Well said, Rich. You saved my time to babble around the usual about juvenile vs. adult discus debate.
Thinking about Discus
- Thread starter Temptress
- Start date
It'll work just fine as long as the output flow doesn't hit the fish directly. You can use the spraybar to disperse the force.
While discus breeders recommend bare-bottom only for growing out juvie discus, it is not impossible for discus to reach their full size potential in a planted tank. But it requires a thorough understanding of how your tank works and a familiarity with discus keeping. The biggest negative issues explained a bit more.......water changes and feeding.....
One 50% water change a week on your 75G is not going to be enough if you're feeding juvie discus properly which is 4-6X a day whether you go planted or bare-bottom. A 50% water change once a week isn't enough while growing out any baby fish if you are feeding them frequently like you should. All baby fish need to be fed 4-6X a day, but most people either don't know this or can't do this.
The more frequently you feed your fish, the more likely excess leftover food will settle into the substrate and at the base of the plants. A lot of discus breeders are looking to get maximum growth quickly for selling the fish and include raw beefheart food mixtures as the primary food. Uneaten flake and pellet settling in the plants and substrate is one thing, it will still foul the water, but uneaten raw beefheart and fat is a whole different bigger fouling issue. It will foul the water very, very quickly. So if you feed beefheart as the main food 4-6X a day, you should go barebottom and you will be doing partial water changes every day. Go planted with beefheart and you should be doing big partial water changes every day. Go planted, without beefheart, and you should still be doing partial water changes at least every other day.
If you've never kept discus before, you will be learning as you go just how much they eat or don't eat. Just keeping the temperature at the 86-88F level alone keeps their metabolism higher, making them even hungrier. If you don't feed them enough, they'll grow slower and won't grow to full potential. Feed them too much and you're water quality will deteriorate faster. So it's a bit complicated where you need to be cleaning gravel and around plants.
The tank should be well established before the discus are added. They don't tolerate any ammonia or nitrite spikes.
I would not use an undergravel filter set up.
You should add all the discus at one time, whether juvies or adults. Adults will settle in much quicker and there's much less pecking going on with adults. Juvies are much more active, much hungier and much more competitive over food and territory so there is much more aggression in the form of chasing and pecking than there is with adults. You shouldn't see hardly any aggression in adults....... that is until spawning time!
If you prefer adults and would like a lot less tank maintenance, by all means get your planted tank in order with your SAE's, cories and bristlenose and get adults. I do one 80% water change a week on my planted adult tank. Adults are a breeze compared to juvies. They are fed flake and pellets late afternoon, and lots of frozen bloodworms or live white worms in the evening. I've got cories, some tetras and some amano shrimp for helping to keep the planted tank clean.
One 50% water change a week on your 75G is not going to be enough if you're feeding juvie discus properly which is 4-6X a day whether you go planted or bare-bottom. A 50% water change once a week isn't enough while growing out any baby fish if you are feeding them frequently like you should. All baby fish need to be fed 4-6X a day, but most people either don't know this or can't do this.
The more frequently you feed your fish, the more likely excess leftover food will settle into the substrate and at the base of the plants. A lot of discus breeders are looking to get maximum growth quickly for selling the fish and include raw beefheart food mixtures as the primary food. Uneaten flake and pellet settling in the plants and substrate is one thing, it will still foul the water, but uneaten raw beefheart and fat is a whole different bigger fouling issue. It will foul the water very, very quickly. So if you feed beefheart as the main food 4-6X a day, you should go barebottom and you will be doing partial water changes every day. Go planted with beefheart and you should be doing big partial water changes every day. Go planted, without beefheart, and you should still be doing partial water changes at least every other day.
If you've never kept discus before, you will be learning as you go just how much they eat or don't eat. Just keeping the temperature at the 86-88F level alone keeps their metabolism higher, making them even hungrier. If you don't feed them enough, they'll grow slower and won't grow to full potential. Feed them too much and you're water quality will deteriorate faster. So it's a bit complicated where you need to be cleaning gravel and around plants.
The tank should be well established before the discus are added. They don't tolerate any ammonia or nitrite spikes.
I would not use an undergravel filter set up.
You should add all the discus at one time, whether juvies or adults. Adults will settle in much quicker and there's much less pecking going on with adults. Juvies are much more active, much hungier and much more competitive over food and territory so there is much more aggression in the form of chasing and pecking than there is with adults. You shouldn't see hardly any aggression in adults....... that is until spawning time!
If you prefer adults and would like a lot less tank maintenance, by all means get your planted tank in order with your SAE's, cories and bristlenose and get adults. I do one 80% water change a week on my planted adult tank. Adults are a breeze compared to juvies. They are fed flake and pellets late afternoon, and lots of frozen bloodworms or live white worms in the evening. I've got cories, some tetras and some amano shrimp for helping to keep the planted tank clean.
Wow thank you for that explanation! That helps alot as well.. I do have a question a bout the undergravel filter.. why would you say not to use this? I am planning to invert the pump so they would effectively blow debris up and out of the gravel so the other filters could catch it.. this is bad?
It's just my opinion that water filters are for filtering the water....for converting ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate. Regular gravel vacs are for debris that settles down on and in the substrate. It just seems to me that the water column would stay cleaner if you weren't blowing debris up and aimed at the water filter. That it would be better to keep the water clear and let the solid debris (or most of it) settle downward. They just seem to me to be undergravel dirt traps more so than not using one. We pack our filters full of sponges and other media to trap any solids that naturally float up into the water filters. And the other thing is...why would you want to spray fish poop up so that it would go in to your water filter? That's not what the filters are designed to do.
I can say.. I have no idea! lol it just seemed to me that sounded like a good way for nothing to get trapped in the gravel and therefore I thought it would keep things cleaner.. wrong am I.. I'm ok with being wrong as long as I have you guys to correct me! lol
Ok so.. I guess I wasn't thinking the price quadrupled when these guys turned into adults.. altho it makes sense most definitely when you think about all they have to go through to make sure they aren't stunted.. SOOooo.. I am back to getting some information on going barebottom to start with and raising some from juvies.. so no gravel, lots of WC every other day? 50%? would a magnum 350 canister and 2 HOB filers be adequate? I assume I need to use ro/di water with some sort of peat media? my ph is about 8.2 from the tap.. How does it work some day when I DO want to add plants, and co2 and gravel and whatnot.. I mean.. isn't this rather traumatic to the fish?
Getting rather discouraged here.. =\
Getting rather discouraged here.. =\
Are you planning on buying domestic discus? I have domestics in my source water which has a pH of 8.0. My water is moderately hard and they are doing very very well. I think that hard water is a much bigger issue for wild caught discus. When i had 2" discus, i did every other day 30-50% wc's with my tap water.
ditto this. if you are getting Hans discus, then do not worry about trying to change your pH. just acclimate the fish slowly, drip method, if your water's pH is significantly different from the facility you are getting them from.
