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keeping discus in a community tank2007-11-24 23:38:00

I was talk ing to the manager of my local fish shop and he told me that it would be ok to keep discus in my community tank. My tank is big enough to keep these fish. All i can find on the internet about it is that they are delecate to water quality. So my question is will they be alright? will they kill all my other fish? or was he just trying to push for a sell? the fish shop had guppys in with some discus.

Answers:

HI there.

I am currantly switiching my angelfish over to soft water in the hope of keeping discus with them.

First off, you will need an RO (Reverse Osmosis) unit to soften the water to Take all the metals and impurities out of it, discus can not live in hard water, most breeders and shops keep thier discus at a rate of 20ppm KH and anything over 20 to70 ppm will kill them stone dead.

They need a ph of about 6.5, no higher than 7!

the techincal side of keeping them is very complicated, its not just a case of throwing in some chemicals and be done with it.

You have to take into account the buffering actions of your water when you try to lower the PH and if you have RO water then you need to add enough tap to balance out the mineral loss from the RO unit.

Some fish can live in these water conditions, others wont. although they are cichlids, most other cichlids wont tolerate these waters as they need brackish waters (slighlty salty)

angelfish, corydoras, cardinal tertas, Rams and a few others will live happily with discus, but not many others.