I Converted... To Barebottom!

[redtailblackshark]

that is indeed a very nice aquarium. The discus are so colorful they don't even look real! It it outstanding

 

[T1KARMANN]

well im sorry but if you still have bits of beefheart floating around after feeding then you are feeding to much food cut down on your food and you wont have that problem

or get some bottom feeders to clean up the uneatern food oooops sorry you cant as you dont have substrate so it would be cruel to keep bottom dwellers

i have always kept my tank in layers top fish middle fish and bottom feeders then their wont be any mess left over

 

[simonbrown403]

well im sorry but if you still have bits of beefheart floating around after feeding then you are feeding to much food cut down on your food and you wont have that problem

or get some bottom feeders to clean up the uneaten food oooops sorry you cant as you don't have substrate so it would be cruel to keep bottom dwellers

i have always kept my tank in layers top fish middle fish and bottom feeders then their wont be any mess left over

I feed beefheart 3 times a week when i do i leave it in the tank for 1/2 hour and then syphon out the uneaten out food.

discus and other chiclid do better of a high protein diet, all thought they can make do with less there digestive system's have evolved to cope with such foods, feeding a lesser diet would reduce the quality of the fish.
(in short we must aim to replicate there diet as closely as we can )

You could go for the low protein diet (with plant/algae based foods), but you would have to feed them in greater quantities and larger variety of foods to give the fish the nutrition they need, although you still need to feed these types of foods as part as a balanced diet.

Most fish don't have a stomach as such, instead the food is absorbed through there intestinal track.
The food is only in contact with the intestine for a short time, which means they can only absorb so much. The rest is passed on as waste (both solid and liquid) which as you know adds a strain onto an already delicate ecosystem.

Where do people get this idea they adding bottom feeders such as corys will makes you tank cleaner, its rubbish, they are fish which breath, eat and pass waste, in short the contribute to the mess.

Durbkat Posted Yesterday, 11:03 PM
Simonbrown403 you know how you said cichlids need high protein in their diet to keep to healthy what kind of food would I have to offer to my angels since there cichlids?

Angels are perditors the eat small fish and insects, so base the diet around these.

mlysis ( river shrimp)
insects and lave such as bloodworm, meal worms a good treat, but high in fat.
good quality flake containing molucks, shrimp and algue etc
I,ve feed mine small peices of choped up fish, and prawns and chicken.

You will find they willbe happyer with a balanced varied diet.

 

[T1KARMANN]

well im sorry but if you still have bits of beefheart floating around after feeding then you are feeding to much food cut down on your food and you wont have that problem

or get some bottom feeders to clean up the uneaten food oooops sorry you cant as you don't have substrate so it would be cruel to keep bottom dwellers

i have always kept my tank in layers top fish middle fish and bottom feeders then their wont be any mess left over

I feed beefheart 3 times a week when i do i leave it in the tank for 1/2 hour and then syphon out the uneaten out food.

discus and other chiclid do better of a high protein diet, all thought they can make do with less there digestive system's have evolved to cope with such foods, feeding a lesser diet would reduce the quality of the fish.
(in short we must aim to replicate there diet as closely as we can )

You could go for the low protein diet (with plant/algae based foods), but you would have to feed them in greater quantities and larger variety of foods to give the fish the nutrition they need, although you still need to feed these types of foods as part as a balanced diet.

Most fish don't have a stomach as such, instead the food is absorbed through there intestinal track.
The food is only in contact with the intestine for a short time, which means they can only absorb so much. The rest is passed on as waste (both solid and liquid) which as you know adds a strain onto an already delicate ecosystem.

Where do people get this idea they adding bottom feeders such as corys will makes you tank cleaner, its rubbish, they are fish which breath, eat and pass waste, in short the contribute to the mess.

Durbkat Posted Yesterday, 11:03 PM
Simonbrown403 you know how you said cichlids need high protein in their diet to keep to healthy what kind of food would I have to offer to my angels since there cichlids?

Angels are perditors the eat small fish and insects, so base the diet around these.

mlysis ( river shrimp)
insects and lave such as bloodworm, meal worms a good treat, but high in fat.
good quality flake containing molucks, shrimp and algue etc
I,ve feed mine small peices of choped up fish, and prawns and chicken.

