Please take a look

Morning guys, I just want to ask the experienced people to take a look at my fish please to see if I'm doing things right. I got my first discus in jan this year and added 3 in may. They are now six in total. Do they look good or bad? Is there anything wrong with my setup for them and so on. Would like to get feedback on them please good or bad, don't hold back because the only way to learn is to make mistakes.

Here's the tank. 250L, aquis 800 canister with prefilter and a surface skimmer I made from a corner filter. 50% WC daily with a near 100% once a week and wipe down of everything. Water is aged 24H and heated, aerated.

Got the fish at 3cm size in jan same with the 3 added later.





Is this a red turq or altum flora?


Any input is much appreciated.

 

Howzit,

They are stunning and well cared for, you are doing a fantastic job.

Received the first three at 3cm in January. Judging from the image with your hand in front of the tank they look to be +/- 8-10cm in diameter... hehehe


Keep it up and you will have great success, might need a larger tank though.

 

Cool, thanks Jack appreciate the good feedback as I'm working hard on them. Do you know the strain though, 3 are blue turqs I saw the parents but the other 3 that I got first I don't know. Conflicting ID's on the web everywhere. red turq, altum flora? I don't know.

This a grow out I got for them. Very practical size to work with for me for now especially with the daily WC's. 20 minutes and I'm done.

When I upgrade my arowana tank (1.8m 540L) to something bigger I'll move them over to the 1.8. That thing could house 10-12 adults easily.

The goal I set for myself is to breed discus, spare no expense(the little I have anyway haha). I can't wait, will be so happy.

 

I feed them one strip of bloodworms in the morning before work. When I get home it's a water change and then tetra bits or algae wafers(The high quality stuff for pleco's).

I wait till they finish that then its another strip of bloodworms followed by tetra bits or wafers, If I gave tetra bits the first time round I give wafers and vice versa, this is around 7-8.

Then before I go to bed I check their bellies and feed bloodworm to get them nice and round, some nights its only 2 blocks other times it might be another whole strip depending if the pooped or not.

 

Leaves me "drooling" with envy....

 

They looking stunning @BoelderBeestie but I agree with Reedfish, we have also been taught not to give too much bloodworms

Beefheart mix, spirulina flakes are all good
Ocean Nutrition also sells frozen shrimp mix in little blocks which is excellent as well
Marco sells excellent discus food, maybe drop him a pm

 

@Reedfish thanks going to read it now. @MariaS thanks will look into the frozen shrimp. I've got a pile of shrimp tails in the freezer for my aro, can I give that to them? Haha I'm so paranoid about my discus.

 

@BoelderBeestie, I also have shrimp tails which we feed the aros and stingrays
Ray, the male stingray is bording with my discus at the moment and when I feed Ray the little pieces that he drops when shewing are eagerly picked up by the discus although they prefer the pieces of fish when I feed Ray fish, they actually fight for the fish flakes
So Im sure you could give some but would have to be very finely minced and I dont know if this would be a suitable staple diet, Im sure you would still need to give them at least some discus pellets and spirulina flakes.
All the big discus keepers mention the beefheart too

@Marco is really helpfull with giving advice....

 

Did the read and it looks like the pleco wafers pulled me through as it contains spirulina algae. Going to mix up the bloodworm with prawn tails and try and find the frozen shrimp too. That should pack a few extra grams on them quicker.

After reading the article I'm staying even further away from BH. I can't breed if the dudes are shooting blanks haha.

Will wait for @Marco too. I saw some of his posts and yes he knows his stuff.

 

Forgot about the flakes, I give them seachem discus flakes too but only about twice a week as the aren't very fond of it. I give it mainly for the pungent garlic smell as garlic is good for them.

 

Hi @BoelderBeestie,

There is so much conflicting information available on feeding Discus, its actually astounding that people are still willing to keep them with all the drama attached to them.

Firstly - your fish look good. They look healthy and have obviously grown by your size estimations. Well done

I would not change anythi g as far as tank and water changes are concerned. Its working so leave it as is.

The fish you have are all from Turquoise lineage. To try be specific is not possible as many of the modern 9 bar strains would give you some offspring that will resemble yours. Thats apart from the recognised Turqouise lines.

As for feeding - Im.not going to say what is right and what is wrong. That would just add to* the confusion.

I am sometimes left shaking my head when I read the critics opinion on Beefheart - it is often said that Discus can not digest beefheart as it is an unnatural thing for them to eat.
Those same people will then add that its just fed to induce maximum growth but otherwise has little value.
This baffles me cause-if its not digestable - how can it lead to good growth? If it leads to good growth - what "other value" is it missing? Beats me really.

