Brining Discus Home In 4 Days... Am I Ready?? You Be The Judge.

[chriscro]

So.... i have a well established (4 months) old african cichlid tank which i have reaquascaped for discus.
removed all previous fish (20 juvies)
installed new substrate of sand and flourite mixture about 50/50. 3 weeks ago
cleaned my Eheim canister filter and have been getting into a routine of water changes. i have planted over 20 medium sized plants all pretty compatible with discus.
i also received a new 216w t5 ho 2 10k 2 67k bulb fixutre (90 gal 4 foot tank)
these are my major changes of the past couple weeks. But....
my ph is steady in the tank at about 7.2-7.5 nitrates 0
out of the tap my water reads about 7.8-8.2 no wells just regular water

so i think through my many hours of research ageing my water will probably be necessary. which i have done for practice and the ph comes to about 7.4

also, i have just fabricated a diy co2 and am waiting for my co2 difussor to come in the mail (2 days left). i have the co2 feeding into my canister hopeing i can get a more efficient until the difussor comes. now i have read that co2 can bring ph down.

my questions are is my tank ready for discus? is my ph within the tank suitable for non-wc discus, will i have to age my water to neutralize ph? and is my plant/light/substrate setup ok to maintain these plants?

[waj8]

I would have waited on the Discus until the plants were growing well. You have no pH problems. Likely your water is perfect for Discus. The water from your tap is at less than ambient CO2 levels so aging it will allow some CO2 to absorb into the water from the atmosphere. That is good. You have virtually no CO2 dissolving in your tank. So far your CO2 injection is pretty much useless. Your lighting is good but without CO2 you are going to run into problems. Turn off two of the lamps until you get the CO2 injection worked out. That substrate while good, will not add any nutrients for your plants so you will have to come up with some sort of fertilizer regimen within the next couple of weeks. I use DIY CO2 on my tank but I have a ton of experience with that sort of thing. Make sure you have a bubble counter on your system. You are going to need at least a couple of bubbles per second to get useful CO2 levels. You are trying to learn about plants, Discus and DIY CO2 injection all at once. That's a tall order. I would skip the CO2 for now and cut the lighting back for now. It will give you more time. I know I am sounding critical but I am not trying to be. It's so exciting to get Discus it's easy to get the cart before the horse. I am sure things will work out in the end.

[Jennie]

get sub adults or adults

[goodoo]

Im worried your tank isnt cycled if you have zero Nitrates.

[DiscusOnly]

I would have waited on the Discus until the plants were growing well. You have no pH problems. Likely your water is perfect for Discus. The water from your tap is at less than ambient CO2 levels so aging it will allow some CO2 to absorb into the water from the atmosphere. That is good. You have virtually no CO2 dissolving in your tank. So far your CO2 injection is pretty much useless. Your lighting is good but without CO2 you are going to run into problems. Turn off two of the lamps until you get the CO2 injection worked out. That substrate while good, will not add any nutrients for your plants so you will have to come up with some sort of fertilizer regimen within the next couple of weeks. I use DIY CO2 on my tank but I have a ton of experience with that sort of thing. Make sure you have a bubble counter on your system. You are going to need at least a couple of bubbles per second to get useful CO2 levels. You are trying to learn about plants, Discus and DIY CO2 injection all at once. That's a tall order. I would skip the CO2 for now and cut the lighting back for now. It will give you more time. I know I am sounding critical but I am not trying to be. It's so exciting to get Discus it's easy to get the cart before the horse. I am sure things will work out in the end.

Agreed!

Doing too many things at once can only lead to disaster.

[chriscro]

so... update
i have doubled my co2 (diy) im running about 2.5 bubbles a second
i forgot to mention which is my mistake i am on a liquid fert schedule for my plants i did have about 8 plants with my previous cichlids which all have maintained slow growth because of lack of lighting and co2. basically i have just double my plants with the addition of much better lighting and co2, so i see no real problems there.

also, i have my co2 outakes feeding into my canister filter intake, as i wait for a difusser. is that ok for the time being?

[waj8]

It's fine to run the CO2 into most cannister filters. It is pretty effective as well. I run mine into my sump pump. I used to have an in line diffuser but didn't get better results so I took it out. Your mileage may vary. Some cannisters collect CO2 and burp it out all at once which is not so good. Make sure, in the event of a power failure you don't end up running your impeller dry. I find the best way is to put the CO2 line near the intake so the bubbles of CO2 get sucked in. Don't put the line actually inside the intake. No chance of an airlock that way. Get yourself a drop checker to check for CO2 levels.

[Discusgeo2]

cleaned my Eheim canister filter

Like goodoo said the tank in no longer cycled if you cleaned out your filter so I say no you are not ready for Discus until you can get your filter cycled.

Until then the rest is not anything I can talk about as I have no knowledge of CO2 and the likes.