New Discus Journal

[Bevs1965]

Thank you, I grew them out, I can not recommend the Stendker colour good heart enough and plenty water changes, they was all purchased at 8 cm from UK Stendker retailers.

I do believe that the water changes stop the build up of the growth inhibiting hormones.

[jwcarlson]

I've just been feeding straight beef heart from recommendation of a guy who's been friends with Stendker reseller in the US (Discus Hans) for decades and has been feeding straight beef heart "forever".  I'm in the US, so sourcing Stendker food isn't likely to be reasonably priced. 🙂

I paid about $110 for 60 pounds of beef hearts that already had some processing done (butterflied and much of the inside waste removed).  I will end up with (conservatively) about 25 pounds of beef heart feed.  So ~$4.50/pound and in total about six hours of time to trim and grind it.  I processed about half of it a couple weeks ago and ended up with 14 pounds.  

Frozen, pre-made beef heart I've seen available is $20-25/pound and that probably doesn't include shipping?

 

Mine also get freeze-dried Australian black worms, and Hikari (Vibra Bites and Discus Bio-Gold).

Edited March 17, 2022 by jwcarlson

[Bevs1965]

Nice, you seem to be feeding them the best there, what % and frequency are your water changes, do you age the water and warm it before adding to the tank?

[Juancho]

I like what I’m reading here. I have 6 discus from Hans. I bought them all at 2.5”. I feed them beef heart from Jack Whattley for shipping it was a lot cheaper and think probably same quality. Homemade from there hatchery. I also feed flake from xtreme l, some brine and blood worms.  
which brings me to my next question.  How many of you guys feed blood worms? I give them Hikari that are sold in the big sheets. There supposed to be flashed frozen. Pose to reduce the Pathogens. Any way tell me what you think about blood worms. Thanks  

[jwcarlson]

On 3/17/2022 at 9:34 AM, Bevs1965 said:

Nice, you seem to be feeding them the best there, what % and frequency are your water changes, do you age the water and warm it before adding to the tank?

70% nightly.  Water aged and pre-heated 24 hours.

 

@JuanchoI've not fed mine blood worms.  I know there are supposed to be issues with them, but I think most everyone says Hikari are OK.  

I feed the beef heart frozen pre-cut into cubes and they sit in the freezer in a plastic container.  I just grab a cube and toss it in.  It sinks relatively quickly.  Sometimes I stick it to the glass, but it usually pops off pretty quick.  Freeze dried black worms stick to the glass well.

[Juancho]

Thanks for your input, I appreciate it! To be honest I had a bad experience with bloodworms in the past when I feed it to my flowerhorn when he was small. Had a bunch of internal issues, but not sure if it was a protein issue or pathogen issue. I do feed a bit of spirulina hoping to offset and balance the diet. Thanks again. 

[Brandon p]

On 3/18/2022 at 8:01 PM, Juancho said:

I like what I’m reading here. I have 6 discus from Hans. I bought them all at 2.5”. I feed them beef heart from Jack Whattley for shipping it was a lot cheaper and think probably same quality. Homemade from there hatchery. I also feed flake from xtreme l, some brine and blood worms.  
which brings me to my next question.  How many of you guys feed blood worms? I give them Hikari that are sold in the big sheets. There supposed to be flashed frozen. Pose to reduce the Pathogens. Any way tell me what you think about blood worms. Thanks  

I don’t feed blood worms but I think beef heart, Live Bbs, extre flake, bug bites  I think they ok.

[jwcarlson]

No real big developments here, all of the remaining nine fish are eating (the little guy is finally developing an appetite).  I have had the tank elevated to 90*F for a couple of weeks, but will probably start shifting that down a degree every few days starting like Monday to settle in around 86.  We're leaving the house for the weekend on Friday evening.  So I'm hoping to do a water change Friday and then they'll be without food for a couple days (which isn't a big deal at all).  I'll be able to do a change Sunday evening when we get home, but they're going to miss their first water change in the almost six weeks that I've had them on Saturday! 😱

On the tank cycling front, ammonia is processing swiftly (measuring zero the last few days) and nitrites seem to be kind of past the peak now.  Last night the nitrates appeared to eclipse the pinkness of the nitrite indicator.  I know it's not scientific, but nitrites went down compared to previous 24 hrs and nitrates went up.  So the right direction hopefully.

