Learn how to set up the best discus aquarium for your new pets

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By Randy Green


A real, obsessed aquarist knows that the tank is only as much use as its ability to sustain nautical life. At the day's close, it's your personal calculations and changes that will dictate if your discus fish will live for another week or submit to a natural death in the captive waters of your tank.

Knowing the essentials of an ideal discus fish tank will bring you one step nearer to being able to raise little discus fish types to full maturity. Here are some guidelines to get you going on the right track:

The minimum size for the species' tank which will house discus fish 24 across. Do not put your discus fish in any other tank that is smaller compared to 24 as the water volume will not be enough to raise healthy fish. Use a smaller tank only as a transient quarantining area for new or sick fish.

Tank cycling is a S.O.P. Standard operating procedure, no matter what species you are looking to keep. The minimum time for cycling is one week. Seasoned aquarists may even insist to cycle a tank for a whole five weeks before keeping discus fish there.

With the price of discus fish rising every year, it isn't surprising that private breeders and pro aquarists are not content to take any possibilities with their new discus stocks.

A perfect tank has three kinds of filtering systems installed: biological, chemical, and mechanical. The biological system will look after the ammonia by inspiring the expansion of favourable bacteria that will denitrify the water.

A chemical system, from the other viewpoint, will absorb and disable other chemical products that may build up in the water. The water in your tank is referred to as a system because several normal activities occur in it without your knowing it.

Eventually, a mechanical filtering system will look after solid waste and other pieces that the 2 other systems cannot dump. Mechanical filters are usually equipped with an easy floss mesh that traps big particles in the water. All 3 systems require electricity in order to work, because water needs to be pumped through the system and back to the tank. The renewal of the water must be done continuously to maintain high water quality in the tank.

The recommended pH for a discus tank is 6.5 to 7. Commercial discus strains will flourish tolerably on hard water while the wild strain prefers softer and more acidic tank water.

At about that point in time, it's a wise move if you buy a water toughness testing kit and a pH testing kit, so that you can observe your water closely. Zeolite could be used if the ammonia in the water is getting out of control.

Zeolite is loaded into a chemical filter as a substitute filtering media. This mineral traps the ammonia until it can?t soak up the chemical any more. If the water is getting too acidic, an alkaline buffer might be bought to regulate the acidity. If the water is getting too alkaline, acidifying agents may be utilised as well.




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