suphew

Mine seemd to like plants that grow over the surface blocking off the light a bit.

What part of the country do you live in? If you are around Wellington I would let you cycle your filter on my 4 foot tank if you wanted, this would speed up the start of the process a lot. Also although 6 months seems a long time I would suggest that you keep some other fish for at least a few months for two reasons. a) There is a lot less room for mistakes etc when keeping Discus, so its worth practicing on an easier fish. b) Although it only takes a month or so for your tank to do the nitogen 'cycle' there is also a far longer cycle that takes 6+ months to complete this is basically the time it takes for evey thing to settle down and stablize in your setup. After this time the tank is what is commonly called 'mature'. Until this time you will get algae bloomes, water parameters changing, plants that were growing well suddenly dieing and other suddenly doing well, etc etc. These things sometime require doing stuff to your tank that Discus wont like much.

Have you considered other causes for your Discus moving behind the log? I found that mine always spend most of there time at the end of the tank that has the least current. If yours are going behind the log to hide they would likely be out in the open till they see you coming and then take off behind the log, if they are spending all there time hanging out there then there is proberly another reason for it. Also if Discus are under stress there colour will change (the happens in seconds), depending on the type they will go dark, or get stripes. So this is another way to tell if they are hiding because of stress or just like it better there for some other reason.

Been away all weekend, but the tank survived all the earth quakes! I loosely piled a whole lot of new live rock (hence the trip away) in the tank last night, didn't have time to place it securly, really got my fingers crossed now!!

Prob jibboard, cracks easy if the joins arn't taped correctly before plastering. I haven't been home yet, all of my tanks are secured to the walls accept for the new one cause it only went in on Sunday and I didn't have time to do it. Ever get that nervous feeling.....

Sounds like a great idea, would you need to take it out the rock and rinse the rubbish off to stop it turning into too much of a NO2-NO3 converter? Has this been done before? It sounds like a great way to get high flow over some live rock, why haven't I seen it before, is there a down side?

I haven't done it myself but have seen tanks where they have put nylon sacking (any plastic sacking would work) down the inside back of the tanks (under the gravel at the bottom and glue or pin at the top), any plant that doesn't mind its roots out of the substrate will grow, Java moss, Java fern, etc. Just attach them to it with some cotton. If you want to get really flash you could build it out from the back wall by an inch or two then hide your filters/ heaters etc behind it. By the way Java moss does loosely attach itself after a while, so if you tie it down with cotton, by the time the cotton rots away it will be attached.

If it's a dam (as against a pond) wouldn't there be a stream feeding it and water flowing out somewhere?

I had a guy from nwia suggest to me that I put whitebait in a tank, (I was asking him about rain water quality in Wlg), as I understand it (but could well be wrong) there are 4 (I think) types of fish that make up whitebait one of which was trout. Anyway my point is why not catch some whitebait and put them in the pond, be very interesting to see what fish you end up with.

Yeap I was still getting them at 4 months, been going since July and only cleared up in the last month or so.

What are you guys using to check your SG? I have one of those cheap floating things and my SG always seemed a bit on the high side (.026 - .27), Pies checked it with fancy light meter thing and found it was spot on 1.025. Really just a warning incase you are assuming your meter is right.

I have both, agree it depends on size (or rather the volume of water) however either might be easier depending on who you know, and steel is often cheaper than wood, esp since you wont need as much.

I wouldn't bother working out the volume to pick the filter, if it is around 100L most cannister filters will be heaps. Plus the tank volume ratings on the filters can be very misleading, they base the rating on turning over the tanks volume a number of times per hour, say 3 times the volume per hour which means a filter rated at 300lph would be ok for a 100l tank, but this turn over rate changes depending on what you are keeping in the tank, some fish are messy eaters so need a higher turn over some don't like the high current in the tank so need a slower turn over. To add further confusion the flow rate of the filter (i.e. 300LPH) is questionable, did they allow for the holes, bends, media, these things can half the flow rate plus as the media starts to get crap in it the flow rate number goes out the window anyway. As i see it there are two ways to choose, 1) buy a filter rated at minimum twice the size of your tank to give you a safty margin, it is easy to turn down the flow rate on most newer filters (but impossible to turn it up if its too low) and I don't think anyone actually turns them (FYI it is not really possible to over filter your tank) 2) shop around and find the best filter for your money (as I said before at the moment I recon fluval 204 are on the money) and if you need to, buy two of them. This is what I have done, it gives me so many advantanges, redundancy if a filter fails, I can clean 1 at a time so don't risk affecting the biofilter too much, when I set up a new tank I have a cycled filter all ready to go, I got mine on sale at Animates and it was cheaper to buy 2 than 1 of the next size up!

Yeah that sounds like a good idea, I have a huge pot that I use, even hot tap water should be enough, just stick it in the tub and cover it with hot water for 1/2 hour. If it is still floating (i.e. not already water logged) it will take a while for it to sink, just leave it in there and keep topping up the hot water until it does.

