Water Parameters

[waters10]

I'd like to add some tankmates to my discus tank now and I have some questions.

If you search around, it's almost a consensus that Discus can thrive on a wide range of water parameters and common advice is to not adjust PH, since they can thrive on high PH (not breed) and stable PH is more important than anything.

But I believe that's valid for the standard BB, discus only tank. Is that also valid for tankmates? In my case, I'm planning to add some manzanita branches with some plants on it. Definitely low-tech and still bare bottom. I'd like to add 10 cardinals, 10 rummynose, 2 rams, 1 betta and 1 BN pleco. Right now, my water is hard with PH around 7.4-7.6 and I change water straight from the tap currently. Do I need to adjust it before adding tankmates? If so, how?

Thanks!!

[bs6749]

Your water is perfectly fine for discus and those tankmates. You don't need to do anything to the water, the fish will do perfectly fine. Discus can also breed in a pH of 8.0, I know this because mine do, along with my rams. My GH is also at or above 300 ppm.

[DiscusDude85]

Your water is perfectly fine for discus and those tankmates. You don't need to do anything to the water, the fish will do perfectly fine. Discus can also breed in a pH of 8.0, I know this because mine do, along with my rams. My GH is also at or above 300 ppm.

Really? In 8.0? Wow. About 3 months ago i stopped using my r/o and my discus stopped breeding, They lay eggs and fertilize them but no wrigglers. They used to make wrigglers all the time with the r/o water. I was thinking it was my ph, From tap its 7.2 the r/o brought it down to 6.0.




Joe

[bs6749]

Yes, they lay every week for me in the community tank, sometimes twice per week now. I don't have the room to move them into their own tank otherwise I'd have done that. I've gotten some wigglers when I put some eggs from the filter tube into a jar I was growing my GBR wigglers out. There were about two dozen discus fry that made it about 3 days after hatching then they all died.

[waters10]

Thanks, guys! I'll be getting fish shortly and will investigate what's a good quarantine process for these tankmates.

Thanks