How do i setup a discus tank?

[Nathan]

Im about to buy a tank for discus and im wondering what type of equiptmeant i would require such what type of filter and things like that? if anyone could its be much apretiated!

Nathan :)

[Merrilyn]

Hi Nathan, welcome to the forum and welcome to the wonderful world of discus.

The equipment you get will depend on your budget, and what you want to do with your fish. Are you looking for a display tank or a breeding tank.

For a display tank, get the largest tank you can afford. Water is much more stable in a larger tank, and it allows plenty of room for your fish to grow.

A good quality heater is essential. You need to maintain the water at 30 degrees, so don't skimp on this piece of equipment.

An airpump is another essential piece of equipment. Warm water holds less oxygen than cool water, so an airstone is essential. If you're on a budget, you may also like to run a sponge filter off the airpump too.

A cannister filter is great on a discus tank, and there are a lot of good makes on the market. Check out some of our online retailers for great prices on filters. If the budget doesn't allow for a cannister filter, then buy a good quality sponge filter. I'm not too keen on the internal filters for discus tanks. They need cleaning very often, and on a lot of them, the output is too strong. Discus like calm water.

I consider a UV an essential piece of equipment for valuable discus. Either an internal one, with it's own pump, or one you attach to the outlet hose of a cannister filter. Both of them work extremely well and will keep the bacteria and pathogens in your tank to a mimimum.

You'll be doing lots of water changes, so get yourself a nice long hose so you can syphon the water from your tank to outside (saves having to lug buckets around the house) and a way of filling your tank with water the same temperature as your tank.

A quality water testing kit, to test for pH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates, and a thermometer will round off your list of essentials.

Lots of other things will be needed depending if you plan on keeping a planted tank, or a bare bottom tank.

If you're new to discus, and new to fish keeping, then I'd start with a bare bottom tank, with perhaps just an attractive piece of driftwood to begin with. Discus love clean tanks and clean water, and a bare tank will allow you to see just how much cleaning you need to do to maintain correct conditions.

Good luck, and keep asking those questions. We have lots of members here only to willing to help. Remember, we all started where you are now :P

[Nathan]

ive got 3 tanks at home one with cichlids and other with just some basics like mollies angels an blue rams etc. i have an ok budget but im not gonna go cheap on this because i want this to work, i already was planning on an external cannister filter an the heater is no issue either. what sort of media should i have in the filter and also what does the UV do?

thanx a lot this is helping tons.

Nathan

[Daetarek]

the filter makes a difference to the media volumes, i recommend ehfimech, then coarse pad, ehfi substrat pro, wool layer, and fine layer (standard eheim config really)

a UV sterelizer is an anti algae, anti bacterial device, it concentrates UV radiation on a flow of water at a certain wavelength which will kill microbes in the water, make sure you have a powerfull enough UV for the flow rate / tank size, if you can just get a 36w, they are very good, and the price from APW on the pondmaster at the moment is very good.

Hope this helps
ta
Rob