Discus and Water change

[Thomas79]

Still thinking if i should keep discus or not. If I keep one pair of discus and a school to cardinal tetras in a planted 120 gal tank (mainly anubias) do I still have to do that many water changes? how much water change should be enough in this environment?

[keef]

Hi Thomas,
The first thing to think about would be investing in more than 2 Discus. Maybe see how you go with around 6 instead of two. With just 2 one fish will always become dominant over the other, this will lead to constant harassment of the other. Six would spread out that aggression. As for water changes, the more the better. I would advise 50% per day as a bare minimum, but that's just me. Large water changes are the key to successful Discus keeping.

[nesser]

It depends if you want to grow discus/pump them up or just care for them.This is a Discus forum so there are not to many that would flush there money down the toilet by not trying to procure the best discus possible.Feeding 4,5,6-10 times daily doesn't mix well under normal tank conditions, however adult discus when you feed 2-3 times a day can work better under most surcumstances.Anything is possible for raiseing fish but discus are quite the pigs so bare bottom tanks are a life saver for the first year :p

[tcyiu]

Still thinking if i should keep discus or not. If I keep one pair of discus and a school to cardinal tetras in a planted 120 gal tank (mainly anubias) do I still have to do that many water changes? how much water change should be enough in this environment?

Unless you buy a proven pair of adults, one will end up killing the other. Also, as adults, they "may" end up hunting down the cardinals. I say may because they may not. Depends on their temperament and whether they were raised to see small fish as prey.

I would definitely NOT attempt to raise two juveniles. The chances of one being bullied to death are stacked against you. You could try a schoold of juveniles (5 or 6). Given your scenario, most people here would caution against this because the juveniles need to be fed a lot which means a much increased bio-load which in turn means more water changes. But doesn't mean that it can't be done.

As for anubias, I am not a plant guy, but I would imagine that the slow growth would also mean that they are not really good at sucking the nutrients out of the water. This in turn means that you shouldn't rely on them to take out excess nitrogen. But it also depends on the biological load. A 120 planted tank with just a small school of cardinals will require fewer water changes.

Just some opinions. Can't really tell you one way or another.

Tim

[Scribbles]

As others have stated 2 is not a good number unless it is a mated pair. 6 adults would be better. Adults don't require the heavy feeding that juvies do so the tank stays cleaner. In a 120 gal tank I would think that you could easily get away with weekly wc. You just have to monitor your water and discus. They may or may not hunt your tetras. I've always kept cardinals with discus but my current discus recently decided that hunting was fun. You never know. HTH

Chris

[Jason K.]

i to have had the tetra hunting problem. seems as much as i feed the discus they would still find the appetite to eat the tetras. and yes, water is the key. change, change, change.