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Keeping Discus
Water for discus
A lot of people come to our shop to admire our magnificent discus and often comment on how they would love to have discus in their aquarium but have heard that they are very hard to look after, true discus need some special conditions but so do most of the fish people keep, people don’t think twice about giving the fish they keep the right conditions but when it comes to discus it all seems too hard.
The major problem people face is getting the water to the right values to keep discus happy, discus prefer water with a temperature of 28 to 30 decease Celsius, a ph around 6.5 and very soft around 60 to 80ppm, most municipal water supplies are nowhere near these values and some work will need to be done to get the water right, if your as fortunate as we are on the Gold Coast there will be very little you need to do just add a little ph down and the water is perfect for discus, but if you live in Brisbane where the water is very alkaline and hard you will need to do more.
Softening water is not difficult, there are many commercial water-softening unit now available on the market, the most widely used is the RO (reverse osmosis) where the water passes through a membrane which removes nearly all the things that make water hard, the down side is they also remove all the essential trace elements from the water and these elements must be re-added but this is easily done by using one of the many products like Kent discus essentials, using 50% RO and 50% tap water a little ph down and the water usually ends up ideal for discus. Another convenient method is using a mix of rainwater and municipal water but make sure the rainwater is pure, it is a good idea to filter rainwater through a carbon filter before use this will remove any impurities that the rain may have picked up from the atmosphere, once again a commercial available drinking water filter unit fitted with a activated carbon cartridge is ideal.
Making water more acidic is also very easy by using a commercially available ph down a word of warning, if the water has high kh hardness you will have to use a bucket load of ph down which is not recommended so before attempting to acidify the water you must soften it first otherwise your attempts to acidify the water with ph down will only result in the ph bouncing right back up again.
Discus need clean water with no ammonia, nitrite and very low or no nitrate levels so good filtration is very important, canister filters or overhead filters are in my opinion by far the best choices, one of the biggest mistakes most people make is to use filters with massive flow rates, firstly discus don’t like current, they prefer gentle flowing water, secondly passing water through the filter to fast reduces the amount of time the beneficial bacteria has to do its job the better choice is to use two filter with lower rate therefore keeping the water in contact with the beneficial bacteria for much longer increasing the effectiveness of the biological filtration to control ammonia and nitrite levels, by using two filters an ideal tank water turn over of 4 times per hour can be achieved without causing massive current.
Controlling nitrate level can be done by regular water changes, the number of fish in the tank, the amount you are feeding will determine the amount and frequency of you water changes, a weekly 25-30% change is the minimum I would recommend to control nitrate levels, plants use nitrates especially fast growing plants and are a good way to help control excess nitrate levels, so discus tanks should have as many plants as you can put in, I keep my discus in a very heavily planted aquarium but still allow lots of swimming area.
Feeding discus
Feeding discus the correct diet is one of the most important factors in keeping discus healthy, incorrect diet can result in not only intestinal problems and stress but also lead to poor water conditions. Discus are primarily carnivores so their diet must have a high level of protein, there is a huge selection of commercially made foods available, the secret to happy healthy discus is a varied diet and a combination of several different foods such as flake, pellet, freeze dried, live or frozen foods is a much better choice than feeding one type of food consistently, a varied died also ensures that the fish will not suffer from any nutritional deficiencies.
When purchasing discus it is always a good idea to find out what the seller has been feeding and use the same food when the fish are first introduced into your tank, introducing discus to new foods is sometimes difficult, even a change in the brand of food you use can seem to put discus off their food it’s not that the new food is no good it’s just that the fish need to be a-customized to it, the best way to do this is to include some of the new food with the food you are currently using this will give discus the taste of the new food.
Some good foods to feed discus
- Commercial dry food: Use only a high quality flake or pellet that has been formulated for discus.
- Frozen food: Bloodworm, brine shrimp and mysis shrimp are a good choice, make sure that the food comes from a reliable source.
- Freeze dried food: Almost all frozen foods are available as freeze dried which is a convenient way to keep and store you foods.
- Live food: Mosquito larvae, black worm and brine shrimp are the most commonly use but care must be taken as they can introduce unwanted organisms into the tank.
- Beef heart: On its own is not a suitable food, it’s the other ingredients that are mixed with it that makes it a good food for discus, a lot of serious discus keepers make their own so there are any number of recipes available on the internet but I would talk to someone who knows before feeding anything to your discus.
Tank mates for discus.
There are many fish that are suitable tank mates for your discus basically most of the fish that come from the Amazon River and its tributaries are suitable, I usually keep a few dwarf cichlids, 6 or 8 different schools of tetras, some corydoras cats, I also keep a couple of peppermint bristlenose to keep algae under control they are not from the Amazon but I find them a suitable tank mate, another algae eater suitable is the otocinclus, I have also kept black ghost knife fish but when the reach about 20cm I find them a bit aggressive to smaller fish, I never have a problem with snails as I always keep a clown loach but they develop a very sharp spike that can damage discus so I remove them when they reach about 12cm and replace it with a small one.
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