Hi Morpheus, With regard to your earlier comments about keeping discus, I would tend to disagree with you about firstly, the temperature at which they should be kept and secondly, about keeping them in RO water. Discus should not be kept under 29C, from my 25 years of keeping them and numerous books on the topic, you will nowhere find a recommendation for lower temps. Also your information that the Amazon waters are colder than 28 C for the larger part of the year is simply incorrect, it rises as high as 34C in winter and drops to 29C in summer, but not much below that. My experiences with keeping discus at lower temps is that they are skittish, don't eat well and are more prone to disease. Keeping discus in RO water is nothing else but cruel. They must have some dissolved solids in the water, all discus books will recommend this. Without some dissolved solids the kidneys of the fish have to work incredibly hard and you are inducing additional stress to the fish. Also, if you want to keep plants you can forget about keeping them in RO water. I think you may be mixing RO water with tap water but pure RO water should definitely not be used. I also firmly believe that keeping discus in planted tanks is much more difficult and if you start off with discus, you have enough adjustments to get used to so that plants are just simply an added complication that you can do without. One other aspect that I would like to mention is that keeping discus in such a huge tank means that you have very high maintenance ahead of you. If you want to make a 50% water change on a smaller tanks as opposed to a larger one, the amount of water you need to change is much larger and in this coming winter with the power problems that we WILL have will mean that you cannot preheat your water, so you are headed for problems..... just a small warning from someone who has a lot of experience with these beautiful fishes and all the myths that surround them. Kind regards, Dirk
Dirk, thank you for your post, it was very informative.. my hopes of having a large, planted discus tank are being dashed my the day.. Having second thoughts. Maybe I can just have a discus tank with aquascaping of bogwood and very few plants.. dunno, maybe I will just go South American and be done with it ! Murray
Hi Muz, Sorry to dissappoint you about the planted discus tank. What you could consider doing as a sort of a compromise is to put fine swimming pool gravel in the tank, the light grey whitish type. That type of gravel allows for easy maintenance. You could also build a deeper section with glass in your tank for plants at the back. Then you could keep some really large sword plants in pots or directly in the gravel, but you will need to feed them, I know my plant food will work in combination with discus. Bogwood will also look very attractive, but you could try to find some large narrow pieces which look like a river bank. That could look quite stunning. The image I show was taken by Larry Waybright from the USA, and illustrates what can be done (with picture credits to Larry, thanks). Kind regards, Dirk
Hi Dirk Yes, I think you misinterpreted my post about RO water, when I said, make your own water I meant RO water with additives to make it habitable. There is no way one should use pure RO for any living creature. Although I hear what you are saying about temperatures, I do not agree. Perhaps you know Mary Bailey she writes for Pratical Fishkeeping and is considered a world renowned expert on cichlids including the venerable Discus. It was through email and other forms of communication with her that I began changing the temperatures my Discus live at. I noticed the opposite of what you mention in your post. This LED me to believe that water quality is far more important than temperature. My Discus were very long lived far longer than a lot of experts I routinely converse with. They too heartily disagree with my methods. So at least you are not alone there. As to Discus in a planted, once again I must disagree. I agree that keeping this fish as a novice in a planted tank is a mistake. With trying to tend to the needs of the fish and of the plants, one will lose out. However an experienced keeper in both disciplines can be successful and there are literally thousands of tanks on the internet and magazines that attest to this fact. I value your reply to my comments. My only intention is to give keepers more options with keeping various fish as well as plants. There is far too much dogma out there that needs to be addressed. If one considers all the dogma that has literally been destroyed in the reef keeping hobby of late, it is plain to see there are many ways to skin the cat as it were. Regards Morpheus
Personally I think there is a bare tank route and a planted tank route with discus, and there are different parameters and issues that come into play with each option, 28?C works for me in a planted tank, however if you want to breed and if you want to get maximum size then the bare tank higher temp is the way to go, it is also easier perhaps, planted discus tanks are not altogether easy. I remember reading Mary Bailey had an interesting theory that a parrot was a cross between a goldfish and a Central American cichlid... Mark Evenden is Practical Fishkeeping's discus expert, who's advice I would value more. http://www.devotedly-discus.co.uk/
Here is an article I found on PFK that I remember reading a few years back http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/p ... cle_id=136 I think you are being a bit harsh on Mary Bailey there mate someone that is asked to speak all over the world and called in by aquariums the world over to help them with their cichlid husbandry can be trusted. I have had contact with Mark Evenden and I was not impressed. Its his way or the highway and if we all felt that way the hobby would never move forward. My opinion is my own and things work for me. I am not trying to convince anyone. I have been down that road a few times and it is a bit tiresome. I just provide information as best I can and let other people make the decisions. Regards
I read the article Mary Bailey wrote in which she mentioned that theory, and I have also spoken to Mark Evenden, he seemed fine to me.
Well Muz it seems you are in for more than you planned for! This is a ruf one! The way I see it is that discus and planted tanks can be done. Lets face it there are alot of dislay tanks on the web that prove it! You just got to not listen to thouse who say it cant be done and mission ahead with the advice of thouse who say it can be done! If you have doubt in your hart you are doomed!!! Just do what you want and make mistakes as you go along! Thats the way you learn! Unfortunately! Nobody ever got it right first time did they? If you know of someone that did... Have him set up the tank for you! He he he!! Face your fears... Plant your dreams!
I agree with City Bowl and Morpheus that discus can be kept in a planted tank but this takes a lot of experience. If you do not have the experience don't try to keep discus in a planted tank, just try to keep discus for starters. That for most aquarists is already enough of a challenge, and the perseverence that you talk about vic&andrea, costs fish. By that I mean you will have casualties. Discus are unforgiving, make a mistake, and they die. It is not like with other fish where if you make a mistake, you still have a chance of getting them to recover. My opinion about giving advice on this forum, is that we should help persons to make a success of keeping fish and growing planted tanks, if persons try too many things at the same time and have a flop with the whole lot they become disillusioned and sell off the whole lot and that is the reason why I say, try one thing at a time. I have by now seen many, many people in SA getting very excited about discus, only to give up in disgust a short while afterwards, so pole, pole, (slowly, slowly) as the Tanzanians say when climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.... Just my opinion... Dirk
OK, decided then, no plants for now. I will progress to that later. Thanks for all the input, this website is fantastic.
This is tough for me cos I have not had a FW fish die on me for over 10 years unless it jumped out the tank or died of old age, I cannot and will not accept that I loose a discus to poor water quality or bad planning. Dirk, when can I come out and see you? I would love to just pick your brain for a bit so that I get this setup done right, but I'm running out of time, I woudllike to start building the setup within the next week or so. Tx Murray
Well Muz, you listened to all the advice and you have made a decision, good on you. You are the one that will have the sleepless nights about this so in the end the only opinion that really counts here is yours. As I mentioned, people who keep both Discus and plants are usually an expert at both. I love Discus and a tank with them in is always something to behold. A tank of the size you propose is really going to be exceptional. I am sure you have other tanks and perhaps you can try the planted thing in them for now. By the time you are ready, you will be that expert in both Discus and plants. I trust you will be documenting this tank and the process using a camera for us all to enjoy? Best of luck to you and never feel ashamed to ask anything no matter how silly it may sound in your head. After 20 years of keeping fish I still regularly seek any advice I can find even if I have heard it before. Morpheus
Cheers, thanks ! Hopefully the stand will be complete by next week, I had to send it back cos I made it too high. Sigh!
Boy oh boy ! finally. Got the stand.. glass has arrived. The big build is this weekend. I confess now I am coming under big pressure to make this a marine tank.. I will post pics anyway just incase.
