Hey everyone. Long term aquarist looking to get into Discus keeping

[DerbysDiscus]

Hey! Thanks first of all for the add. Having kept Fancy Goldfish and also Marine set ups over the last 10-12 years I'm currently wondering about the possibility of keeping Discus. I have a Red Sea Max 250 Reef set up, that is currently empty so I'm considering that as a basis, obviously with a few modifications.

I'm au fait with the water quality requirements keeping sensitive fish have, more than anything I'm looking for advice on converting the tank I have, and the finer details of what I'm going to be able to keep, and what mods are going to make the best environment for the eventual livestock.

I live in the East Midlands of the UK, so if there's any fellow enthusiasts with tips, advice and any local information you think would be useful I'd be very happy to hear it!

Apologies in advance for any stoopid questions I might ask...

[aquafrogstuff]

Hi DerbyDiscus. I've had discus for 8+ yrs and really enjoyed them. I think they're stunning. Like most domesticated animals, there's various breeds within the species and the bigger and more exotic, the more you pay. Locally bred discus should not be that difficult to keep. Imported fish from Asia can struggle with local water but I've not really found that to be an issue.

You'd want to ensure you got the marine salt well and truly out of the system before introducing freshwater fish. I'd run the tank setup for some time and checking for salinity before adding freshwater fish.

There's tonnes of info in this forum. Lots of pictures to aspire to and get ideas as well as lots of other discus websites and forums about keeping them.

Hope that helps as an intro. Happy to give you more data if you need it. Suggest you spend some time reading up various aspects on the forum, websites and discus books. There's loads of data.

Cheers,

Dwayne

[shakadog]

First question after you take the excellent advice from Dwayen, is how big is the Red Sea 250 tank you refer to and what filtration does it have set up on it. As the filtration requirements form marine to freshwater as I understand it can be quite different. if the system you has has built in sump etc that can work well with discus but as I discovered on my set up not well with catfish who tend to want to go over into the sump and get killed. Skimmers and some of the other parts ive seen for reef tanks are not needed for discus so can you remove these easily if possible?

Sumps are great for keeping everything out of the way as you would no doubt already be aware.

If you do take the plunge try and find one or two shops in your area that have great quality fish nd limit yourself to those shops to prevent as much as possible bringing in external issues when buying fish. Discus as you will find as you read this forum like clean water, lots of water changes and company, six minimum most would say and about 50 litres per fish seems to be a suggestion.

Make sure any tank you set up is well and truly cycled and run in before adding discus, I cycled my current tank with catfish, corys and l numbers for nearly 3 months before I added discus to make sure I had the filters up at capacity etc.

Also warm water and enough heaters to cope with cold days if the room isn't heated, I made a major mistake with my current tank when I went away for a week. discovered the heaters weren't capable of maintiang the tank temperature above 27 degrees C without the room heated when it got cold. Tank dropped to 24 and all my discus and L catfish got Ich and the discus went black and got cloudy eyes.

Raised the temp back up to 28 C and treated for the Ich and three weeks later all are pretty good but I did lose about 3 discus as far as I can tell. They are a great fish but you need to watch the set up closely and monitor