New to Discus!!

[Tobrienne]

Hey All,

So basically I started out bad.. very bad.. and could have.. and could still quite possible.. kill my fish.. but I think the worst so far is over!! That being said..

The Beginning:
I bought my 20g tank, 50w heater, outer filtration system, bubbler, gravel, some plants.. carbon bagged filter as well as a meshy filter in the outer filter system... plugged it all in set it all up filled it with tap water and let it go! At this point you may all wonder ok? so far so good, the tap water may not be a great idea but once it cycles??? Bad news is that a friend ill-advised me that adding a capful or two of prime to the water and it would be good for adding my discus. Yes... on the same day. So taking their advice I plopped them into the tank. Please refrain from hitting me! lol

The next day they swam around happily and seemed well. The day after they were hiding in one corner not looking so good. So I decided maybe I should begin to get my own research on this situation? BOY WAS I SURPRISED! When I read about hardness and ammonia and nitrites and nitrates I almost keeled over. I immediately went to Big Al's aquarium supplier hunted down a seemingly knowlegable guy (quite cute too if I may say so) told him my story (he almost strangled me) and he filled my cart up with everything (in his opinion) that I would need.

What I bought: Hikiri Frozen bloodworms, Prime, Stability, ammonia testing liquids, sponge filter, and a 6 swabbed tester that did everything (hardness, nitrites, nitrates, ph, akalinity.. etc) a soft water pillow and recharging salts

Armed with all these new toys I went home and step by step (slowly) I started to do everything he instructed exactly the way he told me too.

1) I did a 50% water change, adding the proper amounts of prime to the new lukewarm water.
2) I added the soft water pillow to my EXTREMELY hardened water (it went in the filter behind the carbon bag)
3) I added the first day amount of the stability
4) I followed the instructions for the Hikiri and gave that to them..which only the male seemed to go nutso over

Later on that day both fish seemed to be quite happy again. However every morning without fail they get depressed again. So I do the 50% WC, adding the primer and stability as directed. I test my water on a morning and evening basis and as expected my levels are toxic.. bad bad toxic. We are talking 8+ ammonia and 10+ nitrites.. yet my two babies were still kickin! Sad.. but kickin!!

After several days of this I tested my water again to be pleasantly happy to find that my water is soft, pH is down everything is good EXCEPT the nitrite was still toxic high and the ammonia. I continued to diligently do my water changes and add my chemicals and do all my testing. Then two days ago I noticed that my two discus (Bonnie and Clyde as I named them) were acting strange.. almost dancing in their tank. I giggled at this and did even more research (keep in mind this entire time I am doing all these WCs and whatnot I am researching to find out more more more!!)

So three days ago they are dancing, that evening they are paying special attention to my heater.. to which I checked several times to make sure it was working and they weren't trying to say "HELLO!! Where is the heat?!" The next morning I woke up to EGGS!! Granted, the nitrite levels were still toxic but the ammonia levels had gone down to 0.25 which was WAY better than 8! So I had eggs on my heater and I thought thats great! I went to work and did some more research on here... eggs on heater = bad. And when I got home half the eggs were gone and the other half were completely white or clear and I knew the momma was going to eat them all. She did. But she did a great job fanning them.. she never left them alone!!

So, this is what I've done to change my tank. Took out all the whitish gravel so now my tank is bare bottomed ;-)
Placed the heater in the middle of the tank, horizontally at the bottom and noticed my temperature went from a regular 82 degress to a nice 86 degrees.

My nitrites are still a little high by my ammonia is now 0 which is good. I'm doing the regular water changes to get those nitrites down. Any suggestions and comments would be so greatly appreciated! I am always researching and educating myself so I do not make this same mistake again. I am lucky my two havent keeled over on me! So far so good thankfully!

Someone mentioned adding kosher salt at 2 tblspns for every 10 gallons, after doing a 75% water change... because the salt will kill the nitrites.. any feedback? Thanks all appreciate you taking the time to read my novel! :) Be gentle on feedbacks but firm.. lol I know... I'm a newbie idiot lol

[MightyEvil]

Wow, seems like you went from zero to hero really quick! Nice going!