Last night I added a Poth-O-Carry and put a couple of rooted pothos cuttings in and took two trimmings from a philodendron and put them in as well.    So excited to see those take off in the coming months.  

And you can kind of half see the new background and bottom paint.  This weekend was supposed to be when I got my water change system a little more "automated", but this trip kind of became unavoidable, so it will have to wait.  

Right now I rely on a timer to remind me to go down and shut off the water that refills the 55 gallon aging drum, but I'd like to get that on a float.  Mainly in case I forget to turn it off some night which is absolutely inevitable.  Thinking about getting a second 55 gallon barrel and plumbing them together somehow to give me more capacity, but that's pretty unimportant at the moment.  I currently have a 55 gallon barrel and a 32 gallon trash can, so if I needed to, I could do an emergency 100%+ water change.  But it would just be kind of a pain to do.  I also have temp controllers I want to set up and have kind of a control center that I can kill power to from my phone as needed (heaters when pumping out of the aging barrels).  Also want to plumb separate drain and return lines so I can leave the pump connected and just valve between pumping and draining.

 

Son trying to get them to eat out of his fingers, which they do readily... but he wouldn't quit bouncing so some kept backing off.

Edited March 24, 2022 by jwcarlson

[jwcarlson]

Couple of maybe better pics.  Pardon the poop 😂

 

 

[Juancho]

On 3/24/2022 at 5:58 PM, jwcarlson said:

Couple of maybe better pics.  Pardon the poop 😂

 

 

Beauties! Great pics. Your little guy looks like my little guy. A Turquoise ? 

[jwcarlson]

On 3/24/2022 at 10:35 PM, Juancho said:

Beauties! Great pics. Your little guy looks like my little guy. A Turquoise ? 

Yep, turq.  He's grown a bit finally.  He is basically the size that the other ones came in at, for reference for how much they've grown.

[jwcarlson]

I'm not sure what happened here!  When I was filling up their tank after water change last night I noticed this.  Certainly wasn't there before.  Was first to the food this morning so it doesn't seem any worse-for-the-wear.  I am, of course, out of suitable salt.  I'd bought some kosher salt thinking I could use that, but when I checked the ingredients last night I saw it has yellow prussiate of soda added as an anti-caking agent.  Google tells me that's also known as sodium ferrocyanide which was a game scary enough to keep me from adding it.  I'm not a chemist, but sodium iron cyanide didn't sound like a great addition.

I also have Maldon flaky salt, Redmond real salt, and Himalayan pink salt, but I read that pink salt has some non-zero amount of halide so I decided not to use any of those.  The Maldon salt is probably pure, but I decided to wait and get something "known".  So I bought a big 40# bag of straight salt (Diamond rock salt) this morning.  They happened to have it next to the pump this morning when I was filling up.  $8 for 40#.  

It's amazing how quick they're growing even just seeing pics from about ten days ago.  The little turq has grown quite a lot.  

[Juancho]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:27 AM, jwcarlson said:

I'm not sure what happened here!  When I was filling up their tank after water change last night I noticed this.  Certainly wasn't there before.  Was first to the food this morning so it doesn't seem any worse-for-the-wear.  I am, of course, out of suitable salt.  I'd bought some kosher salt thinking I could use that, but when I checked the ingredients last night I saw it has yellow prussiate of soda added as an anti-caking agent.  Google tells me that's also known as sodium ferrocyanide which was a game scary enough to keep me from adding it.  I'm not a chemist, but sodium iron cyanide didn't sound like a great addition.

