Looking forward to your progress in setting up this tank for eventually housing some beautiful discus!
My friends all know I have fish - usually about 20 tanks worth, mainly angel breeding and grow-out tanks. Last Sept, a friend asked me if I would be interested in her old 125g. It had been sitting unused (and uncleaned…) for about 2 years and she wanted to reclaim the space. Since she was asking only $100 it was a total no-brainer! It was especially timely since I had several discus that I had obtained from members in my local fish club that were needing a larger tank. I had obtained them at 1-1.5" and they were at the time 4-4.5", and in a 55g.
This is the tank when I picked it up:
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After actually getting it home in one piece, I filled it up in my unfinished basement next to the sump pump and let it sit for a couple days to make sure it held water. Then it needed a *thorough* scrubbing. After that, I just had to get it set up and start buying equipment for it.
Still to come: pictures showing the tank's evolution over the last few months.
Looking forward to your progress in setting up this tank for eventually housing some beautiful discus!
It’ll be fun to watch this from empty to full of discus!
If the discus are happy, I’m happy
Nice tank but lots of fish
That will make a great discus tank Linda, looking forward to seeing what you do with it.
Pat
Your discus are talking to you....are you listening
Here is a picture of the first incarnation the 125. Filtration is 2 extra large sponge filters (one taken from my grow-out tank) and an Eheim pro 4+ canister. In one of the Eheim media trays, I used the ceramic beads from the filter on my grow-out tank. I was hopeful that by just moving my sponge and filter media over there would be little to no new cycling on the 125, and that seemed to be the case. I tested the water every couple days and never saw evidence of a cycle. The tank has two 300w heaters with an Ink Bird controller set to 84 degrees. I used about 1/4 inch of pool filter sand and a small piece of wood with some anubias and java fern as decoration.
At this point, the only livestock were 3 misc mixed discus (my first test run at growing out babies) and 2 mandarin discus, all obtained from members of my local aquarium club at 1-1.5". The 3 misc discus now range in size from 4-4.5" and don't have the best shapes. The mandarins are 5.5-6" and turned out much better!
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Nice upgrade and very nice tank!
Nice tank Linda. I like the wood piece with Anubis. Looks like the discus like it too. Your fish look happy and I hear grow outs are difficult even with a good stock, so kudos to you!
Patty
If the discus are happy, I’m happy
The next phase in tank development was to add a few brochis cats that I got at the local fish club auction and 4 heckle cross discus that I bought from Larry Bugg (they all had a 6 week QT first).
My husband also bought me a huge piece of driftwood for the tank. It wasn't the branching look I had wanted, but it's a cool piece, and he was very excited about it.
I scrubbed it, sanded anything sharp, and added some anubias to it. I didn't have anything large enough to soak it in, so I went ahead and put it in the tank, weighting it down with some large rocks. Well, that lasted for about 2 days before I came in to find this. For about a month, I had a nice "floating island" effect as it very slowly sank.
It's hard to see in this picture, but I also put some pothos clippings on top of the tank to root in the water.
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Here's the tank after the wood finally sank. At this point, I also added 6 cardinals tetras. I would really like maybe a dozen more, but I am having a very difficult time finding any that aren't tiny. :/
The plant floating across the top of the tank is just a large artificial bamboo plant. My light seems to be too strong for the anubias and barring a way to easily dim it, I chose to just put something in the way. This seems to have worked really well (at least for the time being).
In this picture, you can see the pothos starting to grow across the lid of the tank.
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Wow your tank looks really good. I love the way you have that wood piece seated. I love the colors and varieties of your discus too. Gorgeous set up!
Patty
If the discus are happy, I’m happy
Last edited by Lindad; 07-22-2018 at 08:48 PM.
Beautiful tank and fish Linda Love that piece of wood.
Pat
Your discus are talking to you....are you listening
I'm not sure if the picture in post #10 is showing up - it was, and now it's not (at least for me). So I'm reposting that one just in case.
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Love the addition of the wood! Looks great!