Discus Care – Protect Your Discus Fish With The Right Water Chemistry
In my experience so far with discus care; studying, keeping and breeding discus fish, the most common cause of problems is bad water conditions. Discus care is not about the fish. It is about the WATER, and if you don’t know how to maintain the proper water levels, I suggest you pick up Discus Fish Secrets because without that knowledge, your fish are in trouble. I can only cover a few topics about water chemistry here, so I strongly suggest you learn as much as possible.
Probably the #1 cause of water problems is failure to test the water before adding it to the tank. With discus care, this is doubly important because as you probably already know, discus are prone to stress easily. The tap water in your area is full of chemicals designed to help humans, but this is usually not the best thing for your fish. Also remember that your tap water ultimatly comes rain water and runoff, to the chemistry is constantly changing due to the increase in the world’s pollution. For these reasons, it is critical that you test your water at every change.
Chloramine and Chlorine
Chlorine or chloramine are routinely added to the public water supply in many parts of the world. Chlorine is damaging to discus fish and chloramine is worse. The presence and concentration of either chemical can be found with a tester that you can get at your local aquarium shop. “Conditioning your water” is a synonym for removing chlorine or chloramine and is an essential part of discus care.
Water Hardness
If the water hardness is not correct for your discus, it can be adjusted. It’s easier to increase hardness up rather than down, but lowering these values is still possible, it just requires an extra water conditioning step.
About pH
Discus can be picky about pH. Keep your pH between 5.5 and 7. The ideal pH for discus care is about 6. Discus can get stressed at At pH levels above 7. Below 5.5, the pH is can drop too rapidly, so I find 6 to be comfortable for both the fish and the care taker.
This has been a brief overview of water chemistry as it relates to discus care. This only covers the high level basics, and there are times such as breeding when special care must be taken to ensure different conditions. In general, discus are really not hard to care for, as long as you give them what they want. And, what they want is fresh clean water.
