u/Affectionate_Dream47

Goodness the difference in these Discus. This female Red Batata x Jacrecappa is, I think my personal favorite discus of these 6

The stupidest thing I did was start with gravel in the 1st place. It's a trap, a prison for uneaten food and waste. A race against rising nitrates that you never catch up to.

Discus do not tolerate high nitrate counts, and stacked gravel beds are basically septic tanks...steamy nasty Lil discus porta potties.

When the nitrates hit 120 ppm, I reverted to every 5 day water changes and feeding once a day..nitrates never below 80 ppm...what a horrible trap. These Discus were miserable.

Over the course of the last 8 days, I removed 90 lbs of gravel, 45 lbs at a time over 2 water changes, 4 days apart. And replaced it with 65 lbs of CaribSea Super Naturals Aquarium Sand, Aquascape, the white sand.

The fish in the aquarium now? It's like seeing them first time, behavior COMPLETELY different! Nitrates...20 ppm

The difference is stunning! Meet my Discus again, for the 1st time!

Got these from my wyze Discus cam. In the foreground is Cruella, the Sakura Leopard princess (from hell!). She really likes Duke, the Snow Panthera, also pictured

I always leave a pretty large portion of the hikari floating bloodworms. I love when they remember them and pick them from the surface like that....

This is so addictive...

I have 6 discus, 2 Snow Pantheras (paired, confirmed, keep reading), 1 female Sakura Leopard, 1 Red Batata (male), and 2 male Royal Floras. My hans discus are pushing 5" now, the pantheras are 6.5"

I noticed the male and female Pantheras doing the mate dance. I also noticed, my female leopard, also, body wiggle and dancing (trying to) with the male panthera Duke.

The leopard, we call her Cruella, was mean and chasing everything, attacking any discus, not named Duke.

Cruella and Duchess were evening cleaning the same site multiple times throughout the day yesterday.

Both females attracted to the same male, never heard of it?

Guess what we wake up to this morning? Two clutches of eggs, each female taking turns fanning them, Duke swimming around like....WTF HAPPENED?!?

Has anyone heard of anything like this? A discus threesome?

Bad timing, I'm putting the tank in vacation mode, and we'll see what's left in days.....

It’s all fun and Gladiator Games until someone pokes their eye out.

This is Horace, my 4.6” Royal Flora Discus, up and coming, getting stronger, challenging everyone, everything in the tank.

His fate was sealed when the Discus royalty arrived on my doorstep…whom we’ve since dubbed Duke, and Princess (yes, mated pair).

For a couple days, they tolerated Horaces harassment, but what did God say on the 8th day? “Let there be an ass whooping?” someone look that up will you?

Woke up, yesterday morning, waited till the lights came on, six discus came up, one missing? I look in the corner, back side, as black as night, Horace….

Broken #4 dorsal ray hanging there, gouge or scratch across the left eye, ¼” scrape (deep) on left side of his body, and several (like 6 or 7) bite marks on his forehead. I mean he is tore up….

Bless his little Chicken Hawk heart…I hope he pulls through. I guess he found out Duke wasn’t a chicken 🐔

He’s in a 20 gallon high, a mixture of kanaplex and metroplex, and daily water changes.

PH 7.0, and zeros across for the rest.

Oh and…my stunted discus, Lemon Drop died yesterday 😢

By my estimate, these guys spent about 62 hours in shipping bags.

What started as a simple Golden State Discus order turned into quite the adventure. I originally ordered two Scarlet Snakeskins, but due to a shipping mix-up I received two Snow Panthera discus instead (which honestly are absolutely stunning).

Then came delay after delay. What should have been a straightforward overnight shipment turned into more than 60 hours in transit.

Needless to say, I was pretty freaked out when the box finally arrived. I was expecting the worst after that much time in the bags. Fortunately, both fish pulled through. They're currently in a 20-gallon hospital tank, active, and doing better today.

Pretty amazing how resilient these fish can be.

Finally turned a corner. Of the 8 discus I originally ordered, 6 survived.

The remaining Orange Jasper has finally started eating. I removed the separator and she’s reintegrated with the group. She still gets harassed quite a bit, but at least she’s eating now.

The two Red Floras are really starting to color up, developing a deep rich orange with beautiful turquoise speckling.

The two wild-strain Jacrecappa × Red Batata hybrids are doing well too. The smaller one, “Nickel,” is a fearless eater and always first to the drop. The other one, “Pancake,” is easily the largest discus in the tank at around 4.25 inches.

The last Sakura Leopard is mean as hell and absolutely runs the tank, but is doing very well.

And the last Jasper is still struggling some, but definitely improving.