Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
How clean is my water
Ok this might seems an odd question but i am wondering just how good/clean is my water ?
I recently got some discus in my tank and from what i read they do need a "perfect" water.
My parameters are as follow:
t*: 29*C
Ph: 6
Kh: 3
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: <0.02mg/l
Iron: <0.05mg/l
So as far as i have learned, water seems adequate for discus fish.
They have been in he tank for 4 days, been feed on bloodworm and brine-shrimp as well as tetra prima. I do feed them 3 times a day.
The reading you can see here were taken this night and they are the same as the one i took on Tuesday. I do keep a record on my test, i don't know if it is very useful but ...
I do my water change on Monday, so i give the tank a day to "stabilise" if that as any sense...
before taking any measurement.I am aware that feeding discus will pollute the water but if it come up with those kind of reading, should i really need to do a WC more often (2-3 times a week) or can i stick with my routine ?
I hope that you can understand what i am trying to ask as it is clearer in my head than in words
I have t say that the discus i got are around 7-9 cm fish so not adult yet.
Anyway, thank you all for your responses.
Inza.
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I have read on many forum and magazines that at least 3 to 5 feeding a day would be recommended for sub adult discus...
But what bothers me is if parameters are ideal, does it mean that the water is clean enough?
Thanks, inza
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Changes of getting and being able to measure "perfect" water is almost zero.
Stable water with proper water change regime is needed for discus.
Food....now this is where we do run into big problems with discus.
A full sized discus of the largest morphotype is many many times larger than an adult angel fish, and bigger than an Oscar.
The metabolism of discus is high.........so that bulk and metabolism need plenty of food (between 10% and 20% of the fish weight per day is the ideal.......but it needs to be quality food).
But therein that is where the problem lies.....high temp = lowered oxygen; high food load places a large load on the biological filters........and with oxygen decreased due to high temp that means that it is so easy to overload the biological filters.
To avoid that risk, biological filters need to be super efficient and mature enough to avoid being overloaded OR keepers keep discus as somewhat stunted by lowered feeding OR keepers do very very regular water changes.
Heavy feeding, overstocking, immature filters (it will take at least 9 months for a filter to get close to being mature at a minimum), lack of water changes are good ways wipe out discus.
ian
Irish Tropical Fish Society (ITFS) Member.
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