You will find they willbe happyer with a balanced varied diet.

so i see your main goal is to give them a good natrual diet so why dont you care that they have a natural place to live surely they are both as important as each other and a bare bottom tank is as far from natruel as you can get

the uaru.f i keep need the same living conditions as discus and in some way i have been told they are harder to keep than discus

if you are having to scope food out after 1/2hr then you are feeding to much for sure when i add food its gone in less than 5mins and they are looking for more

small feeds twice per day is the key to keeping a clean tank

just look at this pic this is what i feed my tank twice per day and never ever have any left over food to scope out

the plate is not a feed for the whole day i feed this in the morning and the same again at night before lights out

in the pic their is 1 x double cube of ruto discus mix 1 x double cube of blood worm prawn broken into little bits and the same with the mussel

i dont feed the frozen cubes at night and replace it with a cap full of prima and a bit of nutrafin spiralina flake job done no messy beefheart that has to be scoped out which tells me they dont like it that much

 

[CFC]

I dont have bare bottomed tanks as i find the glare of the lights reflecting off the glass washes the colours out of the fish but to make cleaning easier i only use a very thin layer of sand no more than a few millimeters deep so no waste can get burried.

Gravel is a very unnatural substrate for most tropical fish as well but the majority of fish keepers use it and the fish dont seem to mind, bare bottomed is no worse but just doesnt look very pleasent

 

[T1KARMANN]

I dont have bare bottomed tanks as i find the glare of the lights reflecting off the glass washes the colours out of the fish but to make cleaning easier i only use a very thin layer of sand no more than a few millimeters deep so no waste can get burried.

Gravel is a very unnatural substrate for most tropical fish as well but the majority of fish keepers use it and the fish dont seem to mind, bare bottomed is no worse but just doesnt look very pleasent

their are 2 main reasons that i dont keep bare bottom tank one is i keep rays and i think its dam cruel to keep them with no substrate as they have taken millions of years to evolve to live in the substrate and any ray keeper will tell you that their rays spend 90% of their day blowing water into the sustrate looking for food and when they are scared they cover themself with the substrate to feel safe

the next reason for no bare bottom is i am a strong belive that it is one of the reasons that aros get drop eye as aro focus on the light to look for food but with a bare bottom tank light is being reflected from everwere and the aro will start to look down at the light for food many people will disagree with this fact but i have kept aros for over 15yrs and never had a aro with drop eye

if you think buy keeping a tank with just fish and no substrate will help you keep it clean then go for it

but if you look on it from another angle look at the surface area that a fine substrate has and all the good bacteria it could also be holding look at how sand bed filters work and in a ray tank the substrate is always getting turned over and when i do my twice weekly 25% water changes their is never anything realy that gets sucked up and people used to use under gravel filters for years with just the gravel as a media



but hey what do i know im a newbie

 

[CFC]

Hey i said i DONT have bare bottomed tanks, definately not my cup of tea, but i do keep my tanks with very shallow substrates rather than the usual 1-2" of sand/gravel.

How do your rays get on with the gravel? I had some coarser sand (river sand) in my tanks when i got my first ray and she hated it and spent most of her time swimming up the glass so that all got yanked out and replaced with some silver sand which they seem to preffer.

 

[Durbkat]

well im sorry but if you still have bits of beefheart floating around after feeding then you are feeding to much food cut down on your food and you wont have that problem

or get some bottom feeders to clean up the uneaten food oooops sorry you cant as you don't have substrate so it would be cruel to keep bottom dwellers

i have always kept my tank in layers top fish middle fish and bottom feeders then their wont be any mess left over

I feed beefheart 3 times a week when i do i leave it in the tank for 1/2 hour and then syphon out the uneaten out food.

discus and other chiclid do better of a high protein diet, all thought they can make do with less there digestive system's have evolved to cope with such foods, feeding a lesser diet would reduce the quality of the fish.
(in short we must aim to replicate there diet as closely as we can )

You could go for the low protein diet (with plant/algae based foods), but you would have to feed them in greater quantities and larger variety of foods to give the fish the nutrition they need, although you still need to feed these types of foods as part as a balanced diet.

Most fish don't have a stomach as such, instead the food is absorbed through there intestinal track.
The food is only in contact with the intestine for a short time, which means they can only absorb so much. The rest is passed on as waste (both solid and liquid) which as you know adds a strain onto an already delicate ecosystem.

Where do people get this idea they adding bottom feeders such as corys will makes you tank cleaner, its rubbish, they are fish which breath, eat and pass waste, in short the contribute to the mess.

Durbkat Posted Yesterday, 11:03 PM
Simonbrown403 you know how you said cichlids need high protein in their diet to keep to healthy what kind of food would I have to offer to my angels since there cichlids?

Angels are perditors the eat small fish and insects, so base the diet around these.

mlysis ( river shrimp)
insects and lave such as bloodworm, meal worms a good treat, but high in fat.
good quality flake containing molucks, shrimp and algue etc
I,ve feed mine small peices of choped up fish, and prawns and chicken.

