Howdy everyone!
Hope you all are doing fantastic!
Today I am back with another interesting blog in another beautiful day!
What I will gonna discus in today’s blog will be about the most colorful exotic fish named as Discus!
Yes the wait ends here.
A lot of you wanted to know about my perspective over discus fish. Well Here I am back with this. So let’s not waste any bit of time and straight dive into it!
Discus is a tropical fish which
is the native to our regular chiclids! You know chiclid? Those small community fish with blue or yellow various colors?
Discus is also a chiclid but in a larger shape and form which differs from our regular chiclid. Mainly they are family members! As they belong from the same family, doesn’t makes them completely of same nature. Their characters are different.
Discus is a calm tropical fish which often likes to stay under worm condition. Have you ever heard of the diseases white spot? A white spot disease happens to fish mainly because of not maintaining temperature. I had my some fish facing this problem where I was suggested to get the water temperature level to 30 degree Celsius. I heated up my tank and finally