I am no expert with Discus but as far as general fish info, I would say to stop adding salt. Salt gets the fish's slime coat going and helps with wounds and parasites but once they are in good shape, you don't need it anymore.

Great job!

[Tobrienne]

I have not added any salt.. because I've heard bad things about it. So good call! And thank you for the compliment.. lol Zero to Hero.. love it! :)

[Dannigirl]

Hi there-
Soooo you already know you messed up. LOL That's the toughest part of the battle. I started keeping fish before the internet- yeah I'm old and I had an angel and 1 Discus in a 10g tank for 5 years...yeah bad- but they lived 5 more in a 55 together. :) We have all been here.
Now we look forward as a lesson learned- how do we fix it.

So far your doing awesome- your fish are tough.
Salt can be good for stress with the fish- never heard about it doing anything for Nitrite. Don't add salt all at once- it can shock the fish- just add it a little at a time.

But Prime will detoxify the water so the fish will hopefully live and not be too scarred. Just feed them very well if they will eat. Change water as much as you can.
You can also double dose if not triple dose Prime- if you read the bottle it tells you- you can use it to detoxify nitrites at 5 times the regular dose. Prime is your friend here.

I have never used Stability. There is a product out there called Tetra Safe Start but you can't use that with Prime.
I think Bill is selling an aquarium cycle thing on here. I just saw a post on it. You can maybe hit him up if he ships to Canada.

You can also keep doing what your doing and wait it out. Use a ton of Prime and change lots of water. Your almost there if the nitrites are spiking.

I'm sure tons of others will chime in here.

How big are your Discus and what is your temp?

[Orange Crush]

I would not mess with salt along as you add enough Prime to detox the nitrIte.
Stability is a great product.
You do not need carbon in your filter and some think it can actually cause more harm than do good.
Discus want stable, consistant water perameters (pH, hardness, temp., TDS...). In fact your discus will be just fine in hard alkaline water. MANY people here keep their discus in those conditions. Using chemicals/w.s. pillows means that everytime you change your water from the tap you are giving them water that is very different than what is in the tank.
What is your pH and hardness from the tap? what is it in your tank now?

[Tobrienne]

My pair are about 4" and 4.5" I will post pictures in a second... and my temperature was 82 degress before I moved my heater now it is 86 :)

[Orange Crush]

What is your pH and hardness from the tap? what is it in your tank now?
You will need 10 posts to post a picture and you might have to use Photobucket or the like to make the picture the right size.

[Tobrienne]

I would not mess with salt along as you add enough Prime to detox the nitrIte.
Stability is a great product.
You do not need carbon in your filter and some think it can actually cause more harm than do good.
Discus want stable, consistant water perameters (pH, hardness, temp., TDS...). In fact your discus will be just fine in hard alkaline water. MANY people here keep their discus in those conditions. Using chemicals/w.s. pillows means that everytime you change your water from the tap you are giving them water that is very different than what is in the tank.
What is your pH and hardness from the tap? what is it in your tank now?

My water out of the tap is very very hard.. with a 7.6+ pH level (off the top of my head)

These were my levels at dinnertime
20 nitrate (down 20)
10 nitrite (same)
150 hardness (up 75)
0 chlorine (sme)
40 alka (same)
7.2 pH (up .5)
0 ammonia (down .25)

That was after I did a 30% water change.

[Tobrienne]

I will go and test them right now, hang on

[tbird22771]

Hi and welcome,
You definitely were proactive and did a great job recovering from what was a runaway train to disaster!
personally I have ditched the water softening pillows, and I am sure there are varying opinions about them but I tried them and didn't find them all that effective and if you don't have a couple to rotate while they recharge they become ineffective all together. Discus and all fish do best in stable conditions and will adapt but consistency is the key. The only other thing I wondered after reading your post is what else besides the frozen bloodworms are you feeding them? frozen blood worms are a great treat for them but a very empty food as far as nutritional value. Best of luck to you and Bonnie and Clyde (cute names btw)

[Tobrienne]

Hi and welcome,
..............I wondered after reading your post is what else besides the frozen bloodworms are you feeding them? frozen blood worms are a great treat for them but a very empty food as far as nutritional value. Best of luck to you and Bonnie and Clyde (cute names btw)

I thought I mentioned it sorry.. Hikiri FBW in the morning, Wardley Tropical fish flakes at dinner time and every other night before bed tetracolour and THANKS! I love their names heehee

[Tobrienne]

Here are my current tank VS tapwater levels!

