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320l Discus tank, becoming planted !

Hey Tonser

I know you have been busy with other things 😉

but please don't forget this journal, any more pics of your setup?

Andyh
 
Thats looking better than ever pal, really cool 8)
 
andyh said:
Tonser said:
andyh said:
Firstly let me say i think that this is the best Discus scaped tank i have seen! :thumbup:
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Thanks Andy, its going to get better too 😉 😀

andyh said:
I have a question though, how are you having such success with the plants when your substrate is silver sand?
Have i missed a section in this journal where that's explained? Or are simply just dosing Ferts.
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Errr, I'm not sure to be honest ! I doe all in one ferts daily to the water column, and there are lots of TPN capsules buried in the sand, but other than that its just silver sand. To be honest the only really strong growers are the blyxa and was the vallis before I pulled it. The cyperus helferi and crypts survive OK but dont thrive. There seems to be a correlation between discus tanks and successful Blyxa - myself, Dan (TDI-Line) and James (james3200) have all had great growth in our discus tanks - perhaps its the amount of waste they produce ? Its interesting that having moved all the sand around last month, which caused an ammonia spike and the spyragyra outbreak, the blyxa has really struggled to take a hold.

Tony
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Tony with ref to the Dan aka TDI-line's tank, i was round at his house purchasing some bits the other day and all i saw was a very impressive 7ft empty tank! I not sure i believe he grew stuff! :lol: :lol: (Andy sits waiting for the torrent of abuse!)
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Stunning tank Tony, you must be very pleased.

Andy, your cruising. :lol: :lol:
 
Hi Tonser, just after a bit of advise. I too have a planted discus tank (albeit not as beautiful as yours) and have enjoyed your journal immensly. Below is a pic of my tank. 60" x 20" x 18"

discus.jpg

It is fairly lightly stocked, only having 4 discus and four cory sterbai and I run a FE CO2 system keeping the drop checker lime green and run a fluval 304 and a fluval 104 both on full flow.
I currently have been running 4 x 55w t5's and have been dosing 32ml of tropica plus weekly aftre a 50% water change with HMA filtered dionised water.
Anyway I noticed that you had an outbreak of spyrogyra and talked of doing a blackout. As it happens I currently have an outbreak of Spryogyra and have just put the blackout curtains over the tank for the next 3 days, and was wondering this.
1. Did you actually do a blackout and if so what was the outcome?
2. If you didn't do a blackout, but managed to eliminate the Spyro, how did you do it?
3. If you did the blackout, how were your discus after a 3 day blackout as I do worry about my fish as they are pets to me and not just fish, i.e did they feed ok after the blackout, were they themselves? How were the plants after the blackout?
Any advise would be kindly taken,
Many thanks and congratulations on your beautiful tank
Kev.
 
Hi all

I had a bit of time tonight on the discus tank, so thought I'd post a new pic. Theres been quite a bit of BBA in there recently, particularly in the high flow areas :evil: . But, as I'm about to go away for a few weeks, I'm not going to worry about it un til I get back - god knows what state it will be in by then 🙁 The auto water change will continue to run daily, and a neighbour is going to come in every other day and dose my all in one ferts, and excel, and feed the fish, but that will be all it gets. I've turned the photoperiod down to 5 hours per day too.

_MUS4112.jpg

Typically, the cleanest Bolbitis leaf is not even in the tank :lol:

_MUS4113.jpg

Next pics in 5 weeks time !!

