95 Gallon Wave Planted/Discus Tank

[DiscusLoverJeff]

Hello Everyone,

My first time here, so please bare with me if this is the wrong area.

I am setting up a 95 gallon wave tank. I will be using Eco-Complete for the substrate as reccommended by the post I have read here. I am however trying to find a good source for plants for a Discus tank around $200.00. I have seen a few places and the prices seem to be all over the place. I know it is a matter of personal choice where to purchase them, but I was told to try and find a place that has plants that are snail free.

My lighting consists of a couple options for the Discus tank, my fixture holds 4 bulbs and I have 4 65w 10,000k bulbs. I can switch on 2 or all 4 bulbs.

My water condition is run through an RO unit that I have. I have not tested its PH level yet, but I will do that after I add water to the substrate.

My question is this, once I buy the plants, do I add them immediately to the tank or should I wait for the tank to cycle before adding the plants?

Also I read on the post here to wait 8 weeks after adding the plants to add the Discus. I am ok with that, this way it will give me time to select 8 or 10 nice fish.

Thank you all in advance for replying to this post.

Also, can you reccommend a good place that sells nice small and medium size pieces of driftwood (planted or not)?

DiscusLoverJeff

[TankWatcher]

Because I live in Australia it's no point me recommending plant sites, but I did want to say welcome and be sure to post lots of pictures as you progress.

That is quite a big tank and I can't wait to see it



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[jball1125]

I get my plants at the swap n shop section of theplantedtank.net... If your only going to have plants at first I suggest you put your gravel down plant the tank while it still empty and then add water straight from the tap. Plants don't need a cycled tank, on the contrary, people sometimes add nitrogen to their tank because the plants benefit from it. If it's your first planted tank I would advise you do some research on lighting. You don't want to get into an algae farm. Lots of light and no co2 is a bad thing. You can have low lights but your selection of plants will be much smaller.
Anyway hope you find some plants, fill that big baby up and start snapping pics.

Welcome to SD

[DiscusLoverJeff]

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for the welcome and most importantly, the advice!!!

I will look into the theplantedtank.net and see what I can find. Not many places to find plants locally in the Lake County, Illinois area.

I was planning on making a couple of the "homemade" CO2 units (sorry if that sounds cheap, I heard they work very well). Question on the CO2 is, will 2 units be enough or is it overkill?

DiscusLoverJeff

[cmich]

If you want to try to pick out some plants in person, you could try Old Orchard Aquarium ( http://www.oldorchardaquarium.com/ ) in Skokie. I've bought some nice plants from them before and they usually have a decent selection. Although their discus look pretty rough, they do a good job with most everything else. Not sure how far it is from you but it's worth a trip if you are within reasonable distance.

Welcome to Simply and good luck.

Blake

[2wheelsx2]

I was planning on making a couple of the "homemade" CO2 units (sorry if that sounds cheap, I heard they work very well). Question on the CO2 is, will 2 units be enough or is it overkill?

DiscusLoverJeff

You're talking about DIY CO2? With 260w of lighting in a 95 gallon tank, forget DIY CO2. They work ok for a smaller tank (I had it in my 20 gallon for a while before I went pressurized), but forget it in a bigger tank. It's almost impossible to supply steady CO2 in that size of tank, and fluctuating CO2 is your enemy. I would suggest either lowering the lighting and going low tech with some Excel/Metricide or going pressurized. Can DIY be done? Sure it can. A guy on plantedtank.net even used sunlight and high wattage lighting with DIY CO2 in a 240 gallon tank with mineralize substrate. But he used 4x 5 gallon jugs and had to change it out every 5 days. IMO, anything over 33 gallons and DIY CO2 is out.

[krucianking]

The best for plants is aquabid.com look for two guy coryloach and bayleeses those guys are great!