You have kept run of the mill tropical fish for years and fancy something different, discus are considered to be the top end of the market. So how do you get your tank ready for the ultimate challenge, keeping discus fish? This month Chris Ingham takes us step by step through the change over process. From keeping basic tropicals to the ultermite challenge, Symphysodon discus, the king of the aquarium.

It's as easy as one, two, three.

STEP ONE:-

The very first thing to bear in mind is that one discus will need ten gallons of water when fully grown. Secondly discus are shoaling fish that need the security in numbers which will need to be at least six.

So on this information so far we have now worked out that a sixty gallon aquarium is needed as a minimum size for starters. You can get away with more discus if you have the right mix (males & female etc) , but to be fair to the fish it is best kept within these guide lines. Anything less then this and you should not be looking at keeping discus. Unless you are stocking the tank with a bonded pair only.

If fact the larger the tank and the bigger the shoal of discus the better. In large tanks changes in water 'make up' (minerals and salt content) in larger volumes of water alter slowly where as in smaller tanks the changes in PH, KH, Ammonia etc will be more rapid and could stress the discus where in a larger tank any changes will be slower and the discus will acclimatise better.

Although Ammonia should not be present in any tank, but especially a discus tank as they will not tolerate this at all for too long. The tank can be as shallow as fifteen inches deep to 30 inches deep or more, it is a myth that discus must have a deep tank, although they do enjoy the extra room to swim around. In fact buy the biggest tank you can afford if space allows. If you get the chance of an upgrade this will make life easier in the long run where water quality and maintainance is concerned.

Nearly half way already.

STEP TWO:-

If your tank can be used for discus, the next thing to check is, can any of the equipment you already have be used? Any bog wood in the tank may be okay to use, although I choose not to. It does look nice but it is a rotting decaying piece of wood and may cause a few problems down the road. So I normally go for the fake root wood etc. If you have natural gravel or river sand in the tank this is fine.

But if you have had any hard water species like Malawi or Tanganyikan cichlids in the tank you will need to take out all the substrate or tufa rock etc and change it for river sand or natural gravel before adding any discus. Then slowly bring down the water hardness to (3 - 10) and PH (6.5 -7.0) and water temperature will need to rise to 86f or 30c. You may have to add an extra heaterstat to get the temperature this high.

If you are running a under gravel filter this can still be used, but it may be a good idea to add a power head to the uplift to increase water flow and water quality.
If you intend to keep the filter working, all the better, but make sure you soften the water slowly as not to kill off the beneficial bacteria in the filters if changing from hard water fish keeping to soft water.

Care needs to be taken when you use a power head, it will need to be powerful enough to turn the water volume in the tank over at least four times in one hour. But not so powerful it forces the fish to fall over if the flow is too strong. A good tip here is if you do have a powerful powerhead, fit a spray bar to it a fire it across the water surface.