pictures from me as promised (load warning)

finally got around to getting good pics(didnt know how to use my wifes cam) so well here yall go enjoy




Mixed african cichlids - 55g





125g south american tank



Neochromis Greenwoodi "velvet black" - 55g



Haplochromis sp 35 "tomato - 29g


my daughters guppies - 20g



My wifes betta - 6.6 bookshelf aquarium






My 60g planted tank

Great looking tanks. Love the Greenwoodi, they've become one of my favourites.

make a trip this was and i have fry ready in a few months

I said it before and I'll say it again,Great looking tanks Todd!Great job buddy!

lol thanks man, the planted tank has been runnin unfiltered for 2-3 weeks just added a marineland 150 i think just for circulation really

nice Todd.......

Tanks look great, nice setups in all of them really!

The unfiltered tank is also the one with Discus? That is pretty amazing to be honest. How are the water parameters doing in it? Are you going for the walstad method?

I was always advised to stay away from planted tanks and anything but adult discus. In my mind the needs of plants vs discus are so drastically different I don't see much of a happy medium. (temp, aeration, cleaning/water changes, lighting ect)
That being said your discus look really good in those pictures, did they just get added to a planted tank or have they been raised their whole life in something like that? I really would like to know because I have only heard so many things against it that I like seeing the other side of things.

Nice looking setups congratz

strikingthematch wrote:

Tanks look great, nice setups in all of them really!

The unfiltered tank is also the one with Discus? That is pretty amazing to be honest. How are the water parameters doing in it? Are you going for the walstad method?

I was always advised to stay away from planted tanks and anything but adult discus. In my mind the needs of plants vs discus are so drastically different I don't see much of a happy medium. (temp, aeration, cleaning/water changes, lighting ect)
That being said your discus look really good in those pictures, did they just get added to a planted tank or have they been raised their whole life in something like that? I really would like to know because I have only heard so many things against it that I like seeing the other side of things.

yes the unfiltered is with the discus i really wasnt going for the dws method it just kinda happened when it happened my filter just quit and it stayed clear monitored my parameters the stayed even except my ph dropped a bit. I have done a bit of reading and more often w/c's of smaller amounts you can get away with. they have been in that tank since last saturday so a week.

guppy breeder wrote:

yes the unfiltered is with the discus i really wasnt going for the dws method it just kinda happened when it happened my filter just quit and it stayed clear monitored my parameters the stayed even except my ph dropped a bit. I have done a bit of reading and more often w/c's of smaller amounts you can get away with. they have been in that tank since last saturday so a week.

Yeah those things happen, I moved to sponge filters on most of my tanks. The main displays have canisters but I still worry the motors could go dead any time. Hopefully that won't even happen but you just never know.

Still pretty amazing the tank didn't get that upset by the loss of the filter. Must have enough bacteria in there to keep things going or course if the bio load is not that high it would at least slow down any spikes.

I have read that it can be done as well. I know there are those out there that have managed to successfully raise them in planted tank but having seen how fragile these guys can be it always made me think it would be hard as juvies. Now an adult that you don't have to feed as often or has a stronger immune system would most likely have next to no problems.
See my thinking always was that the two tank setups discus vs planted would not coincide at least for younger ones. When I made my chart (haha yes I know I am a major nerd) I came up with a few problems I just could not get around. Sorry in advance for the long read!! When I get typing it just seems to happen!!! Also wanted to say this is no way is to tell you what to do or say that you are wrong lol just want to put that out there. This is simply what I have read, gathered, when I was looking to house my discus for the first time.

In a discus tank the suggested temperature is roughly 84-88 degrees. For many plants that spells disaster. If you do it the opposite way and lower the temperature down then you risk health problems on the discus due to their immune systems slowing down. I decided that if I wanted to maintain healthy fish then I would keep the temp. higher and get sword type plants that like warm water.

