Seachem Discus Trace

[shakadog]

Hi all,

I'm getting close to adding water to the tank, next week hopefully. Was wondering does anyone add discus trace or any other equivelants on a regular basis to their discus tanks. I am using a four pump doser to put plant food in regularly and will have one pump slot free. Was considering hooking up discus trace to this as the water change water is pretty much RO water, you can see the three filters in white on the left in the pic. 20 micron, 5 micron and a carbon filter, so will have no nutrients or anything in it.

Water changes are done automatically once it is up and running so the tank will only have in it whatever the wood leeches into the water.

Picture of the setup so far for your interest. Will have basically just Anubis and Java fern varieties attached to the wood and a relatively fine layer of gravel and rocks on the bottom.

The sump filter is my old 6*2*2 tank which has all the old filter media I had left over from many many years of keeping fish being utilised.

[jimstreet]

Wow! That's an awesome tank, love the driftwood.

I use Discus Trace, dunno if it does any good as I have always used it. Given how efficient your filtering is, it would probably good to add something discus specific.

[Nathan]

wow what a beast! have to keep us updated.

As for reminerlaising water from R/O unit i dont think you need to add anything specific just enough to keep the kh/gh stable which wont be to difficult as discus dont require much.

[shakadog]

Well got the water in the tank yesterday, need a few days for it to settle and get up to temperature and clear up. Should be interesting to see how brown the water goes from the mangroves, it was very red when I was soaking the wood. I've put some biomchem zorb in the filter to help with tanin removal so hopefully clear in a few days.

[Nathan]

any ideas on what type of discus your going to get?

[shakadog]

No not yet, still trying to find one good quality reliable source. Won't mix wild with german or Asian so looking at the Asian strains now as there seem to be a lot more of these around.

I am running a lot of filtration and depending on where you read you can have one discus in 15 litres to one discus in 50 litres. So based on that I could have between 60 and 200 discus, the latter sounds really ridiculous when you write it down though.

Tank is slowly clearing, But as you can see with the amount of wood it is getting a lot of tanins in the water. Not planning on adding any discus for at least a month so it has masses of time to cycle.

Will probably put some catfish in next week to get the process under way.

[jimstreet]

Looking great, I actually like the tannin water look. Good idea to keep the cycle slow, patience is a virtue :)

[Mavzta]

No not yet, still trying to find one good quality reliable source. Won't mix wild with german or Asian so looking at the Asian strains now as there seem to be a lot more of these around.

I am running a lot of filtration and depending on where you read you can have one discus in 15 litres to one discus in 50 litres. So based on that I could have between 60 and 200 discus, the latter sounds really ridiculous when you write it down though.

Tank is slowly clearing, But as you can see with the amount of wood it is getting a lot of tanins in the water. Not planning on adding any discus for at least a month so it has masses of time to cycle.

Will probably put some catfish in next week to get the process under way.

Your tank looks amazing. Keep up the good work.

[Nathan]

no need to rush these things. Im with jim i like the tanins gives it a really natural amazon river look. Your best to go with one importer so you get the same quality and have been bred in the same conditions. The biggest and best importer is new life aquariums in abbottsford if you speak to them they will be able to organise a bulk import for you.

I would start with no more then 10 discus just to get them settled. I wouldnt go with any less then 6-8 either due to it being such a huge tank theyll feel more comfortable in numbers.

give new life a buzz and theyll be able to help you out, as i said they get regular imports of varying quality (to cater for those on a budget) but definitely have access to incredible top end discus.

[shakadog]

Thanks for that, yes I dropped in there last weekend to have a look at what current fish he had out the back. Going to wait a few weeks before any discus to let all the plants attach to the wood and get established and to let the filter fully colonise up with some catfish only.