New 310L low tech, planted/aquascaped? Discus tank

[Barry.M]

Hi from South Africa, I haven't posted anything yet, although I joined the forum in July.
Just thought I'd share a few pix of my first attempt at an aquascaped, planted Discus tank.
The tank cycled for four weeks prior to stocking and is now eight weeks old.

Tank sise: L 1250cm x W 612cm x H 760cm Half round

Current stock: 10 Discus
30 Cardinal Tetras
6 Zebra Nerite Snails

Still waiting for 8 Apistogramma cacatuoides (6 females and 2 males) (may cut this down to 3 females and 1 male?)
2 Farlowella vittata (If I cut down on the Apisto's, I'll go for 4 of these.)

Hardscape: 1 massive rock from my garden with a few smaller pieces scattered around.
A dead, dry fruit tree, turned upside down, cleaned, trimmed
and mounted onto a piece of Mopani wood.
3 smaller pieces of fruit tree root.
3 home made coconut caves.

Substrate: Tetra plant Complete Substrate, (4cm deep.) Capped with 4 to 6cm of Pea gravel and some
washed sand from the river down the road.
The non planted area is plain washed pool filter sand. (coarse grade)

Plants: Brazilian Pennywort, (Hydrocotyle Leucocephala)
African water fern, (Bolbitis heudelotii)
Anubias nana
Java fern
Hair grass, (Eleocharis parvula)
and a lot of stuff that I took from my out door tropical tank.

Equipement: Tetratec EX2400 canister filter
2 x 300w heaters Set at 29deg C.
Lights, STD supplied with tank, 4 x 14w t8

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[walt3]

your tank looks crazy good! love it! nice job thinking out the scape. congrats. :)

[Coffee1stLife2nd]

Very Nice...Looks like you put in alot of thought to it...

[Second Hand Pat]

I'm with Walt. Great job on the hardscape..nice job.

[discuspaul]

Welcome !
Glad you joined us. Your tank is quite different, and looks extremely good.
Keep posting. You'll like this site.

[Barry.M]

Thanx guys, I discovered the site while researching for this tank, Every one said I had to have a bare bottom tank for discus...
Hehe, didn't believe them! We really battle to obtain a decent variety of aquatic plants here. Most of the LFS, really don't know the difference between a bog plant and a true aquatic plant, never mind confusing the staff with Latin names. Anyway, armed with pictures of the plants I was looking for - off I went and the result is here: 693016930269303
Plants added: Hygrophila polysperma,
Aponogeton undulata,
Hoping to obtain a bit of Marsilea quadrifolia next week end.

The Dwarf Hygro - Hygrophila polysperma seems to have taken. I planted it quite randomly, throughout
the tank, as I did with most of the other plants. I don't think you find plants neatly arranged in any
particular order in nature and I like the randomness found there. I noticed this while spending time
looking at the small river down the road from my place.

[Barry.M]

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I still expect to tweak the plants in this tank, as
Some may not adapt to the higher temperature. But have decided to try anything once and if it doesn't
work, move on... I expect that I will continue experimenting and learning as things grow in. I've already removed some that just don't work and will wait and see.

[discuspaul]

Well, keep it up, you're doing just great !

[Charles Crews]

Love the discus selection!

[Barry.M]

Quick update on the tank:
Have had a small algae outbreak:
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I noticed it about 3 weeks ago and did a bit of research. But after reading,
decided that as I'm loath to introduce chemicals into the tank, I would tackle
things a little differently. With every water change, I used a thin pipe and
vacuumed as much of the algae off wherever it was growing. Then with Friday's
water change, I also removed the carbon from the EX2400 canister and replaced
it with 3 Odyssea cut-to-sise filter pads: 1 phosphate remover, 1 nitrate remover
and 1 amonia remover. The pads fit perfectly into the media tray and must be changed
after 3 weeks. Today, I've noticed a marked reduction in the length of the algae threads.
So, hopefully, this method will help. In the interim, I've also ordered 4 Otocinclus catfish.
I think they will also help and compliment the 2 Sturisoma panamense catfish that are on
back-order.
I will also be doing a bit of plant maintenance this Friday. There are a few plants that need
pruning and some that aren't adapting to the temp. They will be replaced by some
hygrophila polysperma, rotala rotundifolia, bacopa monieri and a dwarf tropical water lilly
that the owner of my local nursery gave me when he was dividing his lillies in his pond...
I've had these in my outdoor tropical pond, but never in an aquarium before, so it'll be
interesting to see what it does in there!

[discuspaul]

Just a small note of caution, Barry.
The Otocinclus will probably be fine, but some, at times, seem to develop a liking for discus slime coats as part of their diet, when they get older, larger and lazier. I've had the experience - twice - no more Otos for me (or SAE's - for the same reason) with my discus.
Just keep an eye on them.

[Barry.M]

Thanks so much for all the encouragement and advice guys and discuspaul, thanks for the heads-up.
I've been warned to watch the otto's and have already planned them into either the outdoor tropical
tank or my future paludarium, (build starts November.) at the first sign of them being over friendly towards the Discus.

[Barry.M]

Ok, Five days since the last update. The algae is almost completely gone and the plants have started going ballistic! I'll have to do a major pruning this coming week end!
Here are a few photos of the growth so far:698706987169872
I planted the dwarf tropical water lily on Thursday evening last week. the first thing I did, was to cut all the leaves and roots off, then scrub the remaining rhizome to remove any algae from the nursery pond. Then planted it slightly left-centre, right at the back of the one coconut cave. By Saturday evening, there were already 5 new leaves 4cm long, 1cm wide and 1 new unopened leaf at the
tip of a new growth node!
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Tonight the leaves are nearly double:
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If I remember correctly, when I had these in my tropical outdoor pond. The temp was 24 degrees Celsius and I had to trim once a week. I think that at the Discus temp. I'm going to have to watch this thin to see that it doesn't get out of hand!

My LFS is out of stock of Otto's at the moment but the Sturisoma panamense should be arriving at the beginning of November. I've increased the order to 4 instead of two. I'll be setting up the quarantine tank the coming week end.