Michelle.g

Thanks for the replies. The tank is 175L, which I know isn't good but the best I can do for the moment. I will start doing 50% water changes daily. I did another 25% change this evening too. Does anyone know, has anything been added to the Chch water supply? eg. chlorine.

Hi all, I will try to keep a long story short..... During the earthquake last weekend my community tank fell over and landed on a tank full of young discus. The survivors have been through a huge amount of stress. 20ish discus (only 3 adults) and a few cories, tetras etc are now all in a tank together. Last night I found a dead discus and this morning a dead cardinal. I can see white patches, probably fin rot, on about 8 of the young discus. What can I do to help them? Is the fin rot a result of stress? bad water quality? an infection? Since Sunday, I have been doing daily approx. 25% water changes (I boiled all water for 3 minutes and allowed it to cool right down before use). I have added salt to the tank. I'm using a sponge filter. Thanks in advance for any help.

The pair usually guard the eggs for one or two days before they disappear. During this time most of the eggs go a dark orange-ish colour and only a few turn white so hopefully they are fertile. Stacking the terracotta pots is a great idea. I hadn't managed to find a terracotta pot tall enough and I was wondering what to do. Do I need to scrub and/or soak the pots before I use them?

Thanks for the replies. My discus are still laying about once every two weeks on the filter in my community tank. I found a pet shop that sells the breeding cones but I might try terracotta pots instead. Any ideas on the best way to plug the hole in the bottom of the pot? Also, what is the best way to check if my pair is a male and female? I have watched the female lay several times now but I can't be sure the other is a male. Is there some way I can check if the eggs are fertile?

I'm just setting up a tank for trying to breed my discus, what should I put into my discus breeding tank for my discus to lay on? Does anyone know where I can get one of those discus breeding cones? Or is it possible to use an upside down terracotta pot? Any help would be much appreciated.

I'm thinking of having a go at breeding discus, but I'm not sure whether the pair I have is really suitable. I have a snow white (female?) and a blue turq (male?) that have paired up and layed eggs three times in my main tank. Does anyone know what the offspring of this pair would be like?

Hi everyone, I have noticed over the past while that one of my discus has been "flashing". It occasionally rubs it's body against items in the tank. I thought this might be a sign that it has flukes. It doesn't appear to have inflamed gills or anything, but I thought it might it be a good idea to treat the discus and tank anyway? I have some droncit and I would like some advice on how to treat with this. I have read that 50mg of prazi per 10L is a good dosage to treat the tank. The tank is 175L with three discus in it, so based on this I would be adding 18 droncit tablets (50mg prazi each). Does this sound ok? I will also feed bloodworms soaked in droncit (1 tablet). Also, should I do a big water change the day after treating? Thanks for any help.

Yes, they are right next to each other. We have also tried moving the thermometer to different parts of the tank and the temperature is very similar throughout the tank.

I just checked the temperature in the tank. The digital thermometer is currently reading 26.0 degrees C and the alcohol thermometer is reading almost exactly 29 degrees C. We have been watching both thermometers for a while now and the alcohol thermometer is always reading about 3 degrees hotter. The alcohol thermometer should be very accurate. I'm shocked to find how different the readings are! The tank got to a maximum of about 28 degrees C (according to the digital thermometer) when the rasboras were in the tank, so if this was actually 31 degrees C could this have killed the rasboras? I'm quite upset to find that the thermometer is so inaccurate. The packaging for the thermometer states that it is accurate +/- 1 degree C. We may have killed the rasboras. Also we replaced a heater because we thought it wasn't powerful enough and maybe it was ok. What can I do?

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. I'm going to borrow an alcohol thermometer and a mercury thermometer to check the temperature tomorrow. So hopefully that will tell me whether there is an issue with the digital thermometer. We are hoping the heating is not the issue. I did a quick check of the water with those "API test strips" and found the pH to be around 7 and Nitrite and nitrate look to be close to 0, but I know these aren't very accurate so will try to take some water to be checked at the shop. When the tank was set up we put in ceramic noodles from one of my already cycled filters and some of the tank water as well so I had hoped this would help. Are swift/Hengelis rasboras pretty hardy fish? What do people think is the best way to slowly acclimate the fish to a new aquarium? And how big a change in pH would be a problem for the fish?

I have been keeping fish for a few years, and my partner recently got inspired by a nice tank he saw and bought his own tank. It's a 34L AquaOne tank. We had issues with heating when it was first set up so we got a new heater and it seemed like it was all ok. I'm pretty sure we did everything right, used ceramic noodles from one of my other tanks, washed all equipment well etc. The tank has some plants and dark fine gravel. The heater and thermometer were placed in the recommended locations in the tank (opposite sides of the tank). We put 6 swift rasboras into the tank on Sunday and got up this morning to find 5 of the 6 dead. I'm confident that they were healthy fish when we got them from the store and I have bought lots of great fish from the same place before. We have no idea what happened. The temperature was at 26.3 degrees C this morning. Last night I watched the temperature carefully and according to an AquaOne Digital thermometer the temperature varied between about 27.5 and 26.5 degrees. Does this seem like too much variation? Is this too hot for the rasboras? I was told around 27 should be ok. Could the thermometer be inaccurate? The other thing is the heater had to be set at 30 degrees C to keep it that warm. Does this seem extreme? We are currently using a 100W AquaOne heater as we found that 55W wasn't enough. The rasboras seemed to hide from the current, could this be what upset them? Sorry for all the questions. My partner really liked the rasboras, so if someone has some suggestions of what was wrong so we can correct it he might like to get some more for the one lonely rasbora we still have.

Wanted to say thanks to everyone for the great advice. I have decided to buy from a breeder and should be getting my first discus this week. I have been planning this for more than 6 months and have had the tank running for 4-5 months so I'm really looking forward to getting my new fish. Thanks again.

Thanks for the replies. The person I was looking at buying off is not a breeder. It sounds like it would be best to buy discus off a breeder. Thanks for suggesting gazza Dixon1990, I will try him. Does anyone know of any other chch people breeding discus? Anyway, these are the auctions I was thinking about. The auctions have closed but I've been sent fixed price offers. http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =143809207 http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =143803032 http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing ... =143194405 What do people think of these? Thanks, Michelle.

I'm looking to buy some discus. I have never owned these fish before and I would like some advice on how to choose healthy and good looking fish. I would also like to buy discus in christchurch if possible. There are three discus for sale on TM at the moment that I'm interested in. Same seller but different auctions. Am I allowed to put links to the auctions so people can give me their thoughts? One is blue turq 5-6cm, one red marlborough 4-5cm, one golden sunset 5-6cm long. I would be interested in getting all three together if possible. What would be a good price for these fish? Thanks.

My partner and I are going. Smashing Pumpkins should be awesome, and I'm really excited about Queens of the Stone Age too.