My tanks..discus and angelfish

[scottychaos]

hello, RamPuppy just asked me to post a new thread about my tanks, so here they are!

I have 2 tanks, a 28 gallon "bow front" planted tank, with 3 Angelfish, 3 SAE's, one really ancient otto cat and one Clown Pleco that I never see..(he is totally nocternal)
This tank has been set up for almost 4 years.

The second tank is a 38 gallon tall, containing 4 Red Alencer Discus.
This tank has been set up for 2 years.

All the pages are a bit out of date..the main change is that I am no longer using the automatic water changer on the Discus tank..only because I moved last September and havent set it back up yet! So instead they are getting 3 manual water changes a week...just 5 gallons each time.
they are happy with that! so im going to just stick with that schedule..
someday when I have a larger tank I will probably do the automatic water changer again..

Scot

planted tank: http://www.geocities.com/scottychaos/aquapage.htm

Discus:
http://www.geocities.com/scottychaos/discuspage.htm

 

[RamPuppy]

Lookin Good Scotty! They have really grown! Nice coloration too.

When you finaly get that big ol' 90 for them are you going to put them in a planted tank?

Oh, and have you seen any indication that they are splitting off into mated pairs?

 

[scottychaos]

R.P,
for the foreseeable future, the Discus will remain in this tank..
I live in an apartment right now and dont have the room the 90 gallon discus tank I would like to have!
So first I have to find a new Girlfriend, get married, buy a house, THEN I can get a bigger tank!

and no, I would NEVER keep discus in a planted tank..a planted tank is just far too dirty to keep Discus sucessfully..(well, people do it, but not long-term..they rotate Discus into the planted tank for maybe a month at a time, then they go back into their bare-bottom tanks! so the planted tank ends up being just a "vacation" for the discus&#33

So all my future discus will forever be in bare-bottom tanks. because it works!

yes I did get a mated pair..2 of my Discus paired up over a year ago..
One is obviously a female, because it lays eggs, but the "mate" could either be a male, or a female just playing the game...I will never know because the eggs will never hatch! my water is too hard for the eggs to hatch, which is fine with me because I have no desire to raise baby Discus anyway!

Scot

 

[RamPuppy]

Is the mated pair living in harmony with the other two? When My brother and I had discuss about 15 years ago (55 gallon with 4) we had 2 pair off, and then they got positively vile towards the other discuss...

the tank was actually planted heavily, and we have very hard water too, we were young and didn't have a lot of money so acidified it with peat as best we could, and used 4 2 liter bottles of a homeade DIY CO2 setup... it amazingly was pretty stable, but I think that was more luck than anything on our part since we were using such an unstable method of CO2 production.

Filtration on the setup was 2 large canister filters, can't remember what brand they were... seems like they were the first two magnum 350's we owned, but it's been so long now I can't remember. We also had a grunge collector in (undergravel filter) but the plants did a pretty good job of sucking all the crap out of it, another amazing success that went against conventional wisdom (no UG in a planted tank&#33

If I remember one filter polished the water, the other was full of carbon, and I think we had a couple of sponges in the back for added bio... My brother would change the water one week, I would do it the next... went on like that for 2 years until he went off to college and I got more interested in the predators.

The discuss were one of the dark blue varieties, and as discuss go, were probably pretty sub-standard... but by the time I unloaded them on another hobbyist here in SA, they were a very nice size...

I think you can grow discuss in a planted tank, as long as you keep the population low, granted, if I were to have kept those 4, I would have needed to upgrade to a much larger tank relatively quickly to maintain the water...

I am much more into low population tanks now, my next adventure is going to be a 85 gallon hex reef system with a lion fish in it... from all my research, as long as I choose my inverts carefully, I will be able to stock the reef successfully.

 

[scottychaos]

No, fortunately I have practically NO agression! which is quite rare..
even when eggs are being laid, the 2 "parents" never heckle the other fish at all..

I think it helps that all 4 fish are from the same spawn, they are all siblings! they have ALWAYS lived together! So they are very accepting of their arrangement..if I added a new fish it would probably fall apart!

the only agression I get at all is the occasional nip at feeding time, but thats very minor, just one fish giving a quick snarl to another one, and its over in a second..

