Questions

[Daetarek]

Hi Everybody, i have a few questions, can anyone help :)

I have two tanks 48x18x14, and 36x18x18

I water change 20% and 50% on alternate weeks.

both tanks are quite well planted and have driftwood, they tend to sit between 28 to 30.

I add Discus Buffer if the pH changes but it is sitting fine at 6.5, i add Discus Trace weekly, and a small dose of Prime and/or Stress Coat.

The larger tanks has two flouros, the smaller has just one.

they both have an eheim 2215 filter and the larger also has a 2213. Both have a small air pump just bubling into the water. Both have 200W heaters

I test the water every sunday morning, todays results are:-

3ft tank 4ft tank
Temp 30 c 29 c
pH 6.5 6.5
Nitrite/Nitrate <0.3 mg/l <0.3 mg/l
Ammonia 0 mg/l 0 mg/l


Are these Setups ok, is there anything else i should do? need to know ? any other tests need to be done ?

how many discus can they hold safely ? (the 4ft has six, the 3ft has none)

At the moment i am just feeding flake food, and colorbits three times a day, and every few days i give them frozen discus food, also when i can i give them blood worm, is there anything else i should add to the diet ? whats good ?

Should i get UV ? if so whats the benefit ?
Should i get CO2 ? if so whats the benefit ?
Is there anything else worth adding ?

I am thinking of investing in an ammonia alert are they worth it ?

Thanks in advance folks i am really unsure if this is all ok, i don't wanna screw anything up ...

[FishLover]

10 g per discus is the rule people use. You need to have at least 4 to 6 of them in a tank for them to be happy.

Water change is the key. 30 to 30% per week is the min. Ammonia alert only cost you about $2 each. I will put one in each tank for sure. CO2 is for plants. Be careful with it. If it goes bad, it can drive out the oxygne and kill all your fish. UV has two main usages. One is to kill alege, which requires lower wattages per g of water. Other ussage is to kill bad things that would infect your fish. That requires a higner wattages per g or water. You should get all the details from the seller as to what you need for your size of tank.

Water temp, PH and WC are the three most important things for Discus keeping.

Hope this helps.

[Daetarek]

Thats great thanks for that :)

[Merrilyn]

Hi Daetarek, you're doing just fine. The only think I'd like to see is increasing the water changes from once a week to twice a week. Discus really love their clean water :wink:

Your ammonia test is excellent at zero. That's where we want to keep it.
Now your nitrite/nitrate test confuses me a bit. They are two different things, and you need different test kits for them. Your nitrite should also be zero, but you should have some nitrate reading, usually under 10. I think the plants are helping to keep your readings at such good levels.

The ammonia alert things are good. Warns you at a glance if the ammonia is on the rise. A good thing to have in a newly stocked tank, to make sure your bio filter is coping with the extra fish load.

I like UVs and have them on all my tanks. I know lots of people successfully keep their discus without ever owning a UV, but for me, if it reduces the nasty bugs in the water, then it's worth it. I don't want my discus getting sick. Haven't seen a case of white spot, or fungus, or any of the other common fish diseases since I began using UVs. But they are expensive, and so it's a personal choice.

The rule for keeping discus is one adult fish per 40 litres (10 gallons) of water. You can go slightly over that limit, but be prepared to do daily water changes to keep the quality of the water up.

Hope that helps.