You will find they willbe happyer with a balanced varied diet.

So say maybe once a week could I go to my lps and get the smallest guppies or neon tetras and put them in the tank to offer the angels some live food?

 

[T1KARMANN]

Hey i said i DONT have bare bottomed tanks, definately not my cup of tea, but i do keep my tanks with very shallow substrates rather than the usual 1-2" of sand/gravel.

How do your rays get on with the gravel? I had some coarser sand (river sand) in my tanks when i got my first ray and she hated it and spent most of her time swimming up the glass so that all got yanked out and replaced with some silver sand which they seem to preffer.

sorry it wasnt ment at anyone persoanly

the gravel i use is a very fine smooth pebble gravel i dont like sand as it seams to stick to rays disk and i hate the look of black dusty rays

i go over to holland to pick up my rays as its very hard to find p14s in the UK the guy i get the rays from was using this gravel and his rays were breeding on it so i thought it was good enought for me so took a sample and matched it
hears a link to the site of the guy who i get my rays from frank hes a great guy with lots of know how

http/www.freshwaterstingray.nl/

sand is ok but my tank is acrylic and thought it was to much of a risk to have sand stuck to the rays disk when they were swimming up the side glass it would have been like rubbing sand paper on the tank all the time

 

[CFC]

That makes sense in a acrylic tank, they scratch far too easily and if the rays dont mind gravel then why not, though personally i dont much like the look of gravel. Frank is a legend, ive spent many hours drooling over his website
Im hoping to bring in a few fish from Holland myself at some point, their prices are a lot better than here for some of the fish i'm hoping to get, though i suspect P14s may be a little more than i can get away with spending without the mrs having something to say, how much did they set you back if you dont mind saying? A PM will do if you dont want to say publicly.

 

[T1KARMANN]

That makes sense in a acrylic tank, they scratch far too easily and if the rays dont mind gravel then why not, though personally i dont much like the look of gravel. Frank is a legend, ive spent many hours drooling over his website
Im hoping to bring in a few fish from Holland myself at some point, their prices are a lot better than here for some of the fish i'm hoping to get, though i suspect P14s may be a little more than i can get away with spending without the mrs having something to say, how much did they set you back if you dont mind saying? A PM will do if you dont want to say publicly.

on the 1st trip to franks i brought back a pair of pearl rays to keep with the Red tail gold aro i was keeping at the time

i then did a tank upgrade to the biggest tank i could fit into my livingroom and had a good chance to sell the pearl rays and the large RTG aro

so i sold everything i had to buy the very expencive xback aro the pearl rays cost 1000 euros i realy didnt want to sell them as they are very rare hear in the UK but they were getting to big for the tank i had just upgraded to so had to look for a ray that stayed smaller and p14s fit the bill perfectly i payed 350 euros each for the p14s i have 3 of them

i do miss the pearl rays they were top rays

 

[CFC]

Pearls are stunners but too much for me to afford, the p14s arent as much as i expected, may have to look into finding some of those for the ray pond once my finances have recovered. For the time being im hoping to pick up a pair of leos and flowers to go with my motoros.

 

[T1KARMANN]

sorry for derailing the thread

the discus tank looks nice but i liked it better with the substrate

 

[fishdisease]

mate,
how many litres is your tank,
youu have 6 discus plus tetras right
i am just worried at the moment with me overstocking my tank but with my 5 fish in mine(only 1 discus,1ghost k,1 sm cat fish,1 angel,1 bala and looks just as spacious as yours.

 

[KageBunshin]

well im sorry but if you still have bits of beefheart floating around after feeding then you are feeding to much food cut down on your food and you wont have that problem

or get some bottom feeders to clean up the uneatern food oooops sorry you cant as you dont have substrate so it would be cruel to keep bottom dwellers

i have always kept my tank in layers top fish middle fish and bottom feeders then their wont be any mess left over biggrin.gif

Beefheart is a feeding regime resevered for growing out juveniles, not a staple for show tank discus. Growing out juveniles requires 6 feedings of beefheart per day. The food that falls to the bottom is not due to over feeding, rather discus are not fast eaters like angels, and they rarely for for food on the bottom (mine dont).

LOL. T1KARMANN, it seems that you truly despise bare bottom tanks. Im sorry for that. But its seems that you want other people to agree with you. I guess thats cool how you are passionate about your views, I have already made my decision.

sorry for derailing the thread

the discus tank looks nice but i liked it better with the substrate biggrin.gif

Its fine. Thank you for sharing you views.