Coming back to the hobby

[Jhhnn]

It's been a long time, 17 years, since I kept fish, at all. Even then, I'd lost interest in fish other than Discus. I suppose that I was moderately successful in my 2 previous attempts, losing a tankful of 3" blues to a stuck heater in the late 70's and having to adopt out several young adult red-turquoise 17 years ago because of a relationship/ lifestyle change. If I've ever been unlucky, it's been in that regard, but this last time around it seems to have stuck, with two sons, now 15 & 12. Nothing is perfect, but it's good, and stable.

But, back to the fish. Both batches of fish at the time had been obtained from mail order breeders, pre-internet, and it was all too common for supposedly 2-1/2" fish to really be the size of 50-cent pieces when delivered... with the smaller fish obviously being more difficult to raise. Blues often turned out to be browns, if they got old enough to tell, so forth & so on...I think this forum and others definitely help hobbyists figure out who's honest and who's not, regardless of the hype and promises...

The wealth of information (and even differing opinions) is a good thing, and I'm taking my time, learning the new ways, before I tale the plunge. It's inevitable at this point, since I bought a used tank, yesterday, have a shopping list at Drs Foster & Smith, and a to-buy list for Jehmco.

The used tank is a 72gal bowfront, which came with a double tube light, cabinet/stand, gravel, two no-name heaters, pennplax cascade 1000 canister, misc nets & etc, and some really cheesy plastic plants, decorations and background. I hadn't even considered a bowfront, but it obviously held water and the price seemed right- $225- How'd I do?

The gravel will be nice for houseplants, the heaters might be OK for the water aging barrel, and the "decorations" are already in the trashcan. Yechh!

Any advise on the canister filter? I've never used them, but I figured I'd pack it full of the Azoo sintered glass bio-rings, floss on the intake side, sponge at the end, just to keep it all in there... I'll have sponge filters, of course, and a sponge on the canister intake...

I plan on maybe 8- 3" fish, some bushynoses, Ebo heaters on a controller, and a trusty Luft airpump- I had one back when, and it was as reliable as dirt. Any comments or suggestions? Thanks!

[Eddie]

Hello, nice to meet you. Glad you decided to jump back into the hobby. It seems like every who has gotten into discus at some point or another always ends up getting back into them. There just isn't a more beautiful fish IMO.

So, the tank. Will it be a barebottom tank? You said you wanted to have 8 young fish being 3". If so, you'll also have to figure out how you will perform waterchanges. You will need to find out if you have chlorine or chloramine in your water supply. Another thing to think about, is the PH of your water and how stable or unstable it is after 24 hours of agitation. I'd definitely invest in a nice freshwater test kit if you havent already.

Now for the big stuff. What do you want to do with your tank, final product? Do you want the tank to eventually be planted? If you want to have a planted substrate tank, I would definitely recommend you start with adult fish, around 5" or greater and about 6 of them. The reason is, if you try to grow out discus in a planted substrate tank, you will have mixed results in the end. Buying 5 adults will guarantee that you have full grown discus in your tank, alleviating the possibility of slow growers.

So I guess there are a few things to think about before you decide on how you are going to go about filling the tank. Please don't hesitate to ask a million questions. Between everyone on the forum, I am sure we can provide you with a million answers. ;)

Eddie

[Darren's Discus]

Welcome back to the hobby,nice to have you join us flat fish fans or the 3F club here at simply !:D



cheers

[Jhhnn]

Thanks, guys. I'm not really interested in planted/ sand substrate tanks so much- Healthy Discus are a stunning sight, even in the most spartan environment. Maybe some potted swords down the road, big piece of driftwood, a few contrivances of stones siliconed together for bushynose cover. I really like the idea of having bushynoses in with discus for maintenance reasons, and I think I can get tank-reared younguns from several sources, maybe even from the discus breeder I'll ultimately choose. Years ago, I never knew where they came from or what they brought with 'em, so I kept them in community tanks, not with Discus. Great helpers, voracious algae munchers, utterly non-aggressive.

I think I can just start out with Denver water, which has chloramines, and isn't terribly hard. The Denver water board has a good website, and what they're saying fits with what I remember-

http://www.denverwater.org/

http://www.denverwater.org/waterquality/pdfs/TreatedWQSummaryReport2007.pdf

The second link, pages 14 & 15, gives monthly values, and they tell me the water in my neighborhood comes from the Marston facility. It should work. My shopping cart w/ the Drs. includes Prime and the Seachem Ammonia/nitrite/nitrate testkits recommended somewhere here... Years ago, it was commonly believed that soft acid water was necessary even for rearing, which apparently isn't really true. When and if I get to a place where I have pairs, I'll deal with the necessary changes to the water at that time. It wouldn't be a big deal to have more than 1 aging vat, either...

I have a smaller Victorian home in the city, vintage 1887, and I've renovated it extensively, torn into almost every part of it at one time or another, so I know it well. It has a shallow partial basement, ~6-1/2 feet tall, which houses the furnace and my workshop, so it'll be pretty easy to install a used 55gal food container or similar down there- it has water & electricity easily available, and I'd figured a mag drive 950 (13.5 ft head) to pump the conditioned water up to the tank, and a separate drain line down to the sewer or maybe to a grey water system for the veggie garden... bringing the tubing and etc up through the floor & in the wall is pretty easy...

The hardest part, so far, has been bringing myself to spending the money to do it well. It's not that it's really a big deal in the greater scheme of our finances, at all, just that I'm not accustomed to spending on myself, on what are essentially "toys", as my wife puts it. She's encouraging me to do so, however, so it's all good...

My taste in fish is definitely old-school, prefering them closer to wild than much of what's currently available. Not wild, but not pedigreed poodles, either... I confess to a weakness for some of the leopards, however...

We're vacationing in NYC (New York City!), the last week in March, someplace I've never been, so definitely no fish until we get back. We've been offered the use of a condo in the Ghostbuster building, 55 Central Park West, and the travel arrangements are a done deal... should be interesting.

[Eddie]

Sounds great! Thats cool that your wife wants you to get some "toys". LOL

When you get back, you'll have plenty of help here to guide you.

Also, when you say your water is hard....how hard? There are plenty of people who keep discus around 8 PH. The lower PH levels are pretty much for breeding purposes or keeping wild caught fish in an effort to keep them in a closer environment to what their normal water is.

Take care,
Eddie