Thanks for the compliments! It's a 150. I did like you when I first began with discus and I read until I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head! There are a lot of variables to discus keeping and many things that you should take in to consideration. In my opinion, you should set a show discus tank up with plenty of places for the fish to seek "shelter" The plants do that for me and the discus love them! Driftwood is an awesome addition to any discus tank. It's likely that the discus that you are buying (unless they are imported) have no idea what environment they came from. All they know is a bare bottom tank. In my eyes, if you are in love with your tank and the fish are happy and healthy, then you have achieved success!
I am sure that you are getting anxious to stock. What cycling method are you using? Just curious. Try to have a few months of cycling under your belt and your water params are stable.
I like to paint the backs of my tanks black. Your idea with the vinyl sounds cool! The only issue with that is if you get water trapped between the tank and the background. It looks a little ugly. My first background of a 100 gallon consisted of a 33 gallon glad trash bag that I cut long ways, opened it up and taped it to the back! Ghetto, but I was learning.
The discus tank in the picture was cycled with a school of Danios. I know that is frowned upon by many people, but it works. I put 20 in the tank and ran it for about two months. While that was going on I stocked the plant life and made minor adjustments to filtration. I added a wet/dry for surface skimming plus some additional filtration. The sump of the wet/dry also gives me a portal for water top off and the return pump back to the tank feeds a CO2 reactor and UV sterilizer. It works for me. Anyway, the cycle took about two weeks, but I let it run for about two months just for good measure. When I was ready to add discus, I removed the danios to my community tank. I never lost one fish in the cycling by the way! I added the first 8 discus and two months later added the second 8 for a total of 16 today. I haven't had any issues.
As for water changes, initially a 10% daily change for about a week after you intorduce the fish would be good with a 50% weekly. I do 50% water changes every Saturday, none during the week. I have a 110 gallon resevoir tank in my garage that produces RO water. I use RO since I really don;t trust the water here in Souther California. I do mix it with carbon filtered tap on a 1:10 tap/RO ratio. Hope this helps! Happy tanking!
