New Discus Fish Room

[aurax]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum and kindly ask your assistance with setting up my first discus fish room.

I would like to mainly focus on the equipment to reach optimal water conditions and minimum disturbance to my fish. My goal is to build (as much as I can, or pocket can afford) automated environment to prevent problems.

My setup contains three 670L tanks. First one is community tank others are divided to three for breeding.

Our water here is mid-hard, pH is between 7-7.5.

My big question is regarding reverse osmosis. I know that my discus will live and breed better in slightly acidic water (pH 6.5~) so I'm thinking of adding reverse osmosis with tap water mixture filtered using active carbon filter. Are there automated systems that can mix both tap and RO water? (I'm against pH buffering/chemicals in general).
To achieve optimal filtration I plan to build separated systems for each tank:

• 2200L/h Pump with 10L mechanical and biological filtration and 9W UV.
• Two fluidized bed filters.
• Three Double sponge filter on intake for each aquarium (single one per breeding cube)

I will appreciate if you can point out important things that i missed.
Regarding food, I plan to feed mature fish twice a day with two different type of dry food. And randomly feed with frozen bloodworms. For fry I plan to feed dry brine shrimps eggs.

Thanks!
Tal.

 

[MKD]

wow, that 's a lot of wc change there. 670L = ~176G x 3 = ~528 G . IMO, I don't like divided tanks, because each pair will lay egg and hatch different time so you have to perform wc different for each pair. Also, they will share same water which means share same disease. so i like multiple small tanks system better, of course it's a pain to monitor water change, perameter, disease.... for those tanks, but i think it's safe that way. Also, it'll save $$$ because you may don't have enough pairs to fill up those divided tanks. Just maintain the ones with pairs, save water, heater...
With my limited knowledge, you dont need RO water until they start laying eggs, after that you have to switch back to tap water. and I am undecided at this point. let me know what you come up.

here is my set up currently running, but have not put any pair yet. Still at testing point which it has only sponge filter each tank and wc every day.

Good Luck,

Tony

 

[aurax]

Thanks Tony,

That's what i was trying to do in the first place, diving tanks for single filtration. Water change is a PITA in such environment.
It definitely be wise to split them and arrange dedicated filtration for each.

I prefer to have mixture of RO and tap water on all tanks to avoid pH shocks while moving fish from one tank to another.

wdyt?

 

[fly boy]

have you thought about a hma filter instead of mixing ro and tap water , then you wont have to use pumps for water changes just leave the hma on slowly , have the tanks drilled near the top so they over flow straight down the drain and bosh daily 100% water changes .

 

[aurax]

have you thought about a hma filter instead of mixing ro and tap water , then you wont have to use pumps for water changes just leave the hma on slowly , have the tanks drilled near the top so they over flow straight down the drain and bosh daily 100% water changes .

I meant HMA filter when i wrote tap.

The only reason i plan to use RO is because I need to take my pH down to ~6.5 for Discus breeding.