first post

[robr0924]

Couple of questions: But first some background. This is the second time I have raised discuss. I had ten blue turqiose about 18 yrs ago in a 55 gal tank until my heater went hey wire and cooked them while I was at work. I was pissed at the money I lost. And went oscars for a while till the pain went away. Now I have a 300 gallon tank that I have had for 14 years. Last year I stripped it down and got rid of my oscars and arrawana and red tail cat. I decided I wanted to go with Discus again, one I have always loved them and two there a more variety and the price tag is not to big.

I have 14 discus now, I got restarted by buy a guys 80 gallon tank, with 6 discus. One red pigeon, three heckels, and two turqosie. I lost the heckels, I believe mainly because I was not running any heaters on the tank.

I bought 4 titaneium(sp) heaters and added red a lepard, Snow white, red moen, yellow melon, and some red blue turqoise. I up to 14 Discus, 6 clown loaches, 2 rams and 7 angels of different varieties.

I have not lost any fish, but i have been extremely careful with the tank. Since it so big I wanted to fill it up, but I have backed off, and decided to grow these guys and see if anyone pairs off.

I have a 75 gal tank I use to put new discus in to watch for diseases before adding to the big tank. I plan on using it as a bredding tank.

Question for ya'll we just got our cool snap here (texas) and I came home to a 75 degree tank, three out of four heaters crap out on me. I add two ehiem glass heaters, and brought the water temp up slowly to 90 degrees and slow turned it down to 87 degrees. I felt 90 was to hot, but at 87, some of older fish are dark and showing some distress. I check the nitrate and i in acceptable ranges. What temp works best for ya'll?

How many discus could i go up to in a 300 gal tank. I think I have maxed out, any thoughts?

I stop rambling now, any advise or thoughts is appeciated. I going on a year and half with the discus this time around.

thanks

Rob

[White Worm]

Welcome back to the insanity. Accepted number is 1 adult per 10g. Temps are anywhere from 82-84 for breeders, 85-88 for the rest and 88+ for certain meds. Your 75g could be split up for 3 breeder tanks. 20g to 29g are good sizes for breeder tanks.

[GrillMaster]

Sounds like ya got a good fish load in there. Just need to get some reliable heaters is all. I would also check for nitrites, not nitrates.

The darkness your seeing in the discus at the moment is probably caused by the heat fluctuation. Once the temp is at a constant 84-88 deg, they should settle down...

WC's......I wouldnt wanna have to do yours!! But they gotta be done...:D

[KISS]

Without Heckel, 88F should be great. The key is stable! W / C for your huge tank will be a little concern. Any way, you setup sounds great! PS: 75G is 2 big for breeding.

Any pics? That should look great!

Cheers

KISS

[fishmama]

Just a thought-

Consider the "needs" of the tankmates as well. My discus are much more robust than their lil' friends. I keep my tank 84.5-85.5 deg F. Many of the discus tankmates may tolerate high temps, but not thrive longterm.

hth
Lisa

[robr0924]

pic of the my tank before Discus.:D

[KISS]

pic of the my tank before Discus.:D

It looks great though it is a little busy! Oscar looks great!

[GrillMaster]

pic of the my tank before Discus.:D

Cool....... A couch stand!!:D

[Cosmo]

FWIW..

Mikscus gave you some good numbers. The "rule of thumb" is 1 adult per 10 gal but the actual load is determined by a number of factors including filtration, maintenance/WC routines, feeding, etc. Always better to start out on the low side but be careful on how you add to the school.

It's good you have a QT tank and recognize the need for it, buying in groups of 5/6 is good to keep things quiet in the QT tank, but keep in mind that if you get to the point of adding all of them to the 300 gal tank at some point, you WILL be putting a stress on the bio system of the big tank until the bacterial cultures grow to meet the increased need. Even if your bio filter is rated for a 1000gal tank, the cultures will only grow in accordance with the bioload the tank is carrying which is determined by the current number of fish and all the things I mentioned in the first paragraph. So keep in mind that even though the tank will still be "under stocked" at 20 fish, the filters are not cycled to accommodate all 20 immediately. You'll therefore need to monitor ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates and do additional water changes until you consistently get nominal readings on all three parameters. Otherwise, a spike may create pandamonium in terms of illness or even death.

On the heaters... I'd STRONGLY suggest you get an EXTERNAL CONTROLLER and slave your heaters to it. Buy heaters with internal thermostats (the Eheims are great when slaved to external controllers) and look to have about 5 watts of heater per gallon of water. In your case.. that's a lot of heaters :p With a setup like this, the odds of losing a fish due to a bad heater and/or controller are virtually nill as either the controller or the internal thermostat on the heater will turn off the heaters before the water gets hot enough to cause any damage. The controller will turn off any stuck heater at the controllers set point, and the heater will turn itself off if the controller goes bad. A very nice, reliable fail safe.

Considering your tank size, the big 500 or 1000 watt titanium heaters might be more practical, but they don't have internal thermostats so you'd lose the "fail safe". Personally I don't use them because of this, but my largest tank is an acrylic 180 and 4 250 watt Stealth heaters hooked to the controller does just fine.

Might be somewhat unattractive to have 6 heaters in the one tank, although you could use 300 watters of another brand to reduce the number. The controller is the key, the brand of the heater in this setup becomes secondary... but don't go too cheap or you could have broken glass, etc, problems.

You might want to visit the Jehmco.com website as they have an excellent article on heaters and external controllers.

hth
Jim

[FishLover888]

Nice heater tips. Learn something new today.

Thanks

[GrillMaster]

Cosmo gave ya some awsome advice, but if you have alot of plants in the tank, the bioload wont matter...The plants will suck up any additional load the fish put on the filter...

[swinters66]

Hi Rob,

Where in TX are ya?

I like the tank...can't believe you had a red tail cat fish. We had one that got so big it ate one dempsey, then ate the other one, choked on it and died....?!?

I hope youre discus are doing well...sounds like you have some nice ones. And I hope you get your heater problem remedied. I worry about mine too (I have a 60 gallon tank tho), but so far so good...and I have a spare just in case.

[architect1]

Wow love the tank looks calm and vary clean. Hope to see more close up pics.