Initial adding of discus

[pirahnaconda]

Hi All,

I am in the planning stages of a discus tank. It's a 400+ litre tank. It will be planted. My plan is to cycle and mature the tank for at least 4 months before adding discus. During that time it will only have dither fish and clean up crew in there, so I am wondering, how will I know if the tank is mature enough to house discus? Also, I am aiming for 5 or 6 discus tops,is the best approach to add them slowly over time, or as a group?

My concern is of course on water quality impact in terms of adding that many large fish at once. Is there a way to protect against that? I am going to be investing serious money in this and I don't want to bring home thousands of dollars worth of livestock only to have them keel over in a few days. I guess another consideration is that the fish will either have to be shipped to me or I'll have to drive several hours to collect them, so I want to minimize the number of trips/deliveries too if possible.

As an aside, I have kept a couple of 3 foot tanks for a few years now, I'm not a total fish noob or anything, and I have been researching as much as I can about discus for over a year :D I am comfortable with the maintenance and parameter requirements of the fish, just that initial introduction has me a bit concerned.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give me :D

[Nev]

Hi,
And welcome to the forum. Personally I'd buy the fish in the one hit and put them in the tank, but thats me, someone else may have other ideas. But l can't see the problem with that. Where are you and how far are you travelling to get them?

Thousands pf dollars worth? They must be 5 very exotic fish your after.

[pirahnaconda]

I'm just outside canberra, so if I travel to get them it'd have to be sydney, otherwise I'll have to ship them in.

Thousands might have been a slight exaggeration, but I hope I can get 5 or 6 top quality fish for 2-3k or less. It might be a lot less I don't know, down here pretty crap fish are already $200+

[SLS]

PM Sent.

[Nev]

Sydney or Melb will both ship to you, marlon or sls in sydney and adrian at EA in melb all have quality fish. Probally others but I don't know them.

[pirahnaconda]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Does anyone else have any inputs on the safest way to add a bunch of discus, or is it just the accepted best way to add them together?

[winnydapoo]

I would like to know the answer to this too, will be in a similar situation in the new year :D

[grrr]

I have not had fish for a few years (like 10) and I am looking to get back into it.

General rule of thumb is to quarantine all your new fish.

Depending on your substrate and how worried you are about worms and flukes you might not. If I was to buy a group of fish from 1 tank in 1 store and these are the first real fish for the tank. I would add them all together in the main tank. Assuming the fish are happy and look in top health.

If I was to buy 2 groups of fish from multiple tanks .. or multiple stores, I would take a punt and put 1 group in the main tank and the second group in a quarantine tank.

Edit > Just noticed that I bumped a 1yr old thread ... im so bad.