Joander123
12-07-2010, 06:32 PM
Hey everyone! Most of you (well ok, probably all of you) wont know me. I was a member here a few years ago and I had a small tank (turns out a bit too small in the long run) with 5 discus in it. Anyways, eventually the tank went downhill due to many factors that I wont get into at the moment...
To make a long story short I switched over to the salt water reef keeping hobby, but now i'm seriously considering a return to discus. The main reason being it'll be cheaper, less complex, and move forward a bit quicker here. Plus I'm really just itching to get back into them as they are amazing fish.
So here's the plan, I've got a 120 gallon "reef ready" tank, that's currently still set up as a salt water system. My plan is to switch over the tank to a planted discus community tank, and most of the funds will come from selling the reef specialty equipment to fund the planted discus tank equipment and livestock.
The starting materials i have available to me are a beautiful practically brand new 120 gallon aquarium, a 40 gallon sump set-up, and a light plenty high powered enough to grow any plant i would ever desire (I may even run it at half or 3/4's strength to reduce electrical costs and possible algae growth)... of course the other components i would need to add are a freshwater canister filter(s), a new substrate, some plants, some driftwood/rocks, and of course some fish ;).
I figured that i would make this thread to ask questions (as i've never had a large discus/planted tank set-up like this) as well as document my progress.
Today i've got a few questions for future planning.. the first of which is what sort of filter or filters would be best? My prior knowledge around freshwater and discus tells me that canister filters and sponge filters are the best, but i seem to remember canister filters being much more prominent in planted tanks because they dont gas off as much co2 and because they dont need to take up real estate in the tank. I could use any sort of combination of these filters, as i suppose if sponge filters were still the way to go i could contain those in the sump of the tank. As far as canisters i'm obviously open to recommendations, but currently these are the two that i was looking at: The fluval FX5 and the Eheim pro III 2080. Any help here is greatly appreciated.
The second question pertains to substrate.. i'm looking for a simple, effective, natural/good looking substrate to grow plants in. My original thought was that seachem flourite stuff, but then i stumble upon this link :http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/library/52554-how-mineralized-soil-substrate-aaron-talbot.html and that seemed like a really solid idea as well. What are people's thoughts here?
Looking forward to some responses, thanks everyone!
To make a long story short I switched over to the salt water reef keeping hobby, but now i'm seriously considering a return to discus. The main reason being it'll be cheaper, less complex, and move forward a bit quicker here. Plus I'm really just itching to get back into them as they are amazing fish.
So here's the plan, I've got a 120 gallon "reef ready" tank, that's currently still set up as a salt water system. My plan is to switch over the tank to a planted discus community tank, and most of the funds will come from selling the reef specialty equipment to fund the planted discus tank equipment and livestock.
The starting materials i have available to me are a beautiful practically brand new 120 gallon aquarium, a 40 gallon sump set-up, and a light plenty high powered enough to grow any plant i would ever desire (I may even run it at half or 3/4's strength to reduce electrical costs and possible algae growth)... of course the other components i would need to add are a freshwater canister filter(s), a new substrate, some plants, some driftwood/rocks, and of course some fish ;).
I figured that i would make this thread to ask questions (as i've never had a large discus/planted tank set-up like this) as well as document my progress.
Today i've got a few questions for future planning.. the first of which is what sort of filter or filters would be best? My prior knowledge around freshwater and discus tells me that canister filters and sponge filters are the best, but i seem to remember canister filters being much more prominent in planted tanks because they dont gas off as much co2 and because they dont need to take up real estate in the tank. I could use any sort of combination of these filters, as i suppose if sponge filters were still the way to go i could contain those in the sump of the tank. As far as canisters i'm obviously open to recommendations, but currently these are the two that i was looking at: The fluval FX5 and the Eheim pro III 2080. Any help here is greatly appreciated.
The second question pertains to substrate.. i'm looking for a simple, effective, natural/good looking substrate to grow plants in. My original thought was that seachem flourite stuff, but then i stumble upon this link :http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/library/52554-how-mineralized-soil-substrate-aaron-talbot.html and that seemed like a really solid idea as well. What are people's thoughts here?
Looking forward to some responses, thanks everyone!