Preparing the tank

[spaceman1979]

Hi All,

Been a while since I posted. The new tank I bought some time ago ended up as a 'normal' freshwater tank rather than a discus tank.

Having recently bought a new house and given away all the fish, I have an empty tank and am considering a discus / tetra tank.

As I travel a bit with work, I am conscious that I don't want to increase the bio-load of the tank so that if I have to miss a water change on a weekly basis that the fish won't be in dire straits - not the ideal situation but I have to be realistic...

So - now to the question.

I'm thinking I'll get five discus and maybe a dozen tetras...maybe on the tetras (I'm thinking that a discus only tank might look pretty cool).

As I won't be breeding, I'll aim to put some inert sand at the bottom of the tank and fill it with plants and logs - which will obviously help with the softness of the water.

I'm aware that I need to cycle the tank, however in my reading I read that discus get uber-stressed on their own and they are best in groups of five. Noting this, how to you cycle the tank enough to simulate the biowaste of five discus?

Now to the important details:

- tank is 4 feetx 14 inches x 18 inches
- filtration is via a sump that includes a wet/dry bioball areas with multiple bags of ceramic rings for the lovely bacteria to get settled in. The sump also has a seperate submersible filter to add extra filtration power (that's the plan anyways). The sump tank is about 70 litres (can't quite remember the dimensions).

Thanks in advance for posts.

[swampy1972]

Hi,

I think the common understanding that I've gained from this site is to work on about 40-50ltr per adult Discus. So work out your tanks capacity, take a bit out to allow for the substrate, logs etc and this will give you the number you can keep.
Once you cycle the tank you could start with a school of tetras or maybe introduce 2 Discus at a time until you get to your final number.
Just be sure to keep a watchful eye on your water quality during the process and be patient! I got impatient and some of my fish paid a hefty price for my stupidity :oops:

[TW]

You can buy ammonia to do a fishless cycle here http://www.ammonchlor.com/http://www.ammonchlor.com/

Comes with directions on how to cycle the tank, the fishless way. That way, when it's cycled, you can fully stock the tank. The amount of litres in your tank will determine how many discus you can keep.