Re: Chasing the impossible dream?

• To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
• Subject: Re: Chasing the impossible dream?
• From: wmbrady at chesapeake_net (Bill Brady)
• Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 10:24:51 -0500

>From: Calvin Chin <cfc at pacific_net.sg>
>Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 23:43:35 +0800
>Subject: Chasing the impossible dream?
>
>A dream of mine and many other aquarists is to keep the beautiful Discus in
>a planted aquarium. However, it's always striking a balance between feeding
>the fish regularly for it to be beautiful and having lots of algae problems
>and having nice plants with no algae problems and starved skinny fish.
>
>I find that the Discus fish need to be fed quite large proportions of food
>to enable it to grow large quickly and this represents a strain on the
>aquarium. The only solution it seems is to change water very regularly. What
>other ways are there to combat algae besides this? I've tried keeping SAEs
>but they too love the Discus food and ignore the algae now. I find that
>using this bacteria culture called Aqua-10 does help to some extent too.
>
>I sure would like your views of how you handle the algae if you do keep
>Discus in your planted tanks.
>Calvin Chin
>
>
Calvin,

You are quite accurate in identifying the problem with alga when keeping
discus in planted tanks.

I handle the problem by using Nitrex and a homemade coil denitrator to keep
nitrates down and monitoring phosphates & reducing them using PhosGuard
resin as needed.

I keep fast growing plants, and tough plants which I scrub with a cleansing
pad if I happen to get behind in the battle.

It's more than worth the battle, for discus in planted tanks are different fish!


- Bill Brady ... On the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, the land of pleasant
living - Harwood Maryland USA

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