Nitrates: 20 vs 0
Nitrites: 10 vs 0
GH: 150 vs 300
Chlorine 0 vs 0.5
KH: 80 vs 80
pH: 6.8 vs 7.2
Ammonia 0 vs 0.50


****I also added 3 capfuls of Prime to get get rid of those bad doubls N's! I had no idea that stuff could do that or else I would have added WAY more the last few days lol maybe I could have prevented my fry loss :(

[Larry Bugg]

Welcome. You are doing a excellent job. Keep it up. You have come to the right place to learn. Read, Read and then read some more. PH 7.6 is not bad for discus. It just needs to be consistent. Most here will tell you to not try and change the PH from what comes out of the tap, just keep it consistent.

[mcishaque]

Yes, Discus are tougher than any other fresh water fishes I've kept. I know they like clean water, but that does not make them less tough. I've never really understood the part where I've heard and read that discus are "delicate".

No matter, congrats that your pair is not sick and doing well.

I have not read every post contained within this thread with care. Rather, I skimmed most of it.

That said, I would like to make a few comments, and hopefully you'll find them helpful:

#1) I don't think salt does anything significant to reduce nitrites; 2 tablespoons of salt per 10 gallons of water every once in a while is good, but bad if done too often; the salt helps their immune system by helping them fight off the creepy crawlies

#2) if you are doing daily water changes, then I don't see how your ammonia was spiking that high; when you put prime in the water, some test kits give you a false positive; I know because I had to deal with that myself; chances are, your water had a little ammonia but not the amount you thought you had; you can easily confirm/deny that: a) take some tap water and let it stand in a CLEAN glass for an hour or two; b) take a little water from the glass and run your ammonia test on the non-primed aged tap water; c) immediately following the last test, put a drop of prime into the glass of aged water and re-run your ammonia test on the primed aged tap water; if you see a difference in ammonia levels in test results from step "b" and step "c", then your ammonia test kit is obviously giving you unreliable readings on water treated with prime; P.S. Seachem sells an ammonia test kit that supposedly does not read false positive when used in water treated with prime;

#3) if you are doing daily water changes, it's probably going to take 5+ weeks for the nitrogen cycle to take hold in your new tank; so be patient, and do water changes every night to remove any uneaten food before you tuck the little ones in for a good night's rest

#4) many probably will wish to castrate me for suggesting this, but my experience is that beef heart is EXTREMELY polluting and degrades the quality of the water very quickly; you may be best off staying away from beef heart and feeding them high protein flakes, pellets, freeze dried black worms, frozen blood worms, etc until your nitrogen cycle kicks in; then start with the beef heart

#5) most importantly, the fishes know best if the water is bad or not; if you see them cowering in a corner or acting funny, do a WC immediately... I'd trust the fishes' behavior over the reading from the test kits; AVOID the temptation to add all kinds of chemical junk into the water like PHup, PHbuffer, Ammo Lock, etc, etc, etc, etc; do a WC instead

Best wishes to you and your gilled friends.

[ktm4us6]

I am also new to discus, from what i read just keep up on the water changes like you are. Don't add things to change ph, just keep things stable. Also because of the stress the fish went through you might have to treat them in the future for Hex-meta, or other parasites. Good luck.

[tonytheboss1]

:bandana: Congrats on catching & correcting. Keep up the WC's - 50/75%. Continued success. "T"

[shoveltrash]

it's a learning curve eh? :p
good for you - and best wishes for continued success :D