. I am also going to take the emphatic advice of many of the forum members and remove the sand as soon as I can and have a barebottom with just the fake driftwood for some comfort structure.
While cleaning the gravel last week and stirring up the detritus in the process I noticed a small, white, hair thin worm wiggling around in the current. I searched the SimplyDiscus.com information on diseases and medications and my best guess is that it was Capillaria. None of the fish are showing any symptoms but I am treating the tank w/ Metronadazinol and am going to follow a quarantine regimen of medications I also found there in order to insure that the tank becomes disease free. I am also going to remove the two plecos and replace them with a couple of bristlenose. When the Pigeonblood gets large enough I will order a box of nice discus (I am looking at fish from Rocky Mountain Discus and Discus Madness. Haven't made up my mind yet.) and give the Pigeonblood to Mike's doctors tank. This should allow me more than enough time to get this tank in shape for the expensive fish I'll be ordering.
One thing that is happening right now is that the Ph has risen to above 7.4 and I am unable to bring it down. I am especially puzzled since I used 100% RO water with about a half dose of Kent liquid RO Right and Discus Essentials. I should have a Ph of no more than 7. The 15 gallon WC brought it down to 7.2 briefly but it was back to 7.4 after 24 hours. BTW, comparison to an LFS water test showed that the Ph indicator on my test strips was way off so I bought a continous use electronic monitor by Pinpoint from Marine Depot. I also tried Ph down and that had no effect, Ph is still 7.4. I am not worried that this will harm the fish but I don't fully understand why my Ph has stabilized at 7.4 using pure RO water and a small amount of discus buffer. It could only be from two thing, the sand is raising Kh or my air pump is offgassing too much dissolved Co2. I just turned off the air pump and will start monitoring the Ph closely to see if there is any change. I was using the airpump in an effort to supplement O2 since I am using a closed canister filter so I will also closely monitor respiration as well.
Mike was transferred to Hospice care today and he is leaving me his remaining tanks and aquariums supplies. There is another 80 gal central american planted tank. These all do well in our local tapwater and my neighbor has an unused hex tank he wants to set up. I am going to give him these fish and help him set it up and then set up the 80 for Discus. There is also a 125 and a custom 90 that is very tall. Both have Africans and I will leave them African for now but eventually the 125 will also be for discus and I'll keep the best of the Africans for the 90. I'm also going to put the Ehiem canister on the 90 as it suits the africans better and start using Aquaclear power filters for all the discus tanks.
Since I'm on a narrow budget, it will take some time to get both 80's and the 125 setup, running, and full of juvi discus so I am going to continue to hump RO water for now but want to setup my own RO unit continously supplying fresh RO water to the discus tanks while the RO waste water will continuosly supply fresh hard water to the africans. Tank waste water will go to the flowerbeds.
These 4 large tanks and the 29 are going to require some very creative living room rearrangement and won't be viable for long so I have broke down and started looking at purchasing either a fix-er-upper on a decent parcel of land (1 acre would be nice, 2 even nicer) or just an empty parcel and build a house. In either case I'm planning on building a large shed/barn/workshop type of building split between a dedicated fish room and a workshop but that's a loooong ways down the road.
In any case, I'm patient and dedicated to this wonderful new hobby of mine and for right now just intent on learning the basics of Discus care. I have a feeling that I'll be learning a lot from the great people here and hope that I'll be able to contribute back to this community.
Oh, and I'm sorry for the long winded introduction, I can get carried away and I wanted to give everyone an accurate picture of how far along I am and what I have learned so far.
Scott