I also have Maldon flaky salt, Redmond real salt, and Himalayan pink salt, but I read that pink salt has some non-zero amount of halide so I decided not to use any of those.  The Maldon salt is probably pure, but I decided to wait and get something "known".  So I bought a big 40# bag of straight salt (Diamond rock salt) this morning.  They happened to have it next to the pump this morning when I was filling up.  $8 for 40#.  

It's amazing how quick they're growing even just seeing pics from about ten days ago.  The little turq has grown quite a lot.  

Not a pro since I just started taking care of Discus. Hope you get some good answers to help this little guy out. 

[jwcarlson]

On 4/4/2022 at 9:34 AM, Juancho said:

Not a pro since I just started taking care of Discus. Hope you get some good answers to help this little guy out. 

I think it got spooked and whacked into something.  I'm not too worried about it healing, it should do so quickly with the daily big water changes and good food.  If I had to guess, it might have happened when I turned the refill pump on.  I've been doing that down at the aging barrel in the basement and then doing laundry or other clean-up work down there before I head back up.  Sometimes when that turns on it can blast out some water/air and be kind of loud.  So I wonder if that wasn't worse than normal last night and made it bang off something.  Thankfully it seems pretty superficial.  I kind of wonder if there will be a scar, this one might end up with some pretty good street cred out of it. 🤣

Interestingly, I have had discus swim into my gravel vac at least twice.  Last night one did (not this injured one), but was too big to get up the tube.  Awhile back one did and got kind of wedged in halfway up, was a real pain to get out of the tube and I was really worried it would be injured.  I think they're chasing the debris.  In any event, I'm going to have to start paying better attention.  Seems to happen when I let the vac sit still for too long to start a timer or check the temp or go grab the water conditioners or whatever.  

@JuanchoHave you noticed or been impressed with discus' ability to swim backwards?  I've never seen a fish swim backwards so quickly.  It seems like they can do it almost as fast as they can forward.  I suppose as they get bigger that might slow them down a bit.  But right now they can really scoot around in reverse swiftly (and in control).

Edited April 4, 2022 by jwcarlson

[Juancho]

On 4/4/2022 at 9:50 AM, jwcarlson said:

I think it got spooked and whacked into something.  I'm not too worried about it healing, it should do so quickly with the daily big water changes and good food.  If I had to guess, it might have happened when I turned the refill pump on.  I've been doing that down at the aging barrel in the basement and then doing laundry or other clean-up work down there before I head back up.  Sometimes when that turns on it can blast out some water/air and be kind of loud.  So I wonder if that wasn't worse than normal last night and made it bang off something.  Thankfully it seems pretty superficial.  I kind of wonder if there will be a scar, this one might end up with some pretty good street cred out of it. 🤣

Interestingly, I have had discus swim into my gravel vac at least twice.  Last night one did (not this injured one), but was too big to get up the tube.  Awhile back one did and got kind of wedged in halfway up, was a real pain to get out of the tube and I was really worried it would be injured.  I think they're chasing the debris.  In any event, I'm going to have to start paying better attention.  Seems to happen when I let the vac sit still for too long to start a timer or check the temp or go grab the water conditioners or whatever.  

@JuanchoHave you noticed or been impressed with discus' ability to swim backwards?  I've never seen a fish swim backwards so quickly.  It seems like they can do it almost as fast as they can forward.  I suppose as they get bigger that might slow them down a bit.  But right now they can really scoot around in reverse swiftly (and in control).

I guess I haven’t.  I know these little guys dart around really fast. The only thing that scares them anymore is a lid closing to fast or for some reason when I reach on the right side of the tank lol. Other then that they come up to my gravel vac and act like little puppies every time I come in her fish room. They have some good personalities. This is a little older pic and their a little bigger love these guys 

[jwcarlson]

I am slowly figuring out what sets them flying... it doesn't entirely make sense, but that's fish for ya...

