Hi,

I'm looking at setting up a new tank with some Discus Fish. Does anyone have any suggestions re tank size, plants, rocks etc etc?

There are two main 'types' of Discus, wild and captive-bred. Captive-bred discus are hardier and more adaptable to a wider pH range, plus they come in an array of colours and patterns such as Snakeskins, Red turks and Blue turquoise.

As Fishyfins has said you can keep these fish with others or just by themselves. Suitable tankmates include smaller characins (do your research however as some are known fin-nippers), catfish (i.e small plecs and corydoras) and Dwarf cichlids (i.e apistogramma, keyholes).

RO (reverse osmosis) water is highly recommended due to it's purity and low pH however it will need to be re-mineralized before it is added to the tank as RO water in its pure state will send fish into what is known as 'osmotic shock'.

I would highly recommend large pieces of bogwood for hardscape, Sumatran driftwood also looks very effective and both will help to lower the pH of the water. In terms of plants Vallisneria is hardy and makes an excellent background species, discus look absolutely fantastic against a thick backdrop of this plant. Other species to consider include Amazon swords (Echinodorus amazonicus), Cryptocorynes and Sagittaria. Take a look at Tropica

i have discus

there's couple of factors you need to take in to account when keeping them

• miminum tank size depends on how many fish
• do you want to raise juvies or buy an adult breeding pair? - 6 juvies (min needed) will set you back about £40 each or you can pick up a breeding pair for c £200
• if you want a community tank you are looking at min 300l and more maintenance
• maintenance regimes vary a lot in discus keepers opinions, but one way or another you are looking at changing 100% of water over a week, juvies will require some sort of daily maintenance, fully grown adults need less food and less maintenance
• the simplest set up would be a 300l bare bottom tank with a single external filter, good couple of heaters set at 29C in a quiet location of the house and 3 or 4 30% water changes per week
• things to google - discus varieties, 3 stage HMA, BIDKA, UKDA, Simply Discus, Discus South, Daydream Discus, Chens Discus, WRG Discus, Devotedly Discus

good luck!

I've never managed to keep discus fish - no matter what I tried - one of my biggest problems was getting them to eat - they are rather fussy or at least mine were
Instead I set up a tank of angel fish and tetras - i even ended up with a breeding pair - almost as nice as discus but alot easier to care for and cheaper - good luck

I've also got discus, we have had them for a few years now.

I echo pretty much the same as what everyone else says.

Make sure you do plenty of reading up first of all and maybe join a discus forum such as the scottish discus (My OH is admin there ).
You will need a big tank, ideally a QT tank too. Will need either HMA or RO, or both as we use. We managed fine with just the HMA in our last house as the water was very good, but now we have a pricate water supply it is not so good so we use both.
We also have an external filter, very handy so you can maintain it with minimum disruption to the fish. That way you can add things like peat or crushed oyster shells to help alter the PH.

We keep our discus with some rummy nose tetras and cardinals, so it's a good idea to have dither fish but often people keep them on their own.

We don't have any decoration in our tank now! To start with we had bog wood and gravel etc, but since they need since regualr cleaning it is easiest to maintain a bare tank. Plus it stops any scrapes if they get a scare and dart about.

Feeding them generally has never been too much of a problem, we feed ours beefheard flake, garlic flake, sea weed, brine shimp etc. We have tried a number of different foods and the flakes are our preferred one.

Have you kept tropical fish before? I wouldn't reccomend discus as your first fish, but once you have some basic experience and have bought all the equipment (can be expensive) they are easy enough to keep.