Yep, all normal, can't remember the name sure someone will tell us, but nothing to worry about.

As I understand it FBF work by pushing water through a media (like sand) with enough pressure to make all the media move (i.e. fluidized) the advantage of this is you get a very high surface area and no dead spots in the filter. But there are disadvantages, you need a BIG pump to make them work, very good plumbing so they dont leak, they are difficult to set up (I have visions of blowing all that sand out of the filter into the tank!), expensive (althrough I have never seen them for sale in NZ). I could be wrong about all these problems and I don't see why a well designed unit shouldn't be able fix them (other than the price maybe!). UGF are bad for plants and I have read that they can crash, they are only really good if your looking for a really cheap solution and don't mind the noise and lack of plants. But to answer your question a FBF would be a huge overkill in a 100l tank, if you could even get/build one. IMHO go with a Fluval 204, which seem to have the best price point, the smaller ones aren't that much cheaper and are half the size, the biggers ones cost a lot more and arn't that much bigger. Didn't forget that your plants are adding to the filtration so the more you have the less filtration you need.

I agree anemone's and power heads dont mix well (or maybe mix too well!) in my new tank I have put in a closed loop with a 1060 and SCWD plus a second 1060 from the sump, so hopefully wont need to use any powerheads. But in general unless you need lots of mechanical filtation (and I can't see why you would) sponges dont add anything positive, just extra cleaning.

Thats how I collect mine. If you can it pays to boil it first just to kill off any parasites.

Make sure your water is tip top to, maybe take a sample to your LPS if you don't have the test kits, and keep doing large volume water changes every few day's. A lot of diseases are caused by stress and/or a water problem. A note on the stress to, I know its hard but try and leave her alone as much as possible, every time you disturb her or worst yet chase her out of hiding to check will cause lots of stress.

Rain water should have a nuteral PH (I think correct me if I'm wrong) it is the low (zero) minerals (Kh) that does the trick (and makes the PH drop). The PH in my tank sits on around 6. Tetras are fine, neon's haven't done well, but I've never had any luck with them in any tanks although I have one hardy sole left that must be 3-4 years old now. Most of them are the same shape as a neon but black and white colored, also have some rounder black and white ones (black widow?) Sorry I don't take much notice of them I was sold (very cheap) most of them by Animates in Wlg when they shut down their large display tank a couple of years ago. I often have pregnant tetras, but never bothered breeding them.

Quote from online below. Do a search on google for "fish disease pop eye" for a better idea of treatment. Q: One of my fish's eyes is popped out to the side. A: This is called "Pop-Eye", and is caused by a gram-positive bacteria that affects the kidney. Treatment: Treat the fish with TMP Sulfa Powder for a ten day treatment. Q: Both of my fish's eyes are popped out to the side. A: These are the starting symptoms of Abdominal Dropsy. Very few fish survive this condition. Treatment: Move the affected fish to an isolation tank and raise the temperature to 84-86 degrees fahrenheit. Treat the fish with 1 dose of Gentamycin Sulfate Powder and leave the medication in the water for 7 days, with no water changes during treatment time. When treatment is finished, add the carbon back to the filtration, and slowly lower the temperature back to normal over several days time.

I'm in two minds esp now I have a 3 foot that holds almost 300 litres! I have alway worked on the 3 foot 4 foot etc rule of thumb but to be honest all (okay most) of the advise given is in ?? per litre, like inch of fish per litre, watts of light per litre, watts of heat per litre, etc etc. In most cases it is the volume that really matters not how long the bottom of the tank is. Now lets start a debate over litres vs gallons.....

Currently have around 20 verious tetras and a whole bunch of bristlenose plecs. You will need to be careful which cichlids you put in, they generally like hard water, Discus like soft. FYI I use around 50/50 mix tap and rain water to soften the water. For my subtrate I used around 50/50 mix of gravel and aquadic clay (from plant shop) and some peat added for luck. With about 1-2cm of gravel to hold it down. I did have a green water problem for a while which MIGHT have been from the substrate, but it was worth it in the end as I now remove a pile of plant each week, plus 1 year ago stopped added fertiliser and CO2 to slow the plants down!

IMHO you are far better of using two smaller heaters than one large, that way if one fails....... I use two 150W in my 4 foot 200 litre tank running at 29ish degrees, with no problems. I also now only buy heaters with electronic therometers instead of the bimetalic strip type. I don't know that they will last any longer but figure I would rather they stopped working when they failed instead of jamming on like the others can. Would like to hear other think about this.

Discus need far warmer temps than standard tropical (28+ degrees) so don't forget to take that into account when your planning. You need to think about plants/fish that will handle the heat, lower oxygen levels (heat goes up/ oxygen goes down, this also affects how well your filter works, I run 2x204's on 4 foot which only just keeps up), insulating the tank (to save your power bills). Also if you currently have gold fish in there I would tear the whole tank down and clean it really well, they can have a lot of parisites, worms, etc, that wil cause lots problems with your discus.