jwcarlson

The base of my discus feed now that mine are mature is freeze dried blackworms. I would be broke if I tried to do that during grow out. Blackworms feed out WAY cleaner than beefheart for sure, perhaps mainly because there's so much less tiny pieces of waste. There was a discus breeder that used frozen, solid beefheart and then used a salad shooter or cheese grater type of thing that would shave little pieces of the BH into the tank, pieces probably a bit bigger than a VibraBite, but similar shape and would be able to be eaten in one "bite". Typically, beefheart becomes a paste almost. I did a double course grind for mine and I fed it straight with absolutely no additives during grow out. Very little supplemental feed otherwise. And, yes, domestic discus are so far removed from wild (for the most part, but there are some that are more wild-adjacent to get back to that "look"). I agree that finding a fish biologist who specializes in nutrition is probably rare, indeed. 😄 I will say that we kind of want to default to the idea that the natural diet is ideal, but I think that ignores a lot of things. I might be ideal for a few months per year and then fish might be more or less starving for a few months opposite of that. Additionally, that in-and-of itself might lead to fish being significantly less long lived in the wild. That said, perhaps there's some level of benefit that could be gained by putting the fish through those stresses. I don't know of a lot of people who are doing things like that to their fish except for a few corydora breeders who are way deep trying to simulate the natural stresses of seasonal fluctuation to spawn fish that no one else has spawned in captivity.

I assure you that I am not trying to be argumentative. But they don't find basically any of the stuff that Weiss was talking about in the digestive tracts of wild fishes either... lab grown algae... wheat gluten... It's difficult to start talking about doing things "by nature" when what we're doing to these pieces of nature we own is not natural at all. Weiss also talked about mussels being one of the best fish foods... how much clam meat is your average wild discus eating? Beefheart certainly fouls water quickly, but feeding any food at appropriate levels for growing discus fouls the water which is why water changes are so important. I think a good number of people buy adult more or less fully grown discus and keep them some way and then assume that tracks for that fish from fry to adult, but no one reallly thinks that about any other fish because we typically don't buy many fish that need to grow for 18-24 months. And discus are kind of in this in between where they're not "monster fish", but they're also not your typical nano/community fish. But their appearance draws people who want them to fill that planted community tank role and for the vast majority of people, they cannot just be kept that way successfully long-term. If we want to get down to brass tacks, there's not really any plants where a lot of the fish in the hobby come from either, but that doesn't and shouldn't stop us from keeping them that way. I think we get a bit into of a weird place where we draw boxes around things like "I want to feed my fish naturally" and then ignore that every single thing we do to them is not natural at all. We can, in some ways, try our best to mimic that, but as a rule it's either impossible, impractical, or in a lot of cases irresponsible because we cannot mimic all of the other things occuring in nature and that might put our fish at risk. I am also a beekeeper and there's plenty of round-and-round about "natural" beekeeping at least here in the US. Animals requirements change when we domesticate them, full stop. I mean, we have domesticated and selected some animals so much that they aren't even able to reproduce without our intervention anymore. Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread anymore, so I'll be quiet. 😄

Jurrasic Park might be my favorite Crichton. The Andromeda Strain is also pretty good. I think I've also ready Prey and State of Fear. I'm not super well read in his stuff and some of them are pretty plodding in my experience. For Blake Crouch - Dark Matter is my favorite. But I haven't read a Crouch book that I didn't get was very very good. They're fast paced and (in my opinion) more enjoyable than Crichton books. Recursion is another great one. Upgrade is good as well in SciFi. I just read the first in his Wayward Pines trilogy book 1 is called Pines. Also good. He has also written some more books that are strictly "thrillers" a series starting with Desert Places then Locked Doors. I liked those, but they're far more violent and not SciFi related at all. Overall, I think the best jumping in point for Crouch is Dark Matter and if you don't like that he's probably just not for you. It was my first and I've just been working backwards though his stuff. He hasn't had a miss yet for me.

Michael Crichton is, in my opinion, grossly underrated as an author. Blake Crouch feels a bit like his successor in a lot of ways. Jurassic Park is solid.

Just saw that I said my FISH got into and ate a jar of fish food when I meant my CAT did. 😆🤣 I thought this was a picture I had posted and I was only seeing the bottom half. Saw that duckweed under the lotus leaf and thought I was going to have to go home and burn down my house. You scared me a bit.

I'm no authority. But I don't even look at my crypts anymore for fear they will melt back the last inch of their height. I haven't killed a lot of them, but they get to a nice three leaf plant and then sit there for two years.

Looks marginally better this morning, the fuzz spot seemed smaller and maybe less fuzzy. Agree that a dip might put him over the edge. Will see what it's like this afternoon.

