Discus tank upgrade

[Qs Evolution]

Nice, I need to pop in and see if they are still on sale. I think I got my current rams from one of those petsmart sales.

Yeah I work here, they will be on sale till may 21'st I believe.

[TheHighestCrew]

So today added a few more fish:
got 5 WC apisto viejita. my 2 CPDs in. Want to get maybe 4-5 more rams from petsmart.

Added a 20lb bag of eco-complete but it is still not enough need another bag. Got most of the plants down. Need more.

[TheHighestCrew]

don't mind the blue paint I still need to scrape off. Lighting is terrible it is 1 pink "plant" bulb (dunno what kind of spectrum but awful) and 1 acitinic blue. I am getting 4x 5500k daylight bulbs this week to replace them with.

[Darbex]

Probably to late but from my experience I stay away from having black substrate with discus. They tend to darken up when they are over it. I only go with sand for this reason. In my tank I keep the soil in the back hidden behind rock and plants and the main viewing area is sand so when they are over it their true colors will shine. I will try to snap some pics of when they are over each substrate to show you what I mean.

[Darbex]

Also found that the color pop on the discus more when you run a cooler light temp. Closer to 15K+ I had wild discus in about 14K and they looked nice but now I have them in my new tank and its closer to 18K or so and the colors in my wilds are more vibrant

[TheHighestCrew]

Probably to late but from my experience I stay away from having black substrate with discus. They tend to darken up when they are over it. I only go with sand for this reason. In my tank I keep the soil in the back hidden behind rock and plants and the main viewing area is sand so when they are over it their true colors will shine. I will try to snap some pics of when they are over each substrate to show you what I mean.

Yeah I have always kept them in dark soil. They have always been darker too. I actually like the way they look. I do heavily planted tanks always with freshwater so this is a good substrate for that purpose. I still need to add a ton of plants. The 55 looked a lot more filled out than this 75 does. The dark substrate also makes the PBs pepper up. I would say the PBs are my least favorite of the various types I have.

So do you think I should keep the one acitinic blue bulb? I need to get several daylight bulbs or 10,000k for the plants but I could leave the one blue in there.

[Darbex]

Its up to you. I like the cooler temp.

[TheHighestCrew]

Its up to you. I like the cooler temp.

I think I will try both ways. See how it looks with the plant spectrum stuff, then try it with the blue. I'll post some pics and get you guys take on it.

[TheHighestCrew]

Re-scaped the tank a bit, added new piece of Manzanita to the left side. It is still got a bit of the white algae bloom new wood gets. I added another 48" dual t5 both bulbs are actinic blue. So I will put 4 daylight bulbs in the T6 fixture, and leave the t5 blue for the color (the T6 still has a actinic blue and the pink bulb so the tank appears super blue in the pics). The whores had to come out to have their photo taken.

[aquabee]

Love the manzanita.

[TheHighestCrew]

Love the manzanita.

Thanks!

Added 2 yellow fin hillstream loaches, they are pretty cool. Tiny little guys. They like to stick on the glass and love to sit in the stream of bubbles from the air stone.

[TheHighestCrew]

tossed in 3 small 2" red melons today. My big red melon is so gorgeous had to add some more.

[troy tucker]

The tank looks Great! would love to see pictures of the hillstream loaches...

[jeb102385]

Very nice tank... makes me miss my discus tank. I kept a group of 10 albino blue diamonds. I regret sellng them

[cobraden]

Great work with the aquascape! I love planted Discus tanks.