I have a 40g breeder (36 x 18 x 17 high) that has recently been taken down, having been a Lake Tang setup for the past 5 years. I sold the fish off today and will scrub everything out and start completely from scratch. Got a couple of classic Eheims on it.

I want to plant it and keep some hatchets (maybe) and some discus as display fish - no breeding. I know they like to be kept in groups but is this tank too small for that? It has a relatively large footprint for its size so there is more room for territory than my narrow 55, to my way of thinking.

I have kept many, many types of fish over the years and am a very successful fishkeeper, but have never kept discus and would love to have some.

Edit: Almost forgot - I have moderately hard, alkaline water (this is why I've not kept discus in the past) but I now understand that if they were raised locally and I am not intending to breed them I might not need to fuss too much about water chemistry. I have kept angels with great success in this water.

So you want to know if you can keep a discus in a 40 gallon tank?

I got some good news and bad news for you.

Good news is you can keep discus in 20 gallon tanks, and the bad news is. They are delicate to the water quality...

Also, I raised discus before and they had eggs. now the petstore I gave the discus too didn't bother ordering the discus for the regular days :P and I didn't bother getting store credits, I just wanted plants haha!

Discus young are hard to raise. How hard was it for you?

I might not be able to reply to send me a message and I can get back to you ASAP

some discus (not the wild ones) can adapt fine to a not too much acid water ... keeping the PH on 7,0 (top) you can raise then fine. But if the tap water is the problem, you can use a buffer (discus buffer/seachem for example) and kep the PH at 6,6 to 6,8. The colours will be much better and so will be their life.

best regards !

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I agree with Jim!! Man I had my Discus in a PH of 7.8 and hard water,it worked fine. The ONLY time you should play around with PH is for breeding.
Discus like STABILITY!!! If you start playing with PH and its fluctuating up and down Discus will hate you!!! I've done this for 12+ years and yes I have bred lots of Discus. HTH

Thanks for all of the info - I took in a breeding pair of silver angels for the time being but depending on how they work out I will want to go ahead and get some discus for this tank when the angels move to their own bare spawning tank. I saw a good deal on some Hans discus a couple of weeks ago and they looked great to me, so it is encouraging that many have kept them in conditions similar to mine.

I have had a local guy tell me not to do it - no way - I'd be doomed to disappointment and heartache or something... but I've done very well with some extremely sensitive and nervous wild caught P. leopoldi angels I obtained a while back, which have requirements similar to discus, and they are doing fabulous now, which has given me confidence!

Discus are hard to keep, and should only be kept in a mature tank.

This statement is so false that I'm laughing and crying at the same time. If you don't research and talk to other Discus owners I would agree. If you do a little looking and talk to Discus owners and breeders you will get a TON of very good advice. Discus are no harder to keep then any other fish. The only hard part is the 50 to 100% water changes!!!!!

I've been keeping fish for 25 years and have heard this about discus forever, but I feel up to the challenge, even if they ARE as finicky as all that. I know people who have had horrible luck with them, with a disease wiping out their entire fish room, discus choking on small tetras, stunted discus, deformed discus, etc. You name it.

However, there are certainly strains developed that are hardier and not so delicate, and as someone who prefers wild-type fish anyway, the overbred strains do not interest me. I hope to find some nice, stripey wild-type discus at some point, and I won't be intimidated. My fish tend to die of old age or are sold off, and that includes some species considered "delicate" and difficult to manage.

I do 50% weekly PWCs on all my tanks already, even the 150-gallon, so that is just a part of life in this house, lol.

40 gallon breeder is a very nice shaped tank. You could put a few discus in there, but keep up on water changes.

why do discuses require 50%-100% water changes?

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Calling aquariums and fish boring is like calling a hott model ugly.

http://www.aquariumforum.com/f2/save...fish-2930.html

If you like them large,you do massive water changes on them when they are small. Plus they like to eat like pigs!!

you know that discus love to live in freshwater which is free from any wastages like ammonia,nitrite etc.but most of the aquarium have nitrite and ammonia problem..if you add high ph then it's a lot of problem...for discus tank the ph should be 6-6.5....if you change 50%-100% water then only you get ammonia,nitrite free water..hat's why partial water change is necessary...