They are colorful and swim with grace. Discus fish are especially common among the freshwater tropical fish keepers. But, if you are not able to spend a lot of time regularly for their care and overall on the maintenance of the aquarium, you greater go for other species. A lot of efforts are required for keeping Discus fish successfully in your aquarium.The fish originated from Brazil and it came to the United States by 1920. Initially, it comes in two colors - red and blue. Lately a lot of breeders have experimented on them and produced successfully a large range of Discus with several shades of color.
When planning to maintain Discus fish in your aquarium, you need to keep in mind a incredibly vital factor to begin with. They constantly prefer to live in groups. So you should really maintain them in a group of about 7 to 10.
An additional crucial factor you will need to bear in mind is about their lifestyle. They want plenty of room to swim about. You need to keep them in sufficiently big aquarium. There should really be at least 10 gallons of water per fish in the aquarium. They can grow up to 8 inches, so you should certainly provide enough room for such growth also. The temperature of the water is subsequent fundamental factor. They are comfy with the temperature of about 85° F. If there is any sudden alter in the temperature in either direction, they are unable to cope up with such a change.
Discus fish originated from the quiet waters of Amazon. Naturally, they prefer still water. Even if you strategy to have some streams for filtration purposes, they need to be slower and ought to be kept out of the way of their normal swimming area. They expect ideal conditions of water for their wholesome living. They are pretty sensitive to slightest changes in the environment around them and can get sick or may perhaps even die in a rather brief period of time. So you should present fairly fantastic filtration method for the aquarium and should check frequently the ph level and the levels of ammonia and nitrites with aquarium water test kit so that they are at all times kept under control. The water will need to be kept clean and all the particles of left-over food as well as the fish waste accumulated at the bottom should certainly be removed from the aquarium as promptly as possible.
Discus fish are quite fussy about the food. They are regarded as as fairly slow eaters. When you offer you them something new, they may possibly not eat it for days. They can survive with out food even for a month. Even although they food such as like fish insects, blood-worms and mosquito larvae, you should certainly give them a balanced food containing fantastic quantity of protein.There is 1 even more variety of food which Discus fish enjoy to eat - beef heart. However this is an high priced food and it need not be offered often. Discus fish will require several hiding places in the aquarium. If they get scared and if they can not discover suitable location to hide, they gets stressed and they may possibly hurt themselves by hitting the walls of the aquarium.
If you want to keep them in an aquarium with other freshwater tropical fish species, you have to be cautious. They will be happy to share the aquarium with angelfish and tetras. Nevertheless, you must not keep them with Uaru fish because they might possibly eat Uarus. If you are a 1st time fish-keeper, you really should not go for Discus fish. You might possibly uncover it challenging to manage them with their food habits and high expectations about the conditions of water about them. Instead, you can start with species which are straightforward to keep like catfish or goldfish. When you are trained to keep them successfully for some time, you can introduce Discus fish in the aquarium.