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View Full Version : Guess I should introduce myself



cooksa
05-14-2010, 12:06 AM
Hello from Milwaukee, WI. I'm new to Discus owning. I found SimplyDiscus after doing a search trying to find a reason what I did wrong that my fish never really grew to adult size. All of my discus are from a "phishy" source. It seems I may be lucky in that all six are still alive after a year and a half.

My tank is a Marineland 60gal cube. I use a Rena XP3 canister filter and a Hydor inline heater. I have light colored not-quite-sand/not-quite-gravel on the bottom with one large piece of driftwood and three rocks that were used to hold the driftwood piece on the bottom of the tank before it was waterlogged. There were a bunch of plants in the tank as well, but an uncontrollable algae outbreak persuaded me to remove them.

On to the fish. :) I have two PBs, what looks to be a green something or another, and I believe three BDs. One of my PBs and one of the BDs are about 5". The rest are 4" and under. (My favorite of the lot is a tiny, malformed BD. His whole pelvic area is on one side of his body.) I also have a male betta, three tiny bristle nose plecos and a couple of trumpet snails. My 2nd tank is a 6gal Fluval Edge filled with cherry shrimp. Finally, I recently picked up a 40gal tank/stand combo from ebay for a fantastic deal. Not sure yet what I'm going to do with it, but the two largest discus seemed to have paired off. I might see if the eggs would survive the night if I were to move them into their own tank.

I suppose that's all I have for now. I've found the site to be extremely helpful, so thanks all for your contributions!

Stacey

Elite Aquaria
05-14-2010, 07:26 AM
Welcome to Simply

Eddie
05-14-2010, 08:09 AM
Nice to meet you Stacey and welcome to Simply!

All the best,

Eddie

dbfzurowski
05-14-2010, 11:41 AM
Welcome,
good luck with that 40g breeder :)

babers
05-14-2010, 01:04 PM
Hi Stacey and welcome. If ever you need any help, theres a few discus hobbyists here in WI. Goodluck on the pair.

cooksa
05-22-2010, 08:11 PM
Thanks for the warm welcome. :D

Still not knowing what I want to do with the new 40gal, it's been set up and running empty with just a sponge filter. I ordered another XP3 and Hydor heater, received them a few days ago and decided to set them up today. I wanted to keep this tank easy clean up since I don't know yet what it's going to be. But I've never loved the look of BB tanks. Reading other posts, I read of people using slate tiles to cover the bottom. Same easy clean up, yet not BB. Perfect! Ran to Home Depot today to check out their selection. I wasn't really impressed, truthfully. They just weren't "right".

Strolling down I happened upon the glass tiles. So I picked up 5 (12"x12") mosaics to try out. I figured the mosaics would be easier to cut to size. And since there isn't any fish in it yet, I could see whether or not it'd have any bad influence on the water quality without risking the lives of my fish :D

I laid the tiles on the bare bottom, and filled the cracks with play sand. I personally think it looks quite awesome. (Sorry about the picture quality. I had to take them with my phone.)

Does anyone have any experience with using glass tiles for this purpose? Any info would be more than welcomed. I'm hoping when doing water changes a lot of the excess sand will be siphoned out, but really I'm not too overly worried about it.
http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x144/fozzie04/40gal2.jpg

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x144/fozzie04/40gal1.jpg

Eddie
05-22-2010, 10:33 PM
Wow, that looks very cool! Bet that took some time! You must have a type B personality LOL. I would have been frustrated after the first few tiles getting crooked and scrapped the whole thing. :o I've seen some pictures with similar tiles on the tank floors and tank back and thought it was quite nice.

All the best!

cooksa
05-22-2010, 11:07 PM
...Bet that took some time! You must have a type B personality LOL. I would have been frustrated after the first few tiles getting crooked and scrapped the whole thing...

HAHA I cheated. They come all attached together on a plastic backing. One of the sheets a whole bunch pop off, so I did use aquarium silicone to "glue" them back on to the backing. Which took a while. But I had nothing else to do, so it wasn't too bad.

Eddie
05-22-2010, 11:55 PM
HAHA I cheated. They come all attached together on a plastic backing. One of the sheets a whole bunch pop off, so I did use aquarium silicone to "glue" them back on to the backing. Which took a while. But I had nothing else to do, so it wasn't too bad.

A ha! That is cheating!

babers
05-23-2010, 02:08 AM
Wow! I'm impressed. Very creative.