The best way of analysis is to know nutrient value of food fed, and then afterward have poop analyzed to see what % of input was absorbed vs what is now being put out as faeces.
We cant all do that

I feed no bloodworm. It has little value and I have lost fish due to bacterial issues in Bloodworm

I feed no Tetra Prima. Simply because I have lost fish due to bloat from feeding this. They overfed and it resulted in bloat.

I feed - Benkers Discus mix (I get from Prof Dirk), my own Beefheart mix which consist of a large variety of ingredients of which beefheart is only 30%, Frozen and Live Adult Brine shrimp, Live Mosquito larvae and Mysis.
Thats it

Its what I find gives me best results. I have a source that gets me free range Beefheart and I have no issues.

Thats my take on it

Rgds

Marco

 

@Marco Thanks for your input. Glad to hear the setup is fine, going to leave as is. I'm going to start fazing out the bloodworm with prawn tail then, don't want to change things to quickly. I'll get into contact with Prof Dirk about the Benkers mix, he's only 45 minutes away so I can make a run once a month. Its such a relief to get good feedback from seasoned discus keepers and hope I can be one one day.

Oh and the strain is then blue turquoise bare bottom specials haha.

 

That's a really nice tank set up you have going. Loving the drift wood and plant attachments.

My personal 2 cents on beefheart( even though as Marco says it's just one of those topics that leads down the rabbit hole) I have found that it has increased the growth rate of my fish as well as made them more active. I switched/ started giving mine a beefheart mix about a month ago and have measured a 1 cm growth spurt so far. ( my poor buggers are stunted however so there won't be any more growth I don't believe). I have found it bulks them up and has helped me combat a flagellate problem I had with my discus ( they seem, stress on the word seem) so be able to gain or absorb more nutrients from their diet since supplementing with beefheart.
Again, just my 2 cents. And it has nothing other than ameture visual evidence.
Well done so far I think

 

Thanks people. Grated some shimp tail they are picking at it but not much impressed haha. Will wean them of the bloodworm now.

 

Hi @Reedfish,

I own a 7 year old Golden retriever. Its actually his 7th birthday today!!
Since i got him as a puppy he has been fed a Science driven Diet. Eukanuba, Royal Canin and Ultra dog. I tend to change his food once a year just to keep him interested. I expect and hope my dog will live to be at least 13 years old.
When I was a kid my parents fed our dogs Epol or Dogmor. Thats what was available back then. Today we get told how bad that food is for your dog.
Guess how long our dogs lived back in those days....
Jip - around 13 years
What I am getting at is that it may well be scientifically sound advice that Beefheart is not the best food for Discus. I refuse to accept that its the major cause of Discus deaths.
So - instead of fixating on feeding we should be solving the other issues which are killing many many Discus before the possibility of beefheart even becoming a possible issue.
Improve filtration, improve water management and other stressors - then when we have Discus dying atvthe age of 7 years, we start looking at why we cant get them to 10 or more.

Thats just my 2c on the Beefheart issue
@BoelderBeestie-
No point trying to wean them off of BW. Just stop feeding it.
Prawn is a an ok food but i doubt very much that theyd just jump at eating it. Try getting some Benkers from Prof Dirk. Its a really good food. Also get some frozen brine shrimp if you can

Rgds

Marco

 

@Marco It's not a full on wean, I have half a packet left so just going to add it in between the shrimp till its gone, don't want to waste it. I PMed Prof Dirk and waiting for his reply. Today is payday yay so tomorrow I'm going scouting for frozen brine shrimp. Haha when I dropped it they all darted towards the shrimp but they all just had a dead stop right in front of it and looked confused. I get you on the beefheart but all that hormone talk makes it a bit dodgy as I would never really know if its clean. But with that said I'm going to listen to you.

I'll go ask around at the butchers if they have free range BH, if I find free range I'll give it a try and just mix everything I'm feeding into one mix. Going to need it for my fry anyway. If I ever have any.

With regards to water quality. I have purigen in my filter, another product I like using is seachem pristine, It really works. I took care of all that fluff we get inside our filter piping because after every water change I had a fluff blow back every time I switched on the filter. Not anymore, pipes are clean and the glass also seems not to become white so quickly. This morning all the shrimp pieces where gone and they definitely didn't eat it all, so looks like the pristine is doing its job really well.

My personal opinion about them dying young is stress, they are in captivity after all and a daily spooking with water changes must do a number on them year in year out. If you look at how old oscars get, they don't care, never mind stress when we work on their tanks. I've never seen mine stress, pissed off yes but not stressed.