Planted Discus Tank few months in

[shakadog]

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Hope you like the photos

[aquafrogstuff]

Looks great. Couple questions. Are running metal halide or LED? How long are you leaving the lighting on for per day? Rainwater or tapwater? What fertilisers are you using?

Sorry for the many questions. I have a 6ft planted discus tank with CO2, LED lighting etc etc - battling with a bit of algae at the moment.

[shakadog]

Answers to your questions below, no problem happy to answer them.

I'm running 5 kessil a360 lights, these run for ten hours a day but they ramp up using the controller so only on full for about 7 hours

Tap water but I run it into the tank through two micron filters and a carbon filter, this runs on a timer for 2 minutes 4 times a day to fill up the sump for evaporation. This also has a float switch so it won't overfill

Fertilisers, I'm running sea hem flourish and potassium, dosing at the recommended dose rate but I divided it by 7 and am dosing it every day, also using a product called don't spit, similar to seachem excel but much better value

I'm also running CO2 as well, but it's not that effective as the sump erases a lot of it

I do a third water change a week as well at present.

Hope this helps

[aquafrogstuff]

Does indeed. Thanks for that and well done.

[shakadog]

These were taken only a short time after being put in the tank, they have already started to colour up some more. Really hoping for the Blue Face to come to prominence on the Browns. Hope you like.

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[Nathan]

looking awesome buddy!

any updates?

[shakadog]

No not yet, changed the lighting to drop the blue spectrum out of the kessils and the colours are looking a bit better. It was suggested I should put a pink colour light on the tank, to bring out the colours a bit more but I don't really have any more room lights above the tank.

I'll take some more photos after school holidays, plants are growing fast now. I added Flourish nitrogen to the mix a few days ago so will be interesting to see if I can tell any difference in a week or so.

[Nathan]

Whats your feeding regime?

How do you manage water changes?

[shakadog]

Feeding I currently use an ehiem auto feeder that feeds them one serve of NLS DISCUS pellets 4 times a day. I supplement that with frozen discus mix or blood worms. Currently buying that in the packs from the aquarium but may make my own in the not too distant future.

I have also been trying some of those tins of bloodworms that a number of aquariums in Melbourne are selling. The fish seem to like them a lot.

Occaisonly I grab some live black worm or brine shrimp as well for them. I think they are being a bit picky at present on the dry food so as I'm away for a week they will only get the dry food so will have to either eat or go hungry.

Water changes I just hang a show hose over the top edge, pvc locked in a U connected to a 40 mm hose and drain straight to a nearby drain till it sucks air. So same level each time which is about 30%.

I hard plumbed the tank with a return that has a timer and a float valve. So once drained I just turn the timer on for about 60 mins and it refills to the same level automatically.

Only other thing I have to do is turn the sump pumps off while draining then turn them back on when I'm refilling so the sump pumps back into the tank and the float valve keeps allowing it to fill.

Relatively low maintenance at present and with the filter size so far no spikes in ammonia or nitrite or nitrate all Zero readings.