buzzy Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 hi i have just got a new 450ltr tank and am hopefully gonna stock it with my 4 uarus or get a couple of discus,is the water you get at wet pets(filtered) alright to use??,i wanted to get sand for the ground but cant find anywhere to get has anyone got any ideas where to get it and how many discus would i beable to fit in a 4x2x2 tank?? sorry for all the questions but wanna get everything before rushing into making decisions thanks carl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livebearer_breeder Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 the water should be fine and you should be able to keep about 10 discuss in a tank that size, the general rule is an inch of fish per gallon, and i think a gallon is just over 3 litres Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 Go with the uarus, discus are far too common, much nicer having something uncommon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fins Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 The cheaper discus are about $100 while the more expensive are 200. uarus are only about $30. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petplanet Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 Shop around for the discus. Some times you can get them dirt cheap. You may find someone on line selling them. Start with a large group of similiar sized juveniles and grow them on. If you start with to few, one will bully the others and dominate for food. If you have to by them from a shop then find one that will do a bulk deal. Run the tank in with schooling, algae eaters etc first. Tou can get river sand from building supply companies but you will probably be better off with fine gravel like brightwater 0603 (3mm-6mm size). What types of lighting and filtration do you have? Is Palmy water that bad? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_from_nz Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 i dont know how bad the fluride is in the water but i know the chlorine in palmys water is really bad on a hot day you can smell it in the water it is only $1 for 20l from wet pets and is good water (although a little basic i found might just be my containers though) i have been using it for 2 years now and swear by it wouldnt consider using anything else (although i will change when i get my own ro water filter but only cause it is more convenient) plus if you are setting up a new tank they will let you take water out of the big tank the red tailed cat fish is in to reduce cycleing time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 $1 for 20L, ouch. That'd be $40/week for me... Get some dechlorinator, much cheaper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 Why get a dechlorinator. If you stick the water in a big container and bubble air through it for a couple of days there will be no chlorine left in it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buzzy Posted September 22, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 thanks for the help, i use wet pets water in my 3' tank and its fine but just wanted to check before i got some discus and then find out that i had to treat the water before i use it each time,i will use most of the plants i have in my 3' tank and the driftwood etc and some of the water to get the 4' started.do you think i can put my neons,glow lights and pristillas in there if i slowly put them in after a couple of weeks?i think ill go to the beach/river to find some big bits of driftwood this weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 Paul Parsons from down that way, use to breed Uarus. I saw dozens of babies in his tank. Little spotted fellas. Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_from_nz Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 800l a week ira?????? what size tank do you have???? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 Damn, I was hoping noone would notice I screwed up such simple math. I actually change, when I'm not being lazy, about 400 liters per week. So only $20 per week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_from_nz Posted September 23, 2004 Report Share Posted September 23, 2004 lol still must be a nice sized tank does running bubbles through really get rid of the chlorine? and what about the hardness, as you do watter changes and water evaporates you always add hardness as it is my tank has a high gh 340ppm (although only 50ppm kh) and that is from using the filtered water that only contains 50ppm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted September 24, 2004 Report Share Posted September 24, 2004 wetpets water is fine for uarus but the ph will be way to high for discus .there ph sits around 8.0.and i also no sumone with 12 discus to sell if ur interested they are currently in a four foot tank.palmy water in general has a high ph . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buzzy Posted September 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 25, 2004 hi i was talking to peter from wet pets and he said that they use the same water that they sell, in there discus tanks,how much would your friend want for the discus's i have just got a 4x2x2 today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted September 26, 2004 Report Share Posted September 26, 2004 i use to work there two and the discus tank only gets small water changes as to not harm the fish and has alot of plant waste which helps keep the ph down .if u want ur discus looking there best use ph down or a ph stabiliser u want ur ph bout 6.2.and i think he wants bout $40.00 each for them.u should go with the uarus i think cool fish i have trhee my self.discus just sit thetre and ur so limited to what u can put with