Looking at some pictures, it does look quite a bit like that. Can I spot treat with methylene blue? Or do a dip? I would guess IchX might be effective against it, but didn't see any improvement after 24 hours with that in the tank. I'll go add some more salt for the night and see how things look in the AM. Thanks, Colu!

Setup tonight. Two nice fat females and a beautiful male. Hoping this works OK for egg protection as well as not putting the adults at risk of getting stuck in something. It's a nice tight fit.

@Colu It isn't spreading, but it does seem to be getting longer. I initially thought this could have been anchor worms because there are individual strands coming out from the white spot. But now it's gotten more dense at the base.

I don't know... it's strange to me when someone says beefheart isn't natural and then is talking about selectively bred, lab grown algae and wheat gluten two minutes later. Beefheart has raised more discus than any other food if I had to guess. *shrug*

Good action with the hongloi pair tonight. She is in or around the cave only. When he comes over she seems receptive and there's a little rubbing up on each other and she's fluttering her fins not diving into the cave. They were in this cave together at least a bit yesterday.

I had salt in but not that much. Water changed tonight and went with nitrofurizone and kanamycin and upped the salt to 3 tbs in the 10 gallon. The fungus was bigger today, I think it is causing him the difficulty staying upright. He found a good resting spot in some anubias and I killed the lights so hopefully he is at least a bit better in the morning. He's hanging in there somehow.

Little piggies growing up.

Looks quite nice! You're probably overfeeding, which is helping boost the snail population. If they bother you too much, you could try an assassin snail or two, they usually keep the population down and in my experience do not then boom in population. Regarding giving the plants away, I don't see why not. Most of the things you describe are in people's tanks at some level anyway and I don't see them as a "pest", but part of an ecosystem. Floaters do seem to go bananas and they're good nitrate sponges.

@memorywrangler, I was looking for this exact information on google and who would have guessed it was right here on the forum!? Awesome data, thank you!

Well, dang. I have No Planaria, but I'm trying to avoid using it just because I'm worried it's going to cause some other sort of issue. I'm also not convinced the hydra is a really big deal in most instances.

Here's a picture of one of the other discus, so it's not all negative. This fish was whirling multiple times per day, I did the treatment I talked about in this post in February and she has been totally fine since then. If anyone has a whirling discus and wants to know what it is, I'm more than willing to share it. I don't want to just put it out there without context. It was a short three-day HEAVY metronidazole dose with low temps (for discus), I took this one down to 76 for those three days.

I am going to have to give salt a shot in a couple of my tanks. Anything that I feed BBS seems to end up as a hydra farm (except for my CPD tank which also has shrimp... why is that?). I don't even know if it's a problem for the most part. But I don't like it. Additionally, the only thing that I've has success with keeping them in check are spixi snails, and the tanks with the worst issue are softened water that I'm trying to drive the pH down in for some apistos.

Finished up dropping from seven air pumps down to two last night. Main room. Adapting this cheap pump to an acceptable PVC barb was enough to make me want to pull my hair out. It's pretty quiet. Also... I should have finished painting before putting the fish tanks up because it's going to be a pretty big pain in the rear now. I'm not sure why my wife started painting, honestly. Smaller manifold in the adjacent room.

Sometime between my last update and a few weeks ago, my discus got some sort of infection. The first that I noticed was on the blue diamond. A little dark spot on his forehead. I thought it was an injury during water change as he's always getting scuffed up from sliding around and into driftwood and/or pleco cave. After a week it got this discharge/pus coming out and that's when I got really concerned. Trusted discus folks on another forum thought it looked like an internal infection and that eventually it would probably rupture. Within a day or so I found another discus with an issue, but this one with a ruptured cyst. As best I can guess, this one's mark started on the pattern on his face and really camouflaged it so I didn't see it until it ruptured. The braintrust suggested kanamycin, so I ordered that. This all occurred around Thanksgiving. Last night was the last of 10 kanamycin doses with 90% water changes nightly for about the last two weeks. I have/had cut down on water changes a bit, but have been doing at least two and usually three 90% changes per week. The good news is that the guy with the big hole is experiencing pretty good healing and the spot on the blue diamond is decreased. Here are a couple of pictures from three days ago. You can see the healing around the edge of the hole as it seems to be closing up. I'm told that this should heal without any meaningful scaring.

Is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress an early or later work, @JettsPapa? I always mean to read it, but never get around to picking it up.

Pines by Blake Crouch Blood on the Tracks Volume 2 by Shuzo Oshimi

I can't think of a better use for it other than I think it would be good for a breeding pair of discus.

There's a sponge filter that the power head is on as well, @Chris. The HOB Mainly for flow and a big biological filter. I'm sure a sponge or sponges would work fine.