«

Mr. Perfect

This is Mr. Perfect. Well, he’s not quite perfect. His eyes should really be bright red. Other than that, I think he’s rather attractive. He is the largest of our discus, has a decent shape and he doesn’t have as much peppering as the other Pigeon Bloods. He’s the tank boss and bullies everyone else away from food.…

»

The driftwood fire without that burned…

I’ve always like sticks. I think every young boy does. You’re walking in a park one day and you look down and see a cool looking branch. You break off the irregular bits, swing it around a few times and suddenly you have a light saber, or a walking stick or just something long and pokey. You carry it around for an hour or so until you lean on it too hard or whack it against something with too much force and your sword becomes a dagger.…

»

The cover up of the cover up.

I am a know-it-all in the fine tradition of Cliff Clavin. The fact that Sarah doesn’t kill me in my sleep is really a testament to fine parenting and her Quaker heritage. My latest bout of blowharditis was in relation to the substrate in our tank. As I previously mentioned, we started out with a substrate made of a little bit of natural sand (light tan) and a whole lot of fluorite (black).…

»

More new fish!

Last Friday, Sarah and I received 2 Brilliant Turquoise discus and 16 cardinal tetras from Discus Hans. The fish arrived in the morning via fedex and were shipped in a styrofoam boxed. They are really beautiful, confident eaters as soon as we let them out of the bag and best of all they have calmed down the overall aggression level in the tank. Obviously, part of the aggression problem was just the fact that we only had four discus in the tank.…

»

Our Aquarium Plants

The best way to raise juvenile discus is in what’s called a bare bottom or BB tank. That is, a tank with no substrate and only potted plants or artificial plants. Discus are messy eaters, they need to eat often and they are also very sensitive to water conditions. Gravel or other substrate makes it hard to remove uneaten food and waste. People who are focused on growing their fish as large as possible stick to BB tanks.…

»

LLoyd

This is Lloyd, one of our first four discus:    He’s a juvenile red maze pigeon blood discus. His hobbies are eating, pooping and bullying. One of his eyes is deformed, but we love him anyway. Unfortunately, he started to have long stringy poop last week. You can see it if you look closely at the picture. He was still active and eating, but we were concerned because we had read that stringy poop is one of the big signs of poor health in discus.…

»

Tank inhabitants

After a week of having the tank setup with no flora or fauna, we went to Pacific Aquarium in the city to buy plants and fish. The person who initially helped us wasn’t working on the day we returned. That original salesman had approved of our discus and tetras in a lightly planted tank plan. He even suggested the correct lighting and additives that would support the plants we wanted.…

»

Our New Discus Tank

I’ve always enjoyed keeping fish tanks. Mainly goldfish, but I’ve also had other tropical varieties. Unfortunately, a series of die offs soured me on the hobby about ten years ago. Well, about a month ago Sara and I decided on a whim to get a new tank. Our friend Dave sent us a link to a picture of Discus fish and we fell in love instantly. Only later did we read the plethora of articles talking about how the Discus was, in addition to being the “king of aquariums”, one of the most difficult species of fish to care for.…

»