Want To Add Adult Discus To Established Community Tank- Lots Of Advice

[DiscusKeeper403]

I all and thanks for the replies, I managed to get the test kit for kh and gh at the weekend and have just done the test.
If i am reading it right the gh was 220 (i had to add 11 drops to get it to turn to the colour needed) and the kh was 80-90 (cant remember if I added 8 or nine drops how sad!!).

Now, these results mea pretty little to me to be honest as by having a quick look I see discus keepers saying their kh was anything between 6 and 9 and gh between 4 and 8. Do they mean thats how many drops they added? Sorry if this a really stupid question but I want to try and get the water as good as possible. I have already removed 50l in the last water change and replaced with 50l of RO water and both the angels and the rams seem a lot happier, colours satnd out a bit more already. Planning on doing another water change/add RO tomorrow.

The other results are ph 8, ammonia 0 nitrite 0 and nitrate between 40 and 80 (hard to tell apart).

Any comments greatly appreciated

thanks

Do what you want because you obviously haven't taken our advice anyways. Your water was already perfect before you uselessly threw R/O into it. Your nitrates are through the roof which is probably why the water change seemed to have an effect on the fish.

Take a look at my water http/www.calgaryaquariumsociety.com/Articles/Calgary_Tap_Water_VS_Lake_Malawi_Water.html

Doing random periodic water changes with R/O will most likely kill your Discus, if not directly, your fish will get stressed due to changes in water chemistry and end up sick. It seems like your have your mind set on listening to your LFS and not us, so if you don't want my advice I won't answer your posts. Good luck with Discus keeping, by the looks of it it won't go well for you.

Connor

Shame that you want to take that attitude, most people on here seem to want to help. I asked for advice and opinions not a lecture. Where are the random water changes? Every week I do water changes and for your info in our area the water comes out of the tap at 40 for the nitrates, hence the reason to very gradually add the ro water to improve this. I havent just gone out and bought 300l of RO and swapped it over and thrown in a load of discus have I? No, I have used 50l during a water change and carried on asking for advice. Just because I have not done exactly as YOU wanted please dont see it as a reason to slaughter me. I still may not go with discus but I am planning on seeking more opinions about the water etc. If this is a problem for you, dont let it keep you up at night, just dont reply. Also I am not determined to listen only to the lfs, I have asked the opinion of several and also on other websites and all have different conflicting views.

Sorry if these questions have upset anyone, I thought that was the point of the forum

Either way don't ask for my advice if you aren't going to use it, sorry just seems like a waste of my time. If the LFS is telling you to do a water change once every ten days on a Discus tank (hence the reason why I thought you meant periodically adding R/O) then they should be put out of business. If you had explained that your have nitrates issues in the first place, then my views on using R/O may have changed a bit, but I am still skeptical as this is not something that comes up often and dealing with nitrates from tap water is not something I am familiar with.

 

[freddiesfish]

I all and thanks for the replies, I managed to get the test kit for kh and gh at the weekend and have just done the test.
If i am reading it right the gh was 220 (i had to add 11 drops to get it to turn to the colour needed) and the kh was 80-90 (cant remember if I added 8 or nine drops how sad!!).

Now, these results mea pretty little to me to be honest as by having a quick look I see discus keepers saying their kh was anything between 6 and 9 and gh between 4 and 8. Do they mean thats how many drops they added? Sorry if this a really stupid question but I want to try and get the water as good as possible. I have already removed 50l in the last water change and replaced with 50l of RO water and both the angels and the rams seem a lot happier, colours satnd out a bit more already. Planning on doing another water change/add RO tomorrow.

The other results are ph 8, ammonia 0 nitrite 0 and nitrate between 40 and 80 (hard to tell apart).

Any comments greatly appreciated

thanks

Do what you want because you obviously haven't taken our advice anyways. Your water was already perfect before you uselessly threw R/O into it. Your nitrates are through the roof which is probably why the water change seemed to have an effect on the fish.

Take a look at my water http/www.calgaryaquariumsociety.com/Articles/Calgary_Tap_Water_VS_Lake_Malawi_Water.html

Doing random periodic water changes with R/O will most likely kill your Discus, if not directly, your fish will get stressed due to changes in water chemistry and end up sick. It seems like your have your mind set on listening to your LFS and not us, so if you don't want my advice I won't answer your posts. Good luck with Discus keeping, by the looks of it it won't go well for you.

Connor

Shame that you want to take that attitude, most people on here seem to want to help. I asked for advice and opinions not a lecture. Where are the random water changes? Every week I do water changes and for your info in our area the water comes out of the tap at 40 for the nitrates, hence the reason to very gradually add the ro water to improve this. I havent just gone out and bought 300l of RO and swapped it over and thrown in a load of discus have I? No, I have used 50l during a water change and carried on asking for advice. Just because I have not done exactly as YOU wanted please dont see it as a reason to slaughter me. I still may not go with discus but I am planning on seeking more opinions about the water etc. If this is a problem for you, dont let it keep you up at night, just dont reply. Also I am not determined to listen only to the lfs, I have asked the opinion of several and also on other websites and all have different conflicting views.

Sorry if these questions have upset anyone, I thought that was the point of the forum

Either way don't ask for my advice if you aren't going to use it, sorry just seems like a waste of my time. If the LFS is telling you to do a water change once every ten days on a Discus tank (hence the reason why I thought you meant periodically adding R/O) then they should be put out of business. If you had explained that your have nitrates issues in the first place, then my views on using R/O may have changed a bit, but I am still skeptical as this is not something that comes up often and dealing with nitrates from tap water is not something I am familiar with.

The whole ten day water change was only ever while I was replacing the existing tank water/tap water with the high nitrates with small amounts of the new RO water so as not to stress the existing fish to much! I will do much more regular water changes if/when I get discus. At the moment I do at least once a week sometimes twice, it was just to slowly bring down the hardness so as not to shock the existing fish. This I why I was after lots of different views, I am not ignoring advice but surely you can see there are so many different opinions on these forums. I am trying to gain as much knowledge about how people in very hard water areas go about keeping discus, something I was trying to do as I would hate to kill off any of these stunning fish because of a lack of research. Thats why I also went to several lfs to ask their advice and two of them said they would not even sell me discus without checking that I had used RO due to it being such a hard water area.

again, sorry if this has offended anyone but I was only trying to find out how best to add discus (if possible) to my set up.

I take it nobody else has any views on the results for the gh and kh (after already changing some for RO which has brought the result down a bit to these results) of my tank? lol