BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Fish discus

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with Discus fish? we bought 150 gallon aquarium and I am working on getting it set up for an amazon river biotope. I am having trouble finding any specifics on the substrate. all i know is it cant have lime or calcium, i need to keep the pH at 6.5, and for the fish give them places to hide. But what rocks dont have lime or calcium? I found where sand could work, but i am not sur how to clean it, can you just siphon the water like you do when cleaning gravel substrate? i am also thinking of putting in some angels and bristlenosed catfish, so this is going to be a community of sorts. I am just trying to figure out if i really want to take care of discus, they are beautiful. thank you for your help.

I know that Jilly has had discus, but she is quite busy lately and doesn't come on quite as often as she used to.

You could do a search for various discus sites..that's what I would do..in fact, here's one to start with..you can email these folks and ask them anything about discus and they could certainly give you an educated answer....

Discus Madness

I would go to a discus specific site to get that kind of info scarlet. They are a pretty particular fish to try and keep and the best info you'll get is from folks who specialize in them.

Wish you all the best..I would love to keep discus myself, but I don't think I can do a tank as large as what I would need for them...right now anyway..lol..If I had just ONE large tank I might consider it, but with all these tanks I have all over the place to care for, one more large one would put me over the top I think..lol.

thank you for the help. I think my husband and I have decided not to try discus, beacause our water is very difficult to get to the right chemistry. i have kept the link in my favorites in case we change our minds later. we are thinking maybe of getting some rams and angelfish in the 150 with some different schools of tetras.

how are your rams doing? i saw the picture they looked good last i knew. thank you again for the help i will try to keep you updated on how things work out. it will be a while though i dont plan to start stocking the tank till the end of august.

I have been posting about my rams in the "Community Tank" thread if you want to read up about them.

I have some 3 week old babies who are doing just fine so far, hope that continues ! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

ok I'll check out the community tank. best of luck although I think you have made it through the hard part.