u/nook_803

Picked up eight juvenile discus back in the spring, all around the size of a silver dollar, maybe two inches. Every discus forum and breeder I talked to said the same thing: big frequent water changes are what actually separates fish that stay stunted at four inches from fish that hit six or seven. I was skeptical it would matter that much versus just running a good filter and feeding well, but I committed to it anyway since I had the tank bare bottom with just a sponge filter and a heater.

Routine has been 50% change every single day, sometimes 60% if I overfed the day before. Temp held at 86F, pH around 6.4 out of the tap after it sits in a barrel with peat for a day. Feeding is beefheart mix in the morning, frozen bloodworms midday, and a pellet feeding in the evening, four times a day total when I can manage it.

The growth on these guys has honestly surprised me. Two of them are already pushing five inches and it has only been six months. I lost one early on to what I think was internal parasites, gave the rest a round of metro just in case, but the other seven have been rock solid since. My back is a little tired of hauling buckets every night but looking at them cruising around the tank now compared to the tiny things I brought home, it's been worth every bucket.

Curious if anyone here has tried dropping down to every other day changes once they hit adult size, or if you all just keep the same schedule for life. Part of me wonders if the daily grind is only necessary during the growth phase.

Spent most of the summer refreshing secondhand marketplaces looking for a Sony MZ-R700 that wasn't beat to death or missing the remote. Most listings around here were either water damaged decks being sold "for parts" or sellers asking way more than the thing is worth because they saw one auction go for a lot overseas. Finally found one two weeks ago from someone clearing out their late father's electronics drawer, and it came with the original box, manual, and a handful of blank MDs still in the wrapper.

The unit needed a new battery obviously, but the mechanism itself was dead quiet, no weird clicking on track skip, and the display is crisp with zero burn in. I've been running it next to my MZ-N1 just to compare build quality and it's kind of wild how different Sony's design language was across a few product years. The R700 feels chunkier and more utilitarian, while the N1 feels like it's trying to be a piece of jewelry.

Current lineup is sitting at six players now: two Sonys, a Sharp MD-MT831, a Kenwood DMC-J6, and two Panasonic decks I picked up mostly for spare parts donors. The Kenwood is honestly the one I reach for most because the line-in recording quality on it surprised me, way better than I expected for something that doesn't get talked about much in collector circles.

Still hunting for a decent NetMD unit with working USB transfer since half of mine have connectors that don't want to cooperate with modern drivers anymore. If anyone has had luck getting an old MZ-N10 talking to a newer Windows machine without jumping through a dozen driver hoops, I'd genuinely like to hear how you did it.