Hello from SA

[Weasley]

Hello from South Australia

I'm new to Discus, though I have had tropical fish (among other things) for 17 years. I think it was my parents plan to get me into a contained pet when I was a kid instead of a bunny or puppy [lol that turned out well for them].

I have goldfish that have grown from a tank in my room to an pond outside, leaving a number of different sized tanks in storage in my house from each upgrade & I had the old main tropical tank altered into a tank for our two turtles a couple of years ago as they grew -they're going to need a pond next . We also have a python, bearded dragon, green tree frogs and cats.

After we retired the old tropical tank, I missed having a larger fish tank, and saved up to make the discus tank I always wanted.

Its a 500L setup with 6 small discus, as well as 4 widow tetras, 2 silver tips, 3 rams, 6 black & 11 regular neons and a pleco.


Everything is going great, (the rams have even tried to lay eggs a couple of times) though a couple of discus have developed a lot of speckling and darker fins since bringing them home. I'm not sure if it is because of my black gravel, or possibly stress because our rainwater is usually a little hard, with a pH of 7.2ishhh.

If its the gravel, I'm ok with it - & I was told that since they're captive bred, keeping the water consistent would be better than trying to reduce these levels and always having fluctuating water conditions..?