My 650 planted discus tank

[shakti]

discus love to graze off the soft sand, I used to love watching mine blow into it to float up the colour bits and then eat the food. Magnificent looking tank!

Thanks! My ultimate dream will to set up a full, large, planted biotope-riparium with discus and altums. It also has to mainly solar driven, environmentally sound and as sustainable as possible. I am proud to say that, my tank is second hand, all the PVC bits, and filtaration bits were DIYed from discarded stuff.

[ILLUSN]

love your work and the concept! putting solar on my roof was the best thing I ever did in summer we now make power than we use, so I have a guilt free 1000L tank.
working on batteries now and finishing the roof with more solar to try and get our production to equal our winter consumption (I think we're now at about 30% of our winter usage now)

[axl]

love your work and the concept! putting solar on my roof was the best thing I ever did in summer we now make power than we use, so I have a guilt free 1000L tank.
working on batteries now and finishing the roof with more solar to try and get our production to equal our winter consumption (I think we're now at about 30% of our winter usage now)

Hey Jothy,
its been a while since I have been on here and talked to people. I see that you put solar on your roof and you mentioned you are going to put it back into the battery's. How many 12v battery are you looking at installing for your house. I have been told at our new place that we are building that the transformer is full and no more solar will be allowed so the only option is battery's. Have they come down in price yet as I was wanting to know how much it costs to set it up on a house.

Cheers Axl

[shakti]

I have been asked about tank maintainence, and also keen to know how much time and effort other put into their discus tanks. Time is a favtor for me, as I work nearly a 100 hours a week.

Daily, or once every two days
1. Feeding dis us various treats/frozen food. They are otherwise feed 4x/ via timer
2 Dosing dry ferts
3. Spot dosing Glut and hydrogen peroxide on BBA patches( it only grows on a particular wood)
4. Making sure the drainage pipes are not blocked
Weekly
1. Trimmimg each portion/patch of vegetation, one plant species a week
2. 30-40% water change
3. Some glass cleaning
4. Pulling out the damn U Gibba and burning it!

overall, i would say 1/2 hour a week.

before trim ( 2 weeks growth)
[IMG][/IMG]

After agressively hacking 5-10 mins

[IMG][/IMG]

Tonina. fluvantis s not an ideal plant to grow in a discus tank. Wimpy plant. But its doing ok, and is my canary in the mine
[IMG][/IMG]

[shakti]

Next week, we mow the blyxa

A sad event, one of my beautiful discus jumped out, and died

[Mavzta]

Next week, we mow the blyxa

A sad event, one of my beautiful discus jumped out, and died

Oh man that's horrible news! Don't you have glass lids?

[ellwa]

as I work nearly a 100 hours a week.

We're not so different, you and I.

[shakti]

Update time. The tank has been running for almost 3 months, and is starting to mature.

I am pleased with
1. Discus health
2.Other fish health
3.General water clarity issues

Issues
1. BBA appears here and there. I am still dependant on chemicals
2.Going by numbers, my CO2 is still off. Way off, but the plants looks ok, so not quite sure if I need to fix it.
3. Only one golden pencil fish surviving. For some reason, the rest jumped out.
4. Invaded by a horrible carnivarous plant U.gibba. It's trying to take over the tank
5. Bolbitis is supposed to be an 'easy' plants, but is just rotting.

The fish behaviour is very interesting to watch in a planted tank that has white sand and adequate swim room.

The Anubian nana has taken off.

The alternata reinikii is doing well. I drilled holes in the driftwood and stuffed a few stems in. They are trying to escape.


A full tank shot after trim


And my three discus


Thanks for looking.

[shakti]

UPDATE

The tank has had its ups and downs. With the high temperature, CO2, EI dosing and frequent protein rich homade feeds, algae and grow. It bould down to basic gardening, removing dead leafs, trimming old growth to encourage new growth, weekly water changes.
I am trying to i troduce a more 'natural' filteration system. I have taken to growing amazon frogbit in my sump. these plants suck up loads of ammnonia, soften water and their long roots supports a lot of bacterial growth. Need to keep up on the nitrate dosing though. Lets see how it goes.
[IMG][/IMG]

The plant growth good is good. Needs frequest hacking though. The more agressive plants suck up all that CO2. Then the wimpy plants dont do well, and algae grows on them. Increasing the CO2 is risky, as the discus really dont like it. My tank pH drops from 7.3 to 6.8 after 2 hours of CO2. If we go by numbers, optimal. CO2 meansinjecting enoung to drop the pH by one whole unit. But the discus wont tolerate that.


Here are some tank shots
[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

There are six discus, with one breeding pair. The females spawns often, and they take over half the tank, but none off the eggs hatch. has anyone ever had luck with raising frus in a community tank? The corydoras breed well.

Thanks for looking

[Discuskeeper88]

Hi can I get a list of the plants you have used in your tank thanks