Tony
 
Kevina said:
Hi Tonser, just after a bit of advise. I too have a planted discus tank (albeit not as beautiful as yours) and have enjoyed your journal immensly. Below is a pic of my tank. 60" x 20" x 18"

It is fairly lightly stocked, only having 4 discus and four cory sterbai and I run a FE CO2 system keeping the drop checker lime green and run a fluval 304 and a fluval 104 both on full flow.
I currently have been running 4 x 55w t5's and have been dosing 32ml of tropica plus weekly aftre a 50% water change with HMA filtered dionised water.
Anyway I noticed that you had an outbreak of spyrogyra and talked of doing a blackout. As it happens I currently have an outbreak of Spryogyra and have just put the blackout curtains over the tank for the next 3 days, and was wondering this.
1. Did you actually do a blackout and if so what was the outcome?
2. If you didn't do a blackout, but managed to eliminate the Spyro, how did you do it?
3. If you did the blackout, how were your discus after a 3 day blackout as I do worry about my fish as they are pets to me and not just fish, i.e did they feed ok after the blackout, were they themselves? How were the plants after the blackout?
Any advise would be kindly taken,
Many thanks and congratulations on your beautiful tank
Kev.
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Hi Kevin

Sorry I'd missed your post above 😳 Thats a great looking tank you've got 😀 How did the blackout work out ? I'd be interested to hear, as I never did one ! I reduced the photoperiod by an hour a day and within 2 weeks it had all gone 😀

Just got to get shot of the BBA now 🙄

Tony
 
Im jealous and also it was a shame you couldnt make it to the meet over the weekend.
I would have been asking you a load of questions 🙂

Im going to get a FE set up next week and hoping to start using that in my 180l tank. My tank is very basic at the moment as its a low tech set up.

However its always graet to see other discus set up like yourself for inspiration.
 
Tonser, Ive skim read the tank spec, but do you dose daily ferts in your tank along with the co2 set up?

Reason Im asking is that I have started fert dosing on tank and do a 15% water change every other day to compensate for better water quality.

Londondragon worked out the calculations on my 180 tank and we both agreed to upgrade the tank size to 220l as it will compensate for my fert working out and water changes.

How do you deal with this ?
 
Tonser said:
as I do get BBA forming on the older anubias leaves, and roots.
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Increasing PO4 should help with that.
 
JamesM said:
PO4 only helps with GSA iirc Paulo.. BBA is a flow/inconsistent co2 issue.
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Getting the acronyms mixed up LOL my bad 😛
 
Hi James / Paulo

Thanks for your inputs 😀 The BBA confuses me :!:

It mainly appears on the roots of the anubias, which are in amongst the roots at the top of the tank. They sit right in the flow of one of the koralia 2 powerheads. The tank has a pair of Eheim 2128 filters and a pair of Koralia 2's, forming a circulating flow pattern.
CO2 is via FE, and runs 24/7, with the dc consistently lime coloured.

I dont think its flow / CO2 fluctuations. It could be filter maintenance, or lack of - to be honest each filter only gets cleaned out every 6 weeks or so.

I also get BBA in the optiwhite tank (200L, same CO2 setup, 1 x eheim pro3 2073, 1 x tetratec EX1200 and 2 x koralia 1's), and I suffered it in the 10L nano too, which was running an Eheim 2128 ! Filter maintenance was similarly lax in all of them 😳

Tony
 
Address the filter thing and see if there's a difference, is your water hard? I've found that hard water seems more prone to bba, I think it's because co2 is less available in harder water. This is pure speculation however.
 
From my experience, objects in front of high flow will suffer with BBA more than anywhere else. Possibly due to a plants inability to uptake anything in this flow (?). General maintenance is also an issue yes, as Tom Barr has previously said, BBA will hit any tank if you don't stay on top of it. Clean hardscape regular, and leaves of slow growers, such as abubius, crypts, etc. should be rubbed over now and then.

Along with surface scum, BBA is my biggest nightmare too bud, so you're not alone 🙂 I've had it hit every tank I've set up at some point. Usually when I get lethargic... "Bah, the water looks clear as gin, I'll just do a 30% w/c this week..." 😳
 
SteveUK said:
I think Tony's using RO/tap mixed if memory serves?
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Yep RO / HMA mix on both tanks. The water changes arent the problem either - the discus tank automatically disposes and replaces 50L (approx 18%) of the water every day, whilst the optiwhite automatically changes approx 15% of the water everyday.
I cant automate the filter cleaning :lol:

Tony
 
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