Hello Welcome, Sepia0203

[Art]

Welcome to ScapeCrunch, @Sepia0203!
We would love to get to know you. Please tell us about yourself. What tank do you have?

 

[Sepia0203]

Hi Art, thanks for welcoming me to this forum.

I’ve been a fish nerd since I was a kid. Spent my childhood in Japan surrounded by every possible freshwater ecosystems.

I’m back into fish keeping after a decade. Was very inspired by takeshi amano’s discus aquascaping I believe he had in his early days. So I’m currently taking up the challenge to raise some young discus in a moderately planted tank.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[Koan]

Beautiful! Is this your first discus tank?

Keeping young growing discus healthy with a planted substrate can be a real challenge. If you have questions or get into trouble, you can find help here, and here

 

[Naturescapes_Rocco]

Awesome tank!

 

[Sepia0203]

Beautiful! Is this your first discus tank?

Keeping young growing discus healthy with a planted substrate can be a real challenge. If you have questions or get into trouble, you can find help here, and here

Hi Koan, yeah it’s my first discus and large tank (450L).

The substrate certainly gets messy with all the feeding haha, so I try to siphon out what I can each week with the water change.
Thanks for the links as well. Simply discus has been one of the resources I occasionally read!

 

[Koan]

Right? Substrate really holds onto waste, which constantly increases the bacterial load in the water, dragging on their immune systems, burning calories and slowing growth

To grow the brightest, plumpest fish possible, you are really going to benefit from a minimum of two, if not three or more 50% to 80% water changes a week

The water change cha-cha is by far the biggest challenge with discus
But once you get it down, you're golden

 

[Sepia0203]

Right? Substrate really holds onto waste, which constantly increases the bacterial load in the water, dragging on their immune systems, burning calories and slowing growth

To grow the brightest, plumpest fish possible, you are really going to benefit from a minimum of two, if not three or more 50% to 80% water changes a week

The water change cha-cha is by far the biggest challenge with discus
But once you get it down, you're golden

The substrate choice (bare bottom vs substrate) for discus seems to be a very complex topic relating to their health and growth.
For my tank, I took the approach to mature the tank for a bit over 2 months before adding the discus to make sure there’s sufficient nitrifying bacteria to effectively breakdown food waste with the help of two canister filters. I also have slight overpopulation of shrimps and snails so they seem to be removing any food waste leaving mostly poop to clean up haha..
So far the discus have been growing well and showing good colours over the last 2 months.
I will keep up with the observations.

Speaking of water change, I did lose a few discus possibly due to chlorine poisoning. I didn’t expect the discus can be affected by tap water if I don’t pretreat the water with de-chlorinator for at least 5 minutes.

 

[Koan]

You're from Adelaide! Awesome RFDS season 3 finally just arrived over here

affected by tap water if I don’t pretreat the water with de-chlorinator for at least 5 minutes

I'm so sorry to hear you lost some. Levels of chloramine in your municipal water can vary hugely over different seasons of the year.

Discus are actually affected by other issues on top of chloramines in the water. This is the reason that so many keepers find it beneficial to go to the extra trouble of aging tap water for a day before using it.

Aging allows you to aerate the water to drive off CO2 to stabilize your water's pH. And it has additional benefit of off-gassing microbubbles and temperature matching to the temp of your tank.

When dissolved CO2 in your tap water off-gasses, it can cause the pH of that water to shoot up in a short period of time. This is an extreme stressor if it happens in the tank. If your pH is the same both out of the tap, and after sitting for a day, then that is not an issue for you.

Temperature swings and physical microbubbles of supersaturated oxygen, nitrogen and CO2 gases coming out of solution from your pressurized tap water are additional stressors on your fish.

make sure there’s sufficient nitrifying bacteria to effectively breakdown food waste

Yes this is a very common source of confusion when talking about keeping discus, as different from the other fish we keep.

The stressor here is not only the usual nitrogenous breakdown products. What discus really fail to tolerate is the load of pathogenic bacteria which multiply in the presence of the lipids and carbohydrates as well as proteins from that food waste.

Discus immune systems never evolved to manage bacterial loads, the waters they come from don't have anything for the bacteria to eat

Hope this is helpful I'm a fish vet so I get pretty enthused talking about fish

 

[*Ci*]

I'm a fish vet so I get pretty enthused talking about fish

!!! Am I the only one who didn’t know this? Sooooo wonderful to have your expertise here on SacpeCrunch!

@Sepia0203 welcome to the forum. I am a fellow discus keeper … the journal for my tank is A Symphysodon Symphony

 

[JayP]

I'm a fish vet so I get pretty enthused talking about fish

I didn't even know this was a thing. Well, of course, I knew there were vets for large marine species like dolphins, whales, turtles, and such, but never really thought about them taking care of smaller fish. Then again, who did I think came up with all the treatments for aquarium fish illnesses? Cool!

 

[Koan]

didn't even know this was a thing

AAFV FishVets.org – The American Association of Fish Veterinarians

fishvets.org

WAVMA - A Global Resource for Aquatic Veterinarians

WAVMA World Aquatic Veterinary Medical Association exists to offer support, continuing education and ongoing development to anyone involved in aquatic veterinary medicine, private practitioners and WAVMA members.

www.wavma.org

That's us

To clarify, I'm a vet with a strong side interest in fish it's not my primary practice.

There are folks out there who do all koi all the time (boy doesn't that sound like the dream job.. ) Quite a few more who care for aquaculture

 

[Sepia0203]

You're from Adelaide! Awesome RFDS season 3 finally just arrived over here



I'm so sorry to hear you lost some. Levels of chloramine in your municipal water can vary hugely over different seasons of the year.

Discus are actually affected by other issues on top of chloramines in the water. This is the reason that so many keepers find it beneficial to go to the extra trouble of aging tap water for a day before using it.

Aging allows you to aerate the water to drive off CO2 to stabilize your water's pH. And it has additional benefit of off-gassing microbubbles and temperature matching to the temp of your tank.

When dissolved CO2 in your tap water off-gasses, it can cause the pH of that water to shoot up in a short period of time. This is an extreme stressor if it happens in the tank. If your pH is the same both out of the tap, and after sitting for a day, then that is not an issue for you.

Temperature swings and physical microbubbles of supersaturated oxygen, nitrogen and CO2 gases coming out of solution from your pressurized tap water are additional stressors on your fish.



Yes this is a very common source of confusion when talking about keeping discus, as different from the other fish we keep.

The stressor here is not only the usual nitrogenous breakdown products. What discus really fail to tolerate is the load of pathogenic bacteria which multiply in the presence of the lipids and carbohydrates as well as proteins from that food waste.

Discus immune systems never evolved to manage bacterial loads, the waters they come from don't have anything for the bacteria to eat

Hope this is helpful I'm a fish vet so I get pretty enthused talking about fish

Thank you for the additional tips.
I did happen to just visit a fish keepers house in my neighbourhood that had a large tab of aged water for that very purpose I believe. I’m definitely keen to do that soon.

I’m guessing since the accumulative deposit of waste product in the water affects my discus, my best approach will be to not over feed the discus to the point they will leave food around for a long period and keep up with the water changes.

Great to have a vet share their knowledge to a new discus keeper like me! In Australia we need a vets prescription to access many medications, so pathogens is something I defiantly want to avoid.

 

[Koan]

not over feed the discus to the point they will leave food around for a long period and keep up with the water changes

Yes! Looking forward to seeing more of your tank, let us know how they are doing!