What should I do?

[Mettle]

I'm getting my first discus on Friday. The only thing is I don't know if I'm keeping it or not...

I'm getting a red turquoise discus as a part of a package aquarium set-up that I'm buying off of someone locally. And I was originally planning on selling it to make back some of the money spent on the tank. (It also comes with a trio of adult angels, a pleco and three clown loaches.) But now I'm thinking I might keep the discus!

The tank is a 90 gallon tank that I'll be moving some other fish into (my oscars)... However, I will then most likely have a fully cycled 55 gallon tank with nothing in it. I was wondering how many discus I could possibly keep in a 55 gallon tank (48x13x21)? And what other fish could be kept with it? I'd really like to have rummy nose tetras.

Anyway... It's a tough decision. If need be I have a buyer for the discus. So that's not an issue. But if I keep it? Not sure...

And isn't it better to start with a group of small discus and grow them out rather than trying to introduce older ones at a later stage?

Any help... fingers pointing me in the right direction... would be appreciated. Thanks!

[wyldchyld01]

Hey mettle,

I think, and only seeing how you are umming and ahhing about it, that it might be good to think about it, it takes a little more effort cleaning etc with discus and you need to be willing to keep it up, angel and others can be a little more forgiving.

rummy nose would look good, smaller tetras (neons etc might go missing occassionaly if the discus get hold of them, god forbid if the oscars were in the same tank lol)

enough for a school, smaller size discus yeah...i'd personally not put too much load on it and go for 3 so i can add other varieties later if i want (they just really resort the hierachy and i haven't had any issues adding more discus after q'tine)

hope this helps, it's up to you in the end, but i really really like the discus display tank i have and along with the africans really seems to draw visitors attention.

Brenton

[Mettle]

I'm pretty religious about water changes and gravel vac'ing, so that's not an issue. I also do constant testing of water parameters... I never let my tanks go south. Learned the hard way a long time ago about that.