angelfish and discus
- Thread starter Temo
- Start date
same thing. don't mix. angels are bullies and it won't bode well for your disc shaped friends.....Well said.
I regret ever mixing the angels and discus when I had them. The angels were eager to breed and eventually bullied the discus.
If you want angels. don't get discus.....If you want discus, definetly don't get angels....
Once again, I've kept many a neon and/or cardinal, and many a discus, I've never seen one eaten....goes kinda against the whole timid discus thing. I've never seen a discus eat anything live. Maybe mosquito larvae?
What was in your "community"? I have corys rummys and 9 juvie discus, and they are thriving. Grown from 2" to 4" in 2 months and have never as much as missed a meal.I would say most discus keepers have cardinals and I have never heard of discus eating cardinals.....I think the big issue mixing angels and discus is more the internal and external parasite issue. Angels often carry Capillaria and they usually resist it pretty well, whereas even a healthy discus will fall ill very quickly if exposed to Capillaria for instance.
This is an excellent point, and one that has made me shy away from mixing discus and angels. Also, I'd have to agree that the angels I have kept are much more aggressive at feeding time than my discus. That's just another reason I wouldn't personally mix them. My experience is that discus do very well with passive tetras, and I even keep mine with a breeding pair of apistogramma steindachneri with no aggression issues.
I think the most important advice I've ever received was that juvenile discus under 4 inches should not be grown out in community tanks. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to heed that advice when I was given 4 3 inch juvies for my planted 55 gallon community, as I had no grow out tank. Even with 50% water changes 3x weekly, all my original discus have died. I suspect a parasite is the cause, even though I treated the fish for parasites, however, there's nothing to say that it couldn't have been brought on by water quality issues, even with frequent water changes, as my 4 inch discus have done much better under a more lax water change schedule.
The world may never know, but one thing is for sure:
I will never again grow out small juvenile discus in anything but a 29 gallon barebottom tank.
My tank is planted, with 3.5 to 4" of substrate, and I haven't had any real problems.
IN FACT, all except 1 of my discus tanks have been heavily planted communities. 40% 3X a week has pretty much alway's done me right....I've lost 2 discus during my time in the hobby.....(albeit it was a long time ago, and I'm currently re-learning everthing all over again:grinyes
All it takes is clean, stable, soft water and a bit of heat and you got yourself the right environment for those lil *******s to sprout right up.
You never know that experiences vary.
Did I expect my angels to lay eggs so soon especially when they're young?:mad2: Once again, I learn from my mistakes yet you contradict them.Answering your last question, yes, they do eat mosquito larva. You've never fed them live foods, have you?
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how many discus?
still, I find it hard to agree with mixing the two....goes against everything I've ever read and/or experienced.
angels are aggressive. discus aren't. makes for a bad mix.
this isn't even taking into account the whole disease thing.
still, I find it hard to agree with mixing the two....goes against everything I've ever read and/or experienced.
angels are aggressive. discus aren't. makes for a bad mix.
this isn't even taking into account the whole disease thing.
I have kept other type of small fish with my discus and here is what I found.....the discus never bothered the tetras that were already in there. And the tetras aren't afraid of the discus either. They know they won't hurt them. But, I have tried several times to put new cardinals/neons/rummynoses in with my discus and they get stunned and eaten by even the juvie discus. Having come from an aquarium of their own kind, what I see is that the new tetras upon seeing the large discus act nervous with their darting/swimming. This puts a gleam in the discus's eyes. I think it's the fear from the new fish that the discus sense, and only then they look at them as food. On the other hand with the same discus, I had once bought silver mollies to cycle a tank for me. The one young molly female was pregnant and I subsequently put her in my discus tank to drop the few babies as live food for the discus. She only dropped 4 babies, 2 disappeared, but two thrived in there. Those tiny babies swam everywhere they wanted to and the discus wouldn't eat them! I left the babies in there for several weeks until they were about half grown.....then had to catch them and net them out. I didn't want mollies in there long term! The baby mollies were never afraid of the discus and didn't exhibit that frantic swimming that I had seen when trying to add new tetras.
Debbi
Debbi