I think most Discus keepers tend to over-enginner their systems, which actually makes things worse! no one needs Co2, peat, RO water..etc..
just use your tap exactly as it is! dont change a thing...adult discus can handle hard water just fine. giving them Stable water conditions, and lots of water changes, IMO is far more important and beneficial than trying to create "better" water with the proper PH and hardness etc..
when you do that, conditions change day to day..not good for the fish!
my 4 fish have been living happily in semi-hard Rochester city water, with a PH of 7.5, for 2 years! no problems...

of course if you want to BREED discus THEN you have to get involved with soft water at aPH of 6! because the eggs and fry really need those conditions..but for just keeping adults,most tap is just fine..


and I agree its not *impossible* to keep discus in a planted tank..IMO its far more work than its worth though...you would basically have to do a 25% water change every single day..forever.
also, Discus really like 86 degree water..most plants cant deal with water temps that high.
So lets say someone compromises and trys maybe 80 degrees (low end for the fish, high end for the plants) both fish and plants are getting less than ideal conditions..making them both weak and more likely to get sick..plants and discus just arent a good match. We should always give our fish the best possible conditions we are able to give them...putting Discus in a planted tank is giving them bad conditions..on purpose.
they will suffer for it.

(stepping off the soapbox now&#33

Scot

 

[RamPuppy]

Scotty I totally agree, That discus tank is pretty far back in my past now, and I seriously doubt I would keep up with the labor needed to do it now days.

I was keeping the water to cool, and the CO2 and Peat additives were more for the plants than discus, san antonio water PH averages out at 8.6, and the dissolved solids well... let's say our water is chewed more than drunk!

I will be using an RO system on my reef setup though... that ecosystem is far more fragile, and I want to do it right... everyone who i have talked to in SA that has gone the tap water route for salt water has regretted it.

Oh, and you want to talk about a hard tank to keep clean scotty? Hehh.. imagine a foot long arrowana in a planted tank! Man, that fish, and the bicher that lived on the bottom 13 - 14 inches) LOVED living in a planted tank, you could tell from their behavior, but man, if that wasn't hard. You know arrowanas get Gill Curl if you so much as sneeze in their water, it has got to be super clean, if you thought running two magnums was over-engineering, imagine 2 magnums and two emperor 400's, weekly filter changes (2 of 4 on the emperors) and going through so much Carbon i can't even think back on it with fond memories. I was doing 25% water changes bi-weekly. All I can say is thankfully neither fish showed much interest in my siamese algae eaters and the otto's. I kept them pretty well stuffed on shrimp, krill, bloodworms and beefheart.

Nope... in my opinion, planted tanks in general are just to much effort now adays... I love how reefs become self sustaining, that your filter is your live rock, and your cleaning crew... I am looking forward to the experience... and now, if it gets to be to much labor... well.. lookout automated systems.

(Oh, and I live in an apartment too, which is why I am going with the Hex and not a traditional tank.)

I am glad your having so much success with your discuss... did you set your planted tank back up too? how the angels doing?

 

[scottychaos]

R.P.,
yes, the planted tank is set up again too..with the angelfish!
those 3 angelfish are going on 4 years now..my oldest fish!
I know discus can live 6-10 years, angelfish are probably about the same (because discus and angelfish are very closely related)..

the planted tank has stabilized well, no more major algae problems, just a thin green growth I scrape off the front glass once a month..so things are good!

Scot

 

[RamPuppy]

Scotty that is awesome. How big are those angels now?

At one point I was going to get into breeding angels, and was on a waiting list for oodlesofangels.com for german blue blusher double veil tails, I had two tanks setup, quarantine complete with methyl blue and a sponge filter, (was also going to serve eventually as the hatchery) and a 40 gallon tank that was to be the angels home, loaded with an emperor 400, air stone, and lots of old wood and a lone amazon sword in a pot (real, so I could clip it's leaf if I neede to transfer eggs off of it to transfer to the other tank.)

I waited, and waited, bought oodles of angels genetics and breeding manual, waited, waited, waited... then went to the site one day to see how long I would in fact be waiting, and poof... it was gone... never found out what happened to it.

Now, I know nothing of the angel breeding community, I can only assume that there is some pretty stiff competition and that oodles of angels couldn't hack it... the only reason I chose them is that they had such a visual site, I could see the parents of what I was buying... web-camed em and everything.

Sad... would have been a great extension to the hobby. When it was all over, I turned the 10 gallon hatchery into a venus flytrap tank, and gave the 40 to my sister, who sold it and bought a 30 high eclipse system...

 

[Pressure]

Those Discus are beautiful! Congrats for raising such beautiful fish! Seriously, I could stare at those pictures forever. I cannot wait until I get my 55 gallon for my birthday. I have kept Discus before and I know how hard it is starting out. I was just babysitting them for a friend while he went on vacation. Very amazing fish. I am thinking about putting 4-5 in a 55 gallon. I might even be getting a larger one than 55 gallons, so maybe more! My lfs has plenty of them and takes really good care of them so I know they are in good hands. I compliment you on your fish. They are one of the most beautiful Discus I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot.