jwcarlson

Lennie, have you wormed them? Do you have any pictures of them (your discus)?

Freeze dried black worms with color enhancer for reds and spinach mainly. And a Cobalt discus flake. And occasionally frozen blood worms, various pellets, vibrabites...etc.

Not great pictures, but I cleaned the front this afternoon so figured I should take a picture. And cleaned up the pothos roots/put new cuttings in. Measured a couple and they seem to have grown about another half inch, they're just about all 6" with a couple of them perhaps a bit bigger.

I buy them from Aquatics Suppliers in the US (Al Sabetta). But this looks like the same source, but in Australia? Mal Davidson's farm. I have not bought from here, so not sure of their validity... https://blackworms.com.au/

Just dropping in to say that there's nothing simpler than a bare bottom tank (especially for grow outs). 😄

Surprised you ever saw it in there. I have a barebottom discus tank with a single piece of driftwood and a pleco cave. I never see them unless their tale happens to be out of the cave. Not even during 90% water changes. I would be worried it's stuck inside one of the decor items if those are hollow though.

I keep mine in my liquid rock, but trying to breed them is a different animal. My apistos get straight RO, but also won't breed successfully either. So long story short, don't listen to me. 🤣 Barebottom just makes it very easy to keep the tank clean, @Chick-In-Of-TheSea... Not to speak for Lennie. It's common with discus, particularly when growing out, because you're feeding them so much. I cannot imagine trying to keep a tank with substrate clean with the amount of food I fed my juvy discus over their first year. I'm talking 6-8 half inch+ cubes of beefheart every day, plus some flake, plus feeeze dried blackworms. It would have been gross.

@Lennie I do not think daily water changes are needed, but I think clean water is required. I am by no means a discus expert. So take this for what it's worth. If someone takes a 2 or 3" discus and raises it for a year or so, you can SEE their care in the discus. Unlike any other fish I have kept. The shape, size, eyes... They're swimming billboards advertising how well they were cared for! That said, if you're lucky and have soft, acidic water on tap, I think you can dang near get away with murder raising discus because the bacteria loads are so low compared to high pH petri dish water. I have not found the daily water changes to bother the discus at all, they don't skip a beat. The discus will eat during a water change and eat again as soon as they're mostly upright when it's refilling. Doesn't seem to bother them. But the water is extremely similar to what they had been in (aged and preheated). If someone had them in 160 ppm nitrate soup and them did a massive water change, I could see their being problems. I all water changes with aged preheated water in all my tanks and have not noticed anything I would consider overly stressful. Some fish might get a little spooked depending on how much other cleaning I am doing, but overall they don't seem to mind.

Mine will eat some flake. But their favorite is freeze dried black worms from Australia. They're expensive. During growout I fed them primarily beefheart. My discus also seem to like gnawing on plants, but they mostly leave anubias alone. They're scavenger type fish in my experience. They eat a lot off the bottom even in my barebottoms that are clean. I attribute their seemingly frequent need to be wormed (a topic for elsewhere), but every time I add a new fish, at least one discus end up not eating and needs a round of levamisole to get them back to health. This just happened again when I added a bristlenose that I QTd and wormed before. Diet-wise now they mine are adults I feed them flake in the morning and 2 or 3 blackworm cubes in the evenings. My experience is that they like fresh foods. I made a lot of beefheart (like 30 pounds) and it is now a year old and they are not too keen on eating it anymore. I have never bothered trying to fully convert them to commercial feed, I'm OK babying them. They also get occasional frozen Hikari bloodworms, treat only, I don't think it's a great staple. I would question if you need to add vitamins to any food you're making, especially if you're supplementing with some commercial feed (or mixing a little in). All I ever added to beefheart was garlic guard and they grew out well with that. Overall, I am becoming less convinced that discus are "worth it" for me. I enjoy them, they're beautiful, but even with daily 90% water changes they seem very sensitive for me. I am sure there are other factors. I have started to skip some water changes (doing 3 or 4 a week now). My goal is to eventually get them into a 125 I have for them, but am not feeling motivated to actually do that at this point. *shrug* @Colu I have seen a lot of references to this study, but no one has been able to provide a link. Any chance you have one?

You cannot do that with this light, unfortunately. To the OP, I have 5 or 6 of these lights and use the manual mode to set up a custom schedule (5AM to 9AM then off until 4PM then on until 8PM). Whoever programmed tge light's controller has left plenty of buggy function, but as long as I don't touch the light much, it's OK once it settles in. The on/off is accompanied by a ramp up/down, is it possible that's what you're seeing?

I've not bred them, but I know the tank being lighter colored is because the fry will attach to darkest thing in the tank (typically). As far as "natural", plants are basically nonexistent in discus' natural habitat. Basically, the fry might have a difficult time finding their parents. As far as bare tanks, because of the "optimization" of growth/shape, discus people usually feed A LOT. Especially in the first couple months. Which means dirty tank and trying to maintain that with plants/substrate can be very difficult. Best of luck, though, it sounds like the person you bought them from knows what they're talking about.

It's been below 80 and typically around 60. Though I haven't checked it recently. It was below 80 for at least a couple spawns. I am going to cut some small terracotta pots and giving them some bigger cave options. I am not sure they have great options in that regard. And I can hopefully situate them in a way that I can maybe monitor what's going on.

I keep checking on/off for some at a LFS, but haven't seen any yet. Though I don't frequently check by any means.

Been away from the forum 'forever'. Life in my apisto world (aka The Hydra Farm) continues as it has since January. No fry to report, the Hongsloi pair still occasionally acts like they have spawned, but nothing has come of it. I have thought about pulling the male and introducing one of the other four males, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea. To be honest, they've discouraged me quite a lot so I'm just kind of letting them ride and probably won't rock the boat much. The Abacaxis are a bit flirty and maturing/coloring up. The female is looking more and more yellow (on and off). The male is showing more color more often as well. He's a good looking fella. Thanks for looking! 😄

I did 10 right in the 75 they are currently in. But could see advantages to a smaller tank. So I agree with Dean, who also has infinitely more experience than me! Bare bottom, good food, pound them with clean water. My biggest suggestion would be to fully commit to the grow out. Daily, large water changes. You can get lazier with them in about a year when they're more fully grown. Nothing is more sad than stunted, weirdly shaped discus. If you're going to do it... Do it. If you don't want do the work, buy a group of adult ones where someone else has done the work. Good luck!

I am assuming the 600 is the gallons/hour rating? If so, you would be turning over the water 30 times an hour which is, frankly, pretty insane in my opinion. I think when I was keeping bigger fish like oscars we shot for 9 or 10 times an hour, unless I am mistaken. I wouldn't use a canister, personally. I would put a $10 sponge filter in there and call it good. CPDs are not your standard danio, so far as I know. Meaning they don't like higher flow. I only have them in tanks with sponges, so I cannot speak to flow exactly, but by their behavior I think they don't strike me as a fish that's interested in fighting 30x turnover. But, even with high flow fish, I think what you have is way way too much flow for a 20 gallon. Have you done a test with just the tank and filter? Does that filter have a "tank size rating" on the box? Those numbers are bunk, but is a good sanity check maybe.

@riioKen I highly suggest you rethink the filtration. That filter is probably big enough for a 125. Otherwise, I don't see anything wrong with your stocking. I dont necessarily see my CPDs as schooling fish so much as hiding fish.

It's exceedingly easy to overfed fry food. Not just the Co-Op variety, but anything of powder or almost powder consistency because it's so much more dense than what you're probably used to.

Feed them less and change water as suggested above. Doing 50% water changes in a 10 gallon tank doesn't take but a couple of minutes. That said, I have never had any major issues with this kind of thing while paying attention. Just monitor the parameters every day or every other until you're comfortable things are OK. That's the main reason I like the strips. In the past I've done twice a day 50% changes in "quarantine" and then once filter catches up down to daily, then every other, etc.

I haven't moved any ten year old fish, but moving fish in the dark seems to work well for me. Do the same thing with chickens, add a new hen to the roost in the dark and when they wake up it's like they just assume that's how it always was. There's more to it than that, but very low/no light might help a lot. Otherwise just wanted to say well done on a ten year old fish! 🙂

All purpose or play sand is OK. The big box stores also usually have bagged river pebbles or similar that makes a good natural looking substrate. The issue with paver sand type products is they typically have a concrete-like curing that happens. Now, there might be safe "paver sand" out there, but I wouldn't risk it. I looked into it awhile back because I liked the more uniform colors. But when I looked at it in the store, I knew something was up. I have the all purpose sand and river pebbles from Home Depot in tanks now. It works well.

I have several 957s. You can custom program them pretty easily. I struggle with algae, but am searching for the correct intensity to keep it under control. Every tank I've got them on has plants pearling almost daily. I don't think you'll have a "not enough light" situation. I will say that the lights turn on/off differently. A coupling of my newer ones will not disable the moonlight feature even in custom program. But suspect I can fix it with a reset to defaults and disabling moonlight before custom program. They also behave differently on startup after manual override or accidentally hitting a button. To reset it into auto some of them turn right back to where they were. Some go through the whole "sunrise" again. Not a huge problem, but they are a bit jenky that way. The 957s CANNOT be just and on/off light on a timer. So be aware if that. Don't know about the 999s.

From the manual: I do not own one of these, however, there's a controller inside there and sometimes that can get squirrelly. I would suggest "rebooting" the heater. Probably unplug it and leave it for 20-30 minutes then plug it back in.

I've had pretty good luck with assassin snails keeping my bladder snails in check. In fact, I pick bladders from other tanks and put them in the tank with assassins. They're also dwindling the mylasian trumpets too. Now, will I have an explosion of assassin snails soon? Don't know, I haven't seen any babies yet, but I'm sure they'll show up.

I have one for every one of my aquariums (seven right now). And other Inkbird controllers for my water aging/preheating setup and extras for additional setups if needed. I've used Inkbirds for years for everything from chicken egg incubation to honey liquification to queen bee incubation... They're fantastic. The official Inkbird account on Ebay sometimes sells them there significantly cheaper than on Amazon. And Amazon occasionally runs sales on them for as low as $17, though that's very infrequent. I don't think you can go wrong with them. But make sure you're getting the real thing as there's now a heat controller company who is flat-out stealing the name. The official ebay store is called inkbird, which is convenient. They're currently $27 for the 306T.