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Aquarium with discus fish

• Water Chemistry: Testing the Waters
You should initially test for chloramine and chlorine, pH, and alkalinity. Once the levels of pH and alkalinity in your raw water have been established, you can decide how you want to handle the situation.
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• Toxins in the Water Supply
The water company can be your friend or your foe. Chlorine or chloramine are routinely added to the water in many parts of the world. A simple color test kit will determine the presence and concentration of either.
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• Water Hardness and Alkalinity
It may be that your water hardness and alkalinity are perfect for discus but unfortunately this is not always the case. It is far easier to adjust hardness and alkalinity upwards as when keeping hard-water fishes, but lowering these values is by no means impossible. It simply involves another step in the water conditioning process.
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• Reducing Water Hardness
It is best to test the pH and alkalinity of your water before making any investments in reverse osmosis or deionization equipment. As long as the general hardness and alkalinity are in the ranges mentioned above, you should have no trouble.
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• About pH
Discus are very particular about pH. Keep your pH below 7 and above 5.5. The ideal pH for discus is 6. At pH levels above 7, discus are stressed. Below 5.5, the pH is inclined to plunge rapidly, so I find 6 to be comfortable for both the fish and the fishkeeper.
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• Mechanical Filtration
We start with the mechanical filtration. Sometimes this is called prefiltration. The main goal here is to remove large floating particles of uneaten food, fish waste, and plant waste.
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• Biological Filtration
Mechanical filtration is meant to take particles out of the water, nothing more. Usually mechanical filtration is confused with biological filtration because the same media is sometimes incorrectly used for both types of filtration. Biological filtration is that bacterial conversion of nitrogenous compounds described above in the nitrogen cycle.
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• Chemical Filtration
Some tanks do quite well without any type of chemical filtration at all. Frequent small water changes are employed to remove nitrate and other toxins. However, water chemistry varies radically in different areas and chemical filtration is sometimes necessary simply to keep the fish.
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• Activated Carbon
Activated carbon in granular or powdered form provides one type of chemical filtration. Activated carbon removes discoloration, dyes, colors, phosphate, chlorine, chloramine, antimony, arsenic, chromium, hydrogen peroxide, potassium permanganate, some of the heavy metals and many other toxins in varying degree.
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• Peat in the Aquarium
Peat, from Canada and northern Germany, has been an aquarist's helper for generations. Peat is an amazing substance in that it gives off valuable tannic, fulvic, and humic acids that reduce pH and acts as a natural ion exchanger and reduces carbonate hardness in the water.
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• Building Your Own Tanks
First things first!. When cutting , try and cut to the center of the glass, if you try and cut off a 1" strip (for example), the break would not be square, but would lean towards the narrow strip. When assembling the tank, the sides, front and back are placed on TOP of the base. Silicone can be any 100% silicone, I use DAP, and GE brands from the builders supply.
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