cullymoto

30% 3 days a week ... That's it? They must lose a lot of fish. Bring your expectations to let's say... 75 to 100% every day and now you've got what it takes to keep discus. Anything less and they WILL get ill, guaranteed.

I'm a discus keeper, so while I'm only at two tanks for 150 gallons with fish in them, and a third tank for water ageing and storage of another 150 gallon..... My water bill says I use 40 cubic meters of water a month. Not sure what the conversion would be lol. Merry Fishmas everyone

Many can help you more than I about plants. Nuff' said. I do recommend, since your running a canister anyway, to use a hydor inline heater. A single 300w unit should be all you would ever need. Install it on your canisters return line, get it set and forget about it. Never seen a more beautiful heater in a tank... Than a hydor heater that hides underneath it lol.

Absolutely angles over discus. I'm not trying to say you can't do discus, but boy oh boy are they a lot of work. I use the rule of 10 gallons for each adult discus. A tank sold as a (x) gallon tank never actually holds that much water. My 55 gallon has an actual capacity of 49 gallons. Tanks are rated by displacement, not actuall capacity. A spot I can see conflicting reports is for adolescents or juveniles. Just last month I had close to 200 fry in a 55 gallon for example. My 120 (108 actual capacity) gallon show tank is totally full with 9 adult discus. My fry tank gets a 100% water change every single night. And it will for the next 3 months as a minimum (6 months total) that's 180 water changes just to find out if they are worth keeping or culling. My adult discus tank gets two 75% water changes every week. It is really quite dirty right before a water change, I do not have aquarium gravel, my plants are all in clay pots for easy removal, I massively over filter, I have made every attempt to make maintenece simple. Discus are a lot of work. Angels can be considered much easier, I've had them spawn for me with one water change a month, gravel in the tank (gravel holds un-imaginable garbage in your tank FYI) plants, poor foods the whole nine yards of poor fish keeping. They grey up big and beautiful despite the poor care they received.

Just an FYI, but 4 or 5 discus is fully stocked for a 60 gallon. Save yourself heartache and keep things lightly stocked. Also, go find www.simplydiscus.com it's a forum similar to this one, however I is only about discus. You will find a wealth of information there.

Always dip plants ... Always.

There are some geophages that can go with discus. But you have to keep the sizes fairly close, otherwise the big fish will torment the smaller till death basically. German rams (Bolivian, electric blue, etc) are micro-geophages to give you an idea of the shape etc. regular geophages can get to be 6 inch or greater.

Good news indeed. Keep the water clean and the fish will recover.

Pima/melafix are just plain no good in my experience. It could be burns as jayba suggested, but you'd likely see areas on the sides of the fish, inflamed gills on the fishes well if it was ammonia/ nitrite poisoning. Most likely it started as a burn, and is now bacterial and or fungal. Upping the temp will just accelerate the bacteria life cycle so that the fins get eaten faster. Salt helps, but its no cure. Dosing the whole tank WILL kill your biological filter. Go get a Rubbermaid of suitable size and use that as a hospital with the med that most closely meets the symptoms. Good luck.

Just keep the water as clean as you can. Best thing you can do.

Correct, prime is only effective for 24 hours give or take. Should be fine, in time.

Like i said earlier, goldfish are near bullet proof. I don't think temp would be the prob. Maybe current, tossing him around a bit but so long as he doesn't get stuck to the intake there's no problems with current. Since its an h.o.b. you've got plenty of o2 in the water. Best bet is to cut back on the prime in my opinion. 5ml is the dose for 50 gallons. For 20 gallons that should be a dose of 2ml. And only added when your putting fresh (chlorinated) water in. I wouldn't worry about an ammonia spike at all if youre running an established filter. Certainly not for a goldfish either, a scaleless fish would need special considerations due to ammonia. I keep coming back to prime overdose... If it was a swim bladder infection it wouldn't come and go like that. Swim bladder infections tend to be fatal. My friends had a goldfish for a few years. (Not how one cares for a goldfish, but it makes a good example) never once fed it, never once changed the water, never once added a dechlornator. They had it in a 1gallon tank, originally with 5 goldfish in there. One ate the rest, survived several years more eating algae only. Absolutely 0 maintenance, filtration, aireation, tank sitting in direct sunlight in a window. No temperature regulation.... Nothing. They gave it away eventually, that fish now lives in a restaurant tank in lloydminister. These little guys will survive the apocalypse, right beside the cockroach.

Goldfish will tolerate water with a ph of... Battery acid, so long as its stable. Sounds to me like the phenominon of too much prime in the water. I know that for betas if too much prime is added to the water they act like there's no oxygen in the water and they don't swim well until the prime / safe breaks down. It's pretty challenging to accurately dose that stuff in a small volume. You don't mention if you have an air supply or something to put air into the water like a h.o.b. filter. You just mention there is a filter. There should be something there to ensure that there is adequate oxygen in the water. Hope that helps little frank out.

Welcome aboard!

That stuff has always been less than useless for me. But you gotta do what works for you! I order from big Al's online a fair bit. Free shipping is easy to hit there for chemicals. For hardware check out goreef.com good prices for a lot of hardware that is hard to find in canada.

Melafix... Really? Is it working for you?

My wife was there in my steed. She got a discus and an air pump. Nice looking discus too.

The auction won't be over yet.

Swim bladder infection. Google is your friend.

Get a length of hose to suit your needs. From the farthest point on your tank to a drain. I use electrical tape to attach the hose to the faucet so it stays put. Get a small power head pump (pico pumps are less than 20 bucks at big als) that fits into the hose. There's your water out solution.

I use the eggs from Rick at the farm. I hatch 1/2 tsp in 500 ml everyday. I get four feedings for + - 60 month old fry out of that amount. Half pound goes for a good while. I'm interested in the choice you make however, keep us posted please.

Many discus fry in fish heaven before the first ones escape my purgatory...

Ich is a tough one, and I have no experience with scaleless fish so, take my advice for face value I guess. Your water changes are tiny... Biggest mistake made by many. I won't do a water change less than 50% . Usually I'm closer to 100% water changes. ( my discus fry tank gets 100% daily ) It's fairly common for a fishes immune system to fight off things, so long as the immune system isn't compromised by poor water quality. I'm guessing you have aquarium gravel, or a substrate material of some type? All of these substrates do nothing more than hold garbage in your tank... Basically impossible to keep a clean environment, regardless of water changes, when you have substrate. For the Popeye fish I would isolate it and treat it for pop eye. Even keep up with the paragaurd at the same time. That stuff is very very gentle. I use it on fry if I need to.... I've more effective meds wipe out whole batches of fry while paragaurd bothers them none at all. A med like Marcyn-two is good for treating the gram negative bacterial infection that leads to the build up of fluid that causes pop eye. If the fish has red streaks or patches on him than you need to treat for hemorrhagic septicaemia. (E.m. Erythromycin ) Many things can cause swelling or pop eye ( poor water conditions, stress, gram negative or gram positive bacterial infections, wounds are some examples ) Pop eye is not the actual illness, rather a symptom of one. Stay away from Pima and melafix. Those are garbage indeed. Good luck.

I keep my discus at 27c = 80c. Discus can be a bit skittish, if rainbows are lively they might spook the discus.

Was just about to ask when the next auction was to happen. Thank you.