To add or not to add?

[Oonallee]

Hi all

Some of you may have seen my previous posts whereby I've had problems with my substrate messing with my water (it was showmaster brown gravel and also tried the showmaster dark grey gravel). I tried everything under the sun to fix the issues and in the end removed the gravel in frustration which fixed the problem, yey! I probably should have jumped on this forum in the beginning, instead of listening to just the one experienced person I know. I might have saved some time and resolved the problem quicker and not lost the rest of my discus :(

So I suppose I'm on a steep learning curve. My water is perfect now but it is BB, with some live plants and the fish in my signature. My plan now aquascape my aquarium, prob some silica sand/ rocks/ plants/ some sort of composition of substrate for the plants as well. I'm going away for 5 weeks in 10 days, so at this stage I'm just researching what I'm going to do and taking some really good ideas from you all. When I come back I'll start putting the aqaurium together. Going to leave it as it is til then. I wasn't going to purchase any more discus until I was completely finished the aquascaping of my aquarium and everyone inside was happy.

I've heard that discus aren't really happy alone and should be kept in groups of 5 +. My questions are;

- Should I just leave this single discus in my tank by himself and continue with my current plan?
- Is the above plan a good plan?
- Should I be getting him/her at least one other companion in that time?

Cheers
Oonallee

[swampy1972]

If you're planning to scape your tank, then wait till it's complete AND STABLE before worrying about buying more fish.

If you want a great resource for learning about aquascaping, then have a look at www.aquariumlife.com.au - it's primarily focused on keeping planted tanks but if you get the tank and water right, the fish look after themselves ;)

[Oonallee]

Hi Swampy. Yeh that's my gut feeling too. Although it's not ideal, the single discus seems happy enough, he is certainly quite active and swims around with the red rainbows.