Advice on Aquascaping and Equipment

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Thanks a lot. Well my fish dont splash at all so I guess it will be ok without plexiglass?? I think I may just put my light right over the water. A lot more of it makes it into the tank. Ill prolly just grab another hood like the one I have and have two on there. Unless you can suggest something cheaper from Lowes or Home Depot? As for substrate, I want to keep my brown gravel and stay brown. Which one would mix well and work with the discus? Any suggestions on rearranging the tank (moving the driftwood, plants, etc.)?
 
WyldFya;1262643; said:
The stickies will help you out quite a bit with information. The tall plant does look to be either a crypt or an aponogeton. Still hard to tell from the pic. I would not up the lighting, as you don't need to. For a substrate, I would highly recommend the use of flourite, as it has the longest life, and a good balance of nutrients. If you can get the aqua soil from ADA, that is even better, but more expensive.

Now for the discus, I'd recommend moving them to an un-planted, bare-bottom, tank. The planted tank discus combo often leads to stunted discus. From the pics, I see that your discus are already quite stunted. If you wish to keep them in that tank, I'd up your water changes to 50% two to three times a week. Also, at that size, I'd be feeding them several times a day. Based on the pictures, it appears that you have two cobalt blue discus, or one cobalt and a blue diamond.
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What do you mean by stunted?
 
Nvm about the stunted, I just looked it up. Is this permanent? If not how do I fix it? If so, what can I do to help them? I dont want to do the bare bottom tank as I have a lot of money into the plants.
 
Read my last post. It explains what your options are for keeping the stunting from becoming worse. The plants you have aren't really too expensive generally, but I would definitely either move the discus, or invest in a hand held TDS meter, and use RO water to keep your TDS below 200 ppm. As to adding lighting, don't. You don't need to. All the plants in there will grow just fine under the most basic fluorescent lighting.
 
WyldFya;1262837; said:
Read my last post. It explains what your options are for keeping the stunting from becoming worse. The plants you have aren't really too expensive generally, but I would definitely either move the discus, or invest in a hand held TDS meter, and use RO water to keep your TDS below 200 ppm. As to adding lighting, don't. You don't need to. All the plants in there will grow just fine under the most basic fluorescent lighting.
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What is TDS and Ro?
 
TDS...total disolved solids RO...Reverse osmosis.

Listen to wyldfya he understands planted tanks and water chemistry and what it takes to raise discus in a planted. If and when I raise my next batch of discus it will be bare bottom for sure. I am only a beginner/novice with planted tanks.
 
Ok, so I looked up some stuff about Stunting, what I got from the info is that It will keep them from getting as big as they would and they arent as perfect shaped as they could be. It seems like it has nothing to do with there overall health if I start to feed it right and get on the water changes. I that a fair conclusion? I have no intent of showing or breeding them and would actually like it if they stayed a little smaller, not that I like them being messed up.
 
So anyway, Ive continued the convo on the stunted fish on another tread. As for the plants, any suggestions of how to arrange them and the driftwood that would look best?
 
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