I know not all people strictly follow this rule but I think it would be commonly accepted that young discus tanks require much more frequent water changes then most other fish. That in itself is not a bad thing for a planted tank but my issue was that I was adding fertilizer to my planted tank. So if I was constantly doing water changes (50% daily on my juvie discus tanks) I would have to constantly replenish fertilizer. Now this is not a huge deal since i get dry ferts. and mix my own but it is still a pain. Here again if I used swords fertilizer would not be needed.

Then there was aeration. In my planted tank I keep a calm surface because I inject CO2 and the more surface agitation I have the greater the amount of gas escapes and is therefore wasted. In contrast my discus tank I try to keep the water well aerated because the temperature is higher and naturally holds less oxygen. This one was a tough one but here again the sword type plants would have no need for added CO2 and I could get away with it as well.

Light was next on the list. I know not everyone follows this but I don't use high light above my discus tank. It does make their colors look nice but they seem much more timid and don't like to come out of the shadowy darker areas of the tank. I switched to a dimmer light (2x 36 inch single bulb one above each 75 gallon discus tank) and while their color don't show as strongly they are much more relaxed and swim around the whole tank much more willingly. This again is solved by the use of sword type plants that require low light.

This last one was what I couldn't get myself to do. The thing that made all the difference was cleaning. I feed my juvies 4-5 times a day. They produce tons of waste and with bare bottom tanks it cleans up in 5 minutes. The problem I had was that no matter what a substrate in a discus grow out tank would mean that I could not clean it as well as a bare bottom. What I ended up settling on was that I would grow out my discus in a bare bottom tank to both maintain the best water quality and to make it super easy for me to frequently clean and when they reached adulthood they would get transferred to a normal tank. This way at adulthood I intend to only feed them once or twice a day and while they will still produce a good amount of waste it will be more manageable.

OK enough of that lol! I can honestly say that I have only ever tried it my way so I don't know how it works out in other tanks and it seems like for every person that has some terrible story about xx way there is another person that says they have used it for xx years and it works fine. For right now I felt like I had to take the safest route due to the money invested and maybe later I can experiment.

Good luck! As I already said the tanks look great! I hope I am not

wow long post but good info, I'm doing a 30% change every 3 days today i added a marineland biowheel filter i dont inject co2 i have a soil based substrate so most of the plants nutrients come from there i also daily dose brightwell products my temp is at 82 or so under "high light" 220w total light yes my discus do hide but they are also still trying to get use to the activity in the room i believe.

Sounds good to me. I am sure they will get used to all the activity as time goes on.
I took another look at those pictures and noticed the soil. The plants should take root in that very nicely.
Keep an eye on them, in a group there is always a few that just never seem to adjust and there is really nothing that can be done about that. The downside is that a few or even one can spook an otherwise calm group.
30% every 3 days is within reason and should keep things pretty clean. I would monitor the nitrate level to see how effective the water change schedule is. If you notice that week by week they continue to climb then increase the frequency or amount done.
The good or bad thing (depending on how you look at it) is that if discus are unhappy they will let you know VERY quickly. If their appetite dwindles or they darken up it almost always means trouble is ahead.
You have to keep me undated on this venture. I always wanted to compare growth rate and health in a planted (aka normal tank setup) vs the sterile bare bottom huge water change setup. I don't have the resources to do something like that but hey maybe one day lol.
Sorry for the thread jacking again, this just really caught my eye.

oh i really dont mind i figured something like this would pop up lol it happens and i will keep people(including you) updated

Thanks guppy!

Now everyone back on topic quick!

faster before the new wears off lol

**update**

i no longer have all the tanks only keeping a few
also i no longer have my discus they just wasnt liking the guppies.

keeping 4 tanks 55 mixed cichlids 20g with red flank duo and my wifes betta and my 60 planted tank

takin my 60 to my moms with the betta, everything else I have sold or gunna go in storage

What do you have that you don't want? I would be more then willing to take it off your hands if you donate it twards the Cichlid Conservation Fund.

nice collection