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I am setting up a 600 gallon planted tank (7 x 3 x 4 ft) that will have a large sandy foreground area with wood mulch and botanicals. I also have in my fish room a group of 9 Dicrossus warzeli and another group of 10 Biotoecus (I can't remember if I got them as opercularis or dicentrarchus -...
Thank you both Macz and Darrel for your further advice. I've come across Darrel's posts many times over the years at the plantedtank forum, where I've been a member since 2007 and have kept many successful high tech and low tech planted tanks since then.
I'll be running non-limiting nutrients...
Something interesting I came across that may explain why pure RO didn't work well for many fish for me, but pure RO with tannins works well:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20377
Thank you so much for your detailed response. I apologize that I was not more clear in my initial post. I'm not intending to keep a blackwater or clearwater tank. This is a 600 gallon display tank - the plan is to keep a normal planted display aquarium that is scaped to mimic a flooded river...
In terms of stocking the general rule of thumb as I know it is 1 adult discus per 10 gallons of tank volume. That's for a bare tank though, you may want to reduce it slightly for a scaped tank. The tank I shared was 6 adult discus and 5 angels in a 120 gallon 4x2x2 tank. I also had bunch of...
If I didn't know for sure that the importer/exporter did the exact quarantine procedure that I would do myself, I would just go ahead and do it myself. That's the bar I set for myself and my fish. I have not found any of my wildcaught fish to react adversely to standard anti parasite...
You will also not likely be able to successfully breed them as it seems to me that their eggs are unviable in hard/high ph water conditions. This is my anecdotal experience and not scientifically proven though.
I'm quite late to this thread but I dropped by to say hi to Larry. You may or may not remember me but we've communicated before on simplydiscus many many years ago.
For what it's worth, my wild discus quarantine process is more or less identical to Larry's. Granted I haven't kept wild discus...
I can understand the desire to replicate natural water conditions as much as possible. I have always tried to do so myself. However for this tank I'm honestly trying to go with a no hassle automated setup. I'm getting old and I'm tired and trying to replicate natural water conditions gives me...
I'm in the midst of resetting my 600 gallon tank, moving back to South American cichlids after 2 years of dabbling with Tanganyikans. I have an auto water change system set up that changes about 5% - 8% of water daily using RO water. Several years ago when utilizing this system (without...
I understand, I was wanting them for the looks. The 600 gallon tank is the showpiece of my house so i wanted it to look authentic as a flooded river biotope for discus and other south American cichlids. I've used just leaves (and experimented with Rooibos tea) for over a decade with good...
I'm from Singapore, so not many uncontaminated leaf litter around - I buy my cattapa leaves from an Indonesian source, but I'm looking for more diverse types of botanicals than just leaves