them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caryl Posted September 27, 2004 Report Share Posted September 27, 2004 Teecee just bought a discus from Wet Pets. Their water is pH7.8 and that is what the discus are kept in. All looked well. Teecee will adjust hers when she gets home as her tap water is pH7.0 and her discus tank is currently pH5.6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan_au Posted September 30, 2004 Report Share Posted September 30, 2004 Oh My Goodness !!! If I had to pay that for water I would be right out if fish!!! What sort of water costs like that ??? Get your own RO system or what ever. $20 of water just to fill a 4x2x2 ??? you have got to be kidding !! Have a talk to some of the local fish keepers, see what they do to treat the local water. Or put a rainwater tank on the house and have perfect Discus water straight out the tank. If it is just chlorine or flouride you are worried about, there are very cheap products to fix that problem. Seek some advise, you are being ripped off big time. Alan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Posted September 30, 2004 Report Share Posted September 30, 2004 Apparently, Palmie has several supply loops of water. According to friend of mine, only one of these loops are suitable for fish. Why not collect rainwater, (you have a bit of that down there), or does it get blown away with that wind. Another way is to go and have a chat with a neigbour of WP's and tell them at the end of the year, you'll drop off a tray of the brown stuff at Xmas, for the use of their water. Check the water from the petrol station nearby, fill with gas, and have some plastic containers in the back of the car. There are a lot of variations to paying for it. After all, it just comes thru the tap at Wp's Alan 104 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 wetpets water that they sell is filted heavely before its sold with a carbon filter .this takes nealy all the chemicals out of it leaving it perfect for fish.use water straight from the tap and are bound to lose sum fish.easy way is to buy ur own filter wetties sell them for bout $140 i think makes life easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 Carbon filters don't actually remove much from the water. They remove most gases (like chlorine) and some hydrocarbon products but very little else. It will hardly make any difference to pH or hardness. The cheapest way is still to put tap water into a drum and put an airstone in the drum for a day or so. Once the smell of chlorine is gone it's ready. If the pH and/or hardness is an issue, do as Alan says, collect rainwater. Even rainwater isn't all that reliable due to industrial waste getting into the rain. The cheapest solution for medium quantities of fairly pure water is reverse osmosis. Even this has problems, - the water is too pure to use directly. It has no salts or gases in it (no buffering capacity) and the pH is likely to change wildly. Addition of some readily available salts and acids will buffer the water sufficiently to use. I get about 90000 litres of water out of my RO unit for about $140 in membranes and filters. That's enough for about 2 years of water changes. It's by far the cheapest water purifier you can get. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Midas Posted October 1, 2004 Report Share Posted October 1, 2004 Palmy does have two different types of water supply. One is from the local underground bores and the other is from the dam catchment up in the ranges (Turitea dam). The bore water has a pH around 8.0 (GH about 100ppm), while the water from the treatment station at the dam has a lower pH around 7.5 (GH about 30ppm). When I used to live in Palmy I got the council to send me typical analysis for the different water sources. This included pH, hardness, typical contaminant levels etc (I still have copies). Once the chlorine is removed from the water both sources are ok for fish (nitrates and phosphates were even quite low if I remember right). The southern side of Palmy seems to be on the dam water while the northern side seems to have bore water (some places can get either depending on water demand). I found the easiest way to make the water safe was like Daniel said, just to put it through a carbon filter. The water can be used straight away then without having to have some sort of intermediate storage. Intermediate storage can be a pain once you start having to deal with a moderate amount of water (ie hundreds of litres) as the water needs to be double handled (also if you are using dechlorinating products this can get expensive). An inline carbon filter can be hooked up to the tap and the water sent straight into the tank in one step. For general use this would be fine. If you were keeping Discus, the filtered dam water would probably work really well (its about the right hardness and being soft the pH doesn't take much to drop down below 7). However the bore water could be used too, you would just have to be a bit more careful about the amount of water changed at once, too much and the pH could go higher than you want, smaller more frquent water changes could help avoid this. Incidently Wet Pets is on the bore water. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan_from_nz Posted October 3, 2004 Report Share Posted October 3, 2004 Re reverse osmosis water not being too good, with old tanks gh goes up because water evaporates out of the tank leving the salts and minerals in the tank increasing gh in this scence it is important to make sure you arn't adding too harder water because doing water changes and adding soft water is the only way to reduce the hardness (or peat). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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