new 240 planted discus tank help

[pockets]

Hey peoples. Need some advice. I decided to completely redo my 240 to a community tank. With all my tanks I start off with an idea and as I'm going I change it up 100 times before I'm done. I had only planned on doing a hardscaped community tank. Its filled with rocks and a large driftwood scape. Once I started adding fi**** was missing plants. I put a few in from my 120 planted tank (low tech tank!) And they are doing decent. I bit the bullet and got 9 blue diamond discus and I'm in love. I want to now fill this bad boy with plants but I've got play sand in there for substrate. I need help finding a discus friendly substrate that will promote plant growth too. Still going low tech in this tank. Planning to fill with crypts, value, swords, and dwarf sag.

Also I'm going to attempt to change the substrate out with out pulling fish, probably gonna do sections at a time as not to stress fish too much. So if anyone has done this id love to hear how you did it and what the outcome was.

[aquabee]

You can actually use the sand as a substrate and add root tabs underneath it (I like Seachem root tabs). You need to replace them only every 3 months. This will especially work if you're going low tech. I've had plants do beautifully in gravel or sand without sand substrate. I used root tabs, Seachem Excel, and Seachem Flourish, along with a nice light. How many watts per gallon and what kind of light do you have?

Congrats on what seems to be a gorgeous discus tank! Any pics of the fish yet??

[pockets]

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[pockets]

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[pockets]

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[jeb102385]

Nice fish... Good luck with tank

[wesleydnunder]

I would wait on the plants for a while. Your discus have some growing to do and need pristine water to achieve optimum growth. They need several feedings a day with frequent water changes and substrate vaccuuming. This will be more easily accomplished with fewer plants. You can always add plants later. The play sand is a good substrate for them. I've had discus over several different substrates and I think sand is the best. I used pool filter sand from Leslie's. It's really cool watching them blow little puffs of water into the sand to expose food.

Mark

[jeb102385]

I with I still had my discus... Too bad they are so much work!!

[BeefyG]

I love dicsus... when they are in other people's tanks, lol! I used pool filter sand with mine and root tabs with amazon swords and they did great. I started with blue diamonds too. They still are some of my favorite fish but my water out here is too unstable without aging it and I'm lazy.

[Tetranerd]

I used quickcrete builders sand. And add supplimental fertilizers (liquid, root tabs, feeding too much). Plants are doing great and Discus search the substrate all day for food. Its a cross of 75% sand, and 25% small gravel. Looks like a natural sandy bottom.

[Totenkampf]

root feeder type plants like you describe actually prefer smaller particle sized substrates like sand if you use root tabs to provide nutrients. just make sure that it isnt more than a couple inches deep and be wary of pockets under rocks. sand doesnt allow much flow so it tends to develope anaerobic pockets of bacteria which can offgas hydrogen sulfide gas. if this builds up into a bubble in the substrate then bad things can happen. plant roots actually breathe so this will help with movement under the substrate. mark has a good point about growing them out so if you decide to add plants then maybe pick some plants that make an impact but are easy to clean around, like a large sword or a thin screen of val at the back. great discus!

[Totenkampf]

I used quickcrete builders sand.

i used that for hermit crabs but was unable to determine if it had calcium or the like in it, i didnt think to do a vinegar test on it. Is your pH pretty stable?

[pockets]

Hey guys. Thanks for the responses. I've been sick all weekend and have been a lil out of pocket. I think I'm gonna stick with the play sand for now. I've got a few plants in there now. The 3 swords aren't doing too great but I just picked up q ton of root tab and gonna add that tonight. Its not too thick, maybe 2-3" at its thickest. My 120 and my sons 55 is filled with mts so I'm gonna catch some tonight and throw in there to help keep the sand from developing gas pockets.

I'm gonna add a ton of val but ill do that over time. One so the discus can mature and 2 I haven't found much of it in the market lately. Plus ill add a lot of crypts and a few other oddballs but I really want this to look minimal. Natural.

The discus are doing great. I started w 4. They were extremely skidish! I got 3 more a lil bit larger and 2 more the same size for a total of 9 and they've calmed down a lot. Feeding twice a day. Mixture of bloodworms, beefheart, and krill. Tankmates consist of (so far) 9-roseline sharks, 12 kerry tetras, 5 cory cats, 7 albino corys, 3 bristlenose, and 5 snails.
Gonna fill tank later with cardinals and rummys but after discus are a lil matured.

As far as tank specs 84"x31"x24". 2-hager 300w heaters. 2-fluval 304 and fx5(will swap out 304's with another fx5 in near future). Lighting 2-48" dual compacts 55w (got used from fish gallery. I believe the are 5000k, but not positive). I also have 3 36" regulare florescent lights in there. These cast a blue hue over the water and make the fish glow like you wouldn't believe!

[Totenkampf]

yeah, i was going to mention that i added MTS to mine to prevent anaerobic spots and they work great for that until there are a million of them. i then had to add clown loaches to thin them down so that there was enough O2 saturated in the water.