I'd kind of like to get some floating plants in their tank, but am (as always) nervous about introducing something that's going to harm them.  I have some red root floaters and dwarf water lettuce in another tank (and a boat load of freaking duck weed), but I wonder if there were some floating plants if it would settle down the spooking that happens opening lids.  However, it would probably complicate changing water a little bit if they got dense.  

But, they are a lot better than they were the first couple of weeks.  They are fun to watch.  They seem to have bone to pick with a different fish every couple of minutes. 😄  And the tail whapping each other.  And they're doing some little weird shimmy move that most videos I've seen describe as some sort of courting behavior.  But I know that type of stuff starts earlier than most people might realize in most animals.  I have seen day old turkey poults strutting and chickens I have hatched are crowing an just a couple weeks old if you know what you listen for. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by jwcarlson

[jwcarlson]

Well, I think I've got it at this point.  Been three days like this.  And that strip has been sitting for at least 10 minutes.  Been wiping down small sections so as not to shock anything and hopefully boost colonies in the sponges. 

They ate two beef heart cubes this morning, two more after work, plus 2.5 freeze dried black worms.  AND one of them was pecking my hand for the first 1/3rd of the water change.  How do you eat so much, discus? 

Forgot to add this pic.  The one with the head injury is still doing well, it looks better already, actually. 

Edited April 6, 2022 by jwcarlson

[jwcarlson]

 

Healed up pretty quick. 

[Juancho]

On 4/8/2022 at 7:01 AM, jwcarlson said:

 

Healed up pretty quick. 

AWESOME! 

[Torrey]

Wonderful to hear!!!

[jwcarlson]

It's been two months now.  I measured on the "two month" day (now about a week ago) and the biggest of the batch were a hair bigger than 4".  I'm battling now two that eat sparingly.  Or not at all so I am probably going to worm them again, raise the temp back to 92 for a couple of weeks, and be more consistent with the salt.  And then maybe a course of metro.  I hate tossing stuff at them, but would really like for them to grow. 🙂

Of the nine, six of them are doing very well and are probably 3.5-4".  One is a bit smaller and then the two weirdos.  Still banging away at 70% daily water changes.

Anyway, here is a couple of pictures.  I think I might have talked myself into adding some rummy nose.  I have eight in my community tank that have been problem free after dealing with some issues in QT.  Trying to decide if I risk bringing them straight over or if I should put them in QT and add the two sad sacks to that tank for a couple of weeks to see if they get sick.  Heck, maybe they'd start eating.  But then that's two tanks to change the water in every night!

 

This dope scuffed himself on a filter just before the photoshoot.  I'm still kicking myself for losing this one's "match".  What a dang shame.  I'm not sure if I have a favorite one as they all seem to unique.  And of course they're not at their adult appearances (for the ones with patterns), so that's something else that's fun is seeing how different that is from when I first got them.  

[Juancho]

On 4/21/2022 at 10:40 PM, jwcarlson said:

It's been two months now.  I measured on the "two month" day (now about a week ago) and the biggest of the batch were a hair bigger than 4".  I'm battling now two that eat sparingly.  Or not at all so I am probably going to worm them again, raise the temp back to 92 for a couple of weeks, and be more consistent with the salt.  And then maybe a course of metro.  I hate tossing stuff at them, but would really like for them to grow. 🙂

Of the nine, six of them are doing very well and are probably 3.5-4".  One is a bit smaller and then the two weirdos.  Still banging away at 70% daily water changes.

Anyway, here is a couple of pictures.  I think I might have talked myself into adding some rummy nose.  I have eight in my community tank that have been problem free after dealing with some issues in QT.  Trying to decide if I risk bringing them straight over or if I should put them in QT and add the two sad sacks to that tank for a couple of weeks to see if they get sick.  Heck, maybe they'd start eating.  But then that's two tanks to change the water in every night!

 

This dope scuffed himself on a filter just before the photoshoot.  I'm still kicking myself for losing this one's "match".  What a dang shame.  I'm not sure if I have a favorite one as they all seem to unique.  And of course they're not at their adult appearances (for the ones with patterns), so that's something else that's fun is seeing how different that is from when I first got them.  

