Aeration

I am working through why my discuss seem to be unhappy. They are showing the black stripes but otherwise OK. Eating fine, socially interactive. It is a community tank and no aggression between species.

I have always been a little worried with aeration. Tank runs at 30C.

I have a 750l main tank and the 250l sump. I have the sump pump on max so about 400l/ hour. There is a drop into the overflow and I have 2 airstones in the biofilter section. I have a pipe over the top of the tank with lots of holes drilled in it as the outlet so the surface of the tank gets pretty agitated. There are 4 or 5 smallish plants.

How do I tell if that is enough.

 

If you want more oxygen get a bigger power head.
I know discus don't like strong current,but with a tank this size i wouldn't use anything less then a 1500l/h pump.
A pic of the setup might also help to figure out why your discus are unhappy.

 

Shoot. Just actually measured the flow. 3600/h. I am very surprised actually.

I have a "dribble bar" across the top and the current because the holes all piont from the middle of the tank to the front the water follows a barrel roll type flow through the tank.

 

The dribble bar and the turbidity in the overflow.

 

Doesn't look like 3600 l/hr there. Are the fish gasping or breathing rapidly?

 

Sera makes a o2 test kit. The higher the water temp the lower the disolved o2 in the water, perhaps pop some air stones into the tank

 

I do agree with broder. I have more flow than that and I'm only running 400l/h?

 

Sorry for the silence. I was away for a while camping. When I got back fish looked happier. I had turned off the continuous water change while I was away. I heard that the city has been putting in extra chemicals due to the heat to keep algae or something out of the water. It may be foreign stuff in the water. I have dosed my water conditioning tank with safe to see if it makes a difference. My bad for not doing that routinely but previously I had no reason to suspect anything.

I did a major tank clean today too. Even after the distruption, the black bars have gone.

Ph is still rock solid at 7 and the nitrates after being a closed system for 6 days were at 25ppm. They were at 0 when I shut the continuous water change down.

The dribble bar has 15 holes. I will add a picture with scale but I did recalculate with a bigger 2l bowl this time and it filled in 3 seconds. So closer to 2400l/h. My bad. I used 1 l bowl before and it filled so quickly it was difficult to measure the time it took.

I have also rotated the dribble bar so it agitates the surface some more.

 

So 15x pinky streams coming out at pressure makes more sense?