I first started keeping tropical fish a little over 3 years ago, in November 1993. By March 1994 I was hearing rumors and stories about this mysterious but beautiful, almost impossible to keep, fish called Discus.
On March 23, 1994, two friends and I went to a local Discus and angelfish hatchery to check it out and get our first Discus. I was absolutely amazed at the number of fish present in the hatchery, and the size of the breeding pairs of Discus. They were the biggest aquarium fish I'd ever seen, and I had not imagined that they could grow so large.
I bought two quarter size Cobalt Blue Discus, and brought them to their new home, a 20 gallon long tank with a few other fish in it. The original companions for my two new charges were a couple of neon tetras, two Corydoras catfish, two brass tetras, and two Harlequin Rasboras.
>From everything I'd heard, I fully expected the Discus to be dead within a week, and that my newly found fishkeeping skills would not be finely honed enough to take care of such majestic fish. It turns out that nothing could be farther from the truth, as my first two Discus are now my oldest and largest Discus, approaching 3 years of age on March 23rd.
Their journey, however, has not been without incident.
One of the highlights of my "relationship" with these fish was coming home from work one day to find them intently spawning on one of the filter intake tubes. Not only did they not die in the first week but my Discus were SPAWNING! I had a mated pair from the first two Discus I had ever owned. The female would go along and lay the eggs, and the male would dutifully follow her. I dropped everything and just sat there watching the show for a while. At that point they were used to me so I did not disturb them by being there. I was all excited and wondered how I would take care of the babies that I was sure were forthcoming. Well, the babies didn't come. The eggs turned white and within about 48 hours they were gone. I figured "ok, they'll get it right the next time." This happened now and then for a while. At one point they were spawning almost every two weeks or so, with the same results. The eggs turned white and then got eaten.
One day I realized why this was happening, when I caught the "male" laying eggs and realized that I didn't have a mated pair at all! No wonder the eggs never hatched. I had a pair of females, something that, from what I've learned since, is not all that uncommon with Discus. To this day, they still hang out together.
Sometime after the first set of spawns, they started getting sick. They had strange white spots along the body. I started looking through my fish books, including Untergasser's DISCUS HEALTH, but could not find anything that looked appropriate. These were small pimple-like lumps that sometimes looked like fungus but sometimes didn't. The lumps were too big to be ich as far as I could tell, and didn't look like any sort of worms. Since they were pretty tame, I could "pet" them, and when I did, I discovered that the white lumps were soft and could be rubbed off. At the time I had a couple of algae eaters in the tank who would go along the sides of the Discus and clean off the white stuff. The Discus didn't seem to mind, although now I don't normally keep algae eaters and Discus together.
I tried various medications to get rid of this. They didn't really respond to anything much until I started using Aquarisol (copper) and doing a small water change almost every day. Just water changes alone didn't seem to help, nor did the other medications. After 2-3 weeks of this routine, they started to improve. Their skin color lightened to normal and the "pimples" were much less prevalent. At this point I lost the two corys that were in the tank, after I found out too late that they were sensitive to too much copper. It didn't seem to bother the Discus though. Every now and then, one of the pair still gets this "disease" which I still have not been able to identify for sure, though there have been a number of guesses by different people.
Anyway, all this treatment had apparently pretty much destroyed the biological filter bed in the tank, as I noticed an almost-constant low but present ammonia level. I started doing water changes from cycled tanks and added another filter to the 20 Long to help boost the biological activity. I also moved all of the other fish out of the tank to help cut down the load, and started thinking about what to do next.
What to do next was buy them a larger tank. I went and purchased a 45 gallon high tank, as by this point the Discus were about half the height of the 20 long. I moved them in there, added a bigger filter, and they were very happy. They were the only inhabitants of that 45 for quite some time, until, as a gift for fish-sitting for a friend, I was given an Alenquer Red. I didn't know what would happen if I introduced the Alenquer to the two Blues, but I didn't have any other place to put the new arrival, so I was prepared with a divider just in case. It turned out that after the original "new fish" syndrome they got along quite well, and, along with a new pair of Corydoras Aeneus, were the occupants of the 45. Still no signs of a real mated pair though.
Everything was basically happy in the 45. All 3 Discus loved the vertical space, and the tank, with its large viewing area, looked great in my room.