Beautiful fish. Mine are growing but don’t seems as fast. I’m guessing cause I see them everyday. Every other day water changers 50% and feed 4-5 times a day. Everything in the kitchen ha. Time will tell 

On 4/21/2022 at 11:01 PM, Juancho said:

Beautiful fish. Mine are growing but don’t seems as fast. I’m guessing cause I see them everyday. Every other day water changers 50% and feed 4-5 times a day. Everything in the kitchen ha. Time will tell 

 

[jwcarlson]

@JuanchoHow long have you had yours?  

[Juancho]

On 4/21/2022 at 11:05 PM, jwcarlson said:

@JuanchoHow long have you had yours?  

I received them in December before Christmas.  So about 4 months. At 2-2.5 “ the checker has reached 4 “ I have 5 more 6 total that have stayed a little smaller. Discus Hans sent me a reference chart and they seem to be in track. One thing I didn’t know is at 2-2.5”  size you need to feed at least 5 times a day and do water changes everyday or every other. I did not know that going in. They recommended buying them at 4” and above. Then “ all the hard works is done “ is what I herd in a YouTube video from Hans lol. I wouldn’t do it another way anymore but I think I lost about 3-4 weeks of proper care not knowing this. Sport for rambling. Love talking fish. How big did you buy yours at. Where did you get them from? 

[jwcarlson]

On 4/21/2022 at 11:24 PM, Juancho said:

I received them in December before Christmas.  So about 4 months. At 2-2.5 “ the checker has reached 4 “ I have 5 more 6 total that have stayed a little smaller. Discus Hans sent me a reference chart and they seem to be in track. One thing I didn’t know is at 2-2.5”  size you need to feed at least 5 times a day and do water changes everyday or every other. I did not know that going in. They recommended buying them at 4” and above. Then “ all the hard works is done “ is what I herd in a YouTube video from Hans lol. I wouldn’t do it another way anymore but I think I lost about 3-4 weeks of proper care not knowing this. Sport for rambling. Love talking fish. How big did you buy yours at. Where did you get them from? 

Mine are also from Hans 2.5"ers.  I am an over thinker/researcher (which is why I never had them when I was younger).  So I kind of knew what I was getting into.  I don't have enough experience to know if I am doing well, but I am happy with them other than the runts.  However, I have been told that is a normal occurrence.  Yours looks healthy, I'm sure they'll get going with continued good maintenance.  What are you feeding them?  This staple of beefheart and freeze dried Australian black worms seems to be doing the trick.  I am thinking about experimenting with beefheart in gelatin to keep it a little more intact.  They do seem to consume the vast majority of the beefheart and I am learning the correct portion sizes.  

I am up at 430 daily, lights wake them up around 530.  So I feed then, then feed again about 615 (beefheart both feedings in morning) on way out the door to work.  Sprinkle in some Hikari Vibra Bites and Discus Bio-Gold occasionally at that second feeding for extended grazing while at work.  On days I am home I pound them with food all day.  On normal days, I don't feed them again until about 5 when I get home.  Then I pound them until 730 or 8 when I am doing water change.  Tonight I hit everything perfect, they were pleasantly plump when I was changing water.  Most weeknights I feel like I leave a little on the table.

I have learned that they eat more of black worms that get loose and float if I feed those worms a little earlier in the evening so they can clean them up.  Otherwise I skim a lot of them off the top when changing water (that they would eat if they had some more time).

Basically, if I am awake at home, there is quality food in the tank for them.  They eat an unbelievable amount of beefheart and black worms.  And I really should install the auto feeder.  I got it all set up and never put it on the tank.  That might help push growth a little farther and I know the runts peck away at the food if it's available laying around during the day. 

 

Forgot to mention that I have pothos going now, which is pretty cool.  Roots are going like crazy, nitrates at the end of the day are effectively zero. 

Edited April 22, 2022 by jwcarlson