As a fish enthusiast i think all fish are great and have their own distinct qualities and characteristics, As far as anyone's opinion is concerned i think that they should be able to keep what fish they want with out being insulted, with that said i feel that this site is a great place for ALL fish lovers to come and post questions and comments that are appropriate. If arguments start then it becomes a turn off for those people who are coming here to get and give information on the thousands and thousands of diff types of fish there are in the world. I think oscars are GREAT i would not keep them as they are not my style of fish or have the type of characteristics that i am looking for in a display fish however I love watching them in other peoples homes and seeing the different displays they are in. I keep cichlids and community tropicals, and am thinking actually about switching my big tank over to a planted discus tank with mixed tetra and drift wood. I love my cichlids and think they are wonderful however, age is starting to come into play in my tank and i am losing fish periodically due to them just living out their life expectancy. It's very sad to watch a fish that you have had for many years pass into the great big lake in the sky, as the numbers in my tank dwindle i am starting to think i want to do something diff and set my tank up with something a bit more docile and colorful. If any of you have any advice on discus as this is a fish i have never considered keeping until recently, i know they love planted habitat and need plenty of places to hide, with a 125 gallon tank i am not sure how many i can keep and how many diff types of tetra i can safely add with out having conflict with the discus, i was also thinking that i may want to add a ram or two. as i have cichlids i have ample filtration, i need to know what types of lighting i will need to have as well as if i should keep the two power heads in the tank along with the filter acting as a power cycler in the tank, is it too much turbulence in the tank for discus? my thinking is that with the tank being six feet long i need to have enough motion in the water, and my cichlids have thrived in this scenario very well for many years.
any info that you could provide would be GREAT, i have not made my decision as of yet however it's something that i am keeping in the back of my head and the more info i get the closer i will come to making up my mind.

thank you in advance
Brandon

Hello Brandon. I used to have diskus, and unfortunately, due to a domestic issue at the time, no longer do. I responded with my opinions to a woman on this site who was asking if anyone thought she had enough plants in her tank for diskus. I wrote her quite a long reply that you might be interested in, but I havn't heard from her. I like what you seem to have in mind for your tank though. I don't know what a ram is, but anything that swims around too quickly will bother diskus. I had a 20 gal tank with two powerheads/undergravel filter, and a hang off the back filter, and I used a double 40 watt 2 ft flourescent only to grow a tank full of anacharis, which comes in leaf sizes from dime size to say six inches diameter, as well as java moss and java fern. These plants do ok in med to low light as opposed to grasses and others which need a high output light. Both java moss and java fern grow right on the wood and look really nice IMO, and I had some amazon sword as well. I grew the same plants (with different fish) in a 60 gal tank with 4 40 watt 4 ft flourescents, and that worked fine. As for turbulence I would keep the two powerheads and just adjust to what you think they like. Plants will dampen the flow too. I noticed that diskus in numbers are much happier, and they seem to do very well with a school of tetras, of which I had cardinals and neons. I fed the diskus(and tetras) blood/black worms live, which I kept in the fridge and rinsed daily, and I used a cone type feeder with holes so the worms don't fall to the bottom and burrow into the substraight too much. One day I'll get another diskus/tetra tank going again, when and if I can get my pair of talapia to breed. That is my use of the potential diskus tank now. These juvinile talapia seem to be friendly with each other, they have dug a mating/breeding/whatever hole, and they're very people friendly. It's hard to get talapia that won't beat up on others of their own kind, and I would never have diskus with them due to their voracious appitite, eating habbits, and continuous pooping. Keep me posted with your diskus. I would buy very young ones as you probably will, but look at adult ones of the kind you get because somtimes one that looks nice as a baby can get rather drab as it matures. I'm experimenting with reverse undergravel filtration at the moment. I use a large canister type filter (they're great, and I know you like them too because I've read many of your input in the forums here), and I run it's outflow backwards through the UG filter. I have to do some gravel maneuvers so I don't get boiling of the gravel around the down tube, but so far I think it's working well, and the bulk of the debris get caught in the canister and not in the gravel. PS: I just wanted to point out my weird way of dealing with my favorite beloved fish who have died, usually of old age. I put them in the freezer! After a year or so they end up freeze dried, light as a feather, and they're beautiful, as if I had them proffessionally mounted. I'll bet that when they're totally dried out I could shalack them and they would be able to be mounted on a stand without decomposition. I just like to open the box in my freezer and show myself and my son good old 'Pingy', our loved dojo of many years. Good luck Brandon. Peter

I think you're right about that. I've taken the undergravel filter's attatchment that is like an elbow that goes on top of the riser tubes and stuck it on the powerhead outflow. This in turn dampens the current and deflects it upward (if you turn it upward). I've been able to greatly reduce the current this way. I've been wanting to create another diskus/tetra tank but have held off since the tank I was going to use has a pair of breeding talapia. One has eggs in it's mouth! I'm not counting on raising baby talapia yet because in captivity babies usually get eaten but it's fun to see what happens. I've had diskus lay eggs on a rock over and over again, and every time, after a week or so, they eat them. Peter