[bradac56]

My first thought would be to reduce the lighting as you said a few hours a day and
see what that does. It sounds like the algae is out producing your plants so starve
them a little. Adding more plants especially the C02 loving fast growers would
probably help as well.

~

All wood rots in water so nothing your going to get outside of plastic sticks is going to
not rot. Do you have brown water? If the wood is leaching tannins you will know so
I wouldn't worry to much about that yet and that shouldn't hurt your fish and plants
anyway. And as long as your rocks are hard (non-porous and brittle) you'll be fine as
long as you boil them first to get rid of any nasty stuff on them.

~

I'd imagine Seachem fertz gets a bit expensive for a tank that big, I'd take a look at
the Fertilizing forum here and study up on the PPS or EI methods.

- Brad

 

[bradac56]

Your keeping Discus in that tank correct? The beefheart & bloodworms are fine
but you should ween them off of meat a bit. I would feed them a good quality
vegey flake food four to five days a week and then the beefheart & bloodworms
two days a week for a better diet. I was feeding 100% meat to mine when I
started out as well and they did OK until I started listening to what Jack Wattley
writes and now they are much happier/healthier.

Second don't worry about your high'ish PH unless your trying to breed those Discus
as they will adapt fine. I keep my tanks at PH7.0 just so they won't breed that's
what my breeder tanks are for. Worry more about your KH buffer levels if that
gets out of wack your PH will spike and dip and kill fish not that that's happening.

- Brad

 

[bradac56]

yes, i have adult (almost)discus that are 2 years old & about as big as my hand. i attempted to pair some off and try to breed them... i had 10 in the beginning and lost half of them due to hexamita. after extreme heartache and much trial and error im left with 5 fat, happy discus. ive tried feeding them other things than frozen, but i cant get them to eat flake or pellated food. they do get some veggies from a twice a week feeding of emerald entree. I'm not trying to grow them into monsters or anything.

I'd give them some tough love and let them starve a few days if they won't take the flake food.
They will come around there just extremely spoiled The veggies are a good thing as well.

~

Your bulbs should be in the 5k to 10k range especially if your using C02 but I'll let Hoppy talk about
that he's much more knowledgeable than me on most subjects.

- Brad

 

[bradac56]

its rated for 450gph.

Yes but that's only your un-impeded flow rate which isn't the same as tank size
*but* it is rated for a 265gal tank so it should be OK. I only use Eheim's which
have a better impeded flow rate (water moving though tubing and media) than
the X4 but still 190gph should be plenty.

- Brad