One morning, however, at about 5am, I awoke to the sound of splashing water. I got up as fast as I could, turned on the lights, and noticed that the level in the 45 was about 3-4" from the top, and the floor was very wet. Since I live directly above my landlord, I did the quickest thing I could think of at the time, which was to panic. After that I killed the power to the tank and tried to locate the source of the leak, thinking and hoping that at worst it was coming from one of the filters. I also grabbed every towel and blanket I could find and banged on my roommate's door to wake him up so he could help me.
This turned out to be a smart move because he had two things that helped me both to keep my apartment and to keep my Discus alive. These were a 55 gallon rubber trash can and clean clear plastic bags to line it with, and a "shop vac" that can pick up water.
I started draining the tank into the trash can, and stuffing towels in and around the tank to pick up the standing water before it could go downstairs. At that point I was mostly thinking about keeping a place to live, but as the water level in the tank dropped, the inevitable thought "what about the FISH?!" popped into mind. I was contemplating having my roommate catch the fish while I drained the tank, but fortunately, the leak stopped with just enough water in the tank for the Discus to stay vertical. The leak turned out to actually be along the bottom of the tank, but at this point there was little enough water left in the tank that the leak appeared to stop. At that point I was able to calm down, clean up the remaining water from around the tank, and start to think about what to do next. I moved the Discus and corys into the lined trash can, added an airstone, and dangled the heater into the water by wrapping its cord around a wooden dowel. I made sure the heater was submersed but not touching the bottom. Then I called work and said I'd have to take a vacation day.
I decided that I'd had enough of 45 gallon tanks, especially after a fish shop owner mentioned that because of their dimensions and thickness (or lack thereof) of the glass, they were the most likely ones to leak. I had had my eyes on a dark framed 40 that I'd seen in a fish shop, so went off to get it and its matching stand. By the end of the day all the occupants were in their new home, apparently none the worse for wear. They're still there today. The tank is bare-bottomed, but I have some plants in plastic pots which the Discus rearrange to suit their own tastes if they don't like where I've placed them after a water change.
I now also have 3 other Discus of my own, two that I've raised from 1/2" babies, given to me by a friend in return for caring for their parents, and a third (pigeon blood) that I purchased at a local pet shop.
In addition, I am also currently taking care of the parents of the two babies (the babies are now about 3" size), as well as a large blue and two other Alenquer Reds, who are staying here until my friend's apartment gets finished. The parents have spawned a couple of times but each spawn was quite small and I was not successful in my attempts to keep the babies alive once they became free-swimming. There was some evidence of them feeding off the sides of the parents occasionally, but most of the time they stayed near the bottom or wandered aimlessly.
Other Discus in my life have been Little Red, Greenfish, Big Blue, and Baby Blue. Little Red and Greenfish are sadly no longer with us, but Big Blue and Baby Blue are fine.
Little Red got the name to distinguish between him/her and "Big Red" who is my Alenquer Red. Little Red was a Candy Apple Red who I just could not resist, although I now know that the bright red color, small size, and large eyes, meant a stunted fish. Little Red suddenly died one day, of no apparent cause.
Greenfish was an Emerald Green. There was some warning with Greenfish before his untimely death, but not enough to diagnose and treat the problem before he died. So far, Little Red and Greenfish are the only two I've lost.
Big Blue, who also came from my friend who I fish-sit for, had a 10 gallon tank to herself for a while, until another Discus friend insisted that Big Blue come and live in his 125 gallon community tank. Big Blue was doing fine in the 10 but I realized that my friend was right; she really could use more space. I know Big Blue was female since she spawned once while in the 10.
I still have Baby Blue, a juvenile blue Discus I got from a pet shop, who was very unhappy in the 20 Long tank that the original pair of cobalts came from. "BB" would tend to hang diagonally in the upper rear corner of the tank. Once moved to my roommate's 55, Baby Blue's behavior changed totally, and what I had thought was a sick fish turned out to be just an unhappy fish who, even though small, wanted more "elbow room".
For some reason, I have never found appropriate names for my original "Cobalt Twins", but they are one of the main attractions of my room and "run" back and forth across the front of the tank to greet me when- ever I come through the door.
I'm still waiting and hoping to come up with a breeding pair of my own so I can try my hands at being a Discus foster parent again, which is not easy to do when you're working at jobs that don't involve fish care. I consider this my next big challenge in Discus keeping.
Things have come a long way from those first days with the "Cobalt Twins" when I was afraid I wouldn't even be able to keep them alive.