Discus meet Botia, Botia meet Discus

[weird]

My clown loaches have joined my 4 juvs in my 4 foot tank. The ph is quite different from my community tank, which is always bombing ... so this is my only only concern in the next week, however already they started creating schools to explore the tank after hiding in the caves I transplated from their old tank.

It was suggested to me that the overcrowding of the community tank was leading to the ph crashing, and because my 6 botia are getting too big for it anyhow and the shell grit I was experimenting with sliced one on my soft skinned clown loaches ... I decided to combine my 2 favourite fish ... discus and botia in the largest of my aquariums.

Now I have read in many places that some people have had great success with discus and botia, and as I have put my wishes of a biotype on hold, I will give it a go. They can withstand the same high temps as discus , which to me is a big tick already.

However my only concern is that when I have feed bloodworms to my clown loaches in the community they would go into a frenzy ... I am hoping this will not happen as it may scare the discus ... I am thinking of using funnelled worm feeders ... but not sure if they will help ... also because the botia will also eat flake and pellets and my discus won't, maybe feeding this to them first will slow them down from the frenzied pursuit of the yummy stuff ?

Any suggestions like remove the botias will be ignored ... lol ! Any suggestions to make this work more than grateful ! :D

[Proteus]

You are going to have to be very careful at feeding times, as you may be on the path to starving your Discus.

Clown Loaches are relentless pigs when it comes to food, and as you have mentioned, they do go into a frenzy which may spook the Discus into being stressed and then further problems will occur.

Your pH crashing is more a result of Sydney Water than anything else, if you keep on top of water changes the problem should be kept in check..

[sunshinediscus]

Large botia's can disturb discus at night as they are highly active after dark and as you said yourself are pigs with food, not an ideal combination imo. I know you will ignore my advice but it needed to be said anyway, good luck.

Rod

[weird]

Thanks for the advice, I will try and reseach this as much as possible in the next 48 hours.

4 of tyhe botia are young adults (about 18 months), 2 of them about 6 months. They survived the night, and this morning started schooling like they never did before, doing tumbleweeds in the front of the tank.

I am thinking about getting a few adult discus, to increase the number of them , hopefully increasing their confidence.... hope this does not result in speeding up straving !

I will be setting up a new tank soon (debating over the size it) to move my baby discus to, and will spread the load of the botia between tanks.

[weird]

botia botia

[weird]

You can see the loachs schooling in the left hand corner, they do this all day. The lights in this tank come on at 5pm and off at midnight ... during this time most of the loaches sleep in one of their 3 caves. These times allows me to get plenty of feeding into the discus.

I will soon move the loaches to their own 3 foot tank, with their 3 caves. I will start decorating my 4 foot with plenty of driftwood then.

<why did I move them into the 4 foot ? intermin solution cause of overcrowding in my community 3 foot>

[jim]

Nice fish weird...I have 2 loachs with 10 discus in 4 foot tank for about a year now....never have trouble..
My loachs spend most of the time resting under the driftwood..never bother my discus..and it's very fun to watch them sleep upside down.. I thought they are dead..the first time I saw them rest like that..

Can I please ask where you bought the digital temp meter?? looks very nice and compact (without the annoying cable)..thanks..

[africandiscus]

You get them from Dick Smit, they are $15