Discus are cool fish. They used to be very difficult to maintain. The newer hybrids, many coming from places like Malaysia and Singapore (they’re origonally from the Amazon basin) are somewhat hardier.
But, they still thrive on warm (mine love 84%) clean water. That means changing 25-40% of the water every week. I’m pretty good about it, but can get better. They’ll be glad.
sort77 there is only now
something keeps contaminating my freshwater tank and I need to be better about cleaning it. I nearly lost one of my fish a week ago. You think that would help motivate me. Do you think it would help if I moved my fish temporarily and bleached my tank? sigh… I just dont know.
A healthy tank relies on all the bio-organisms that exist in the water and substrate (gravel) – so bleaching the tank would pretty much sterilize the whole thing. It would take a long time to bring the new water back to “life” before you could reintroduce fish.
Just change about half the water. Use a conditioner to get rid of the chlorine. Then change about 25% every week. If you just keep adding water to compensate for evaporation, nitrates created by the fish just keep getting more and more concentrated.
Here’s some info: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/water_changes.php
sort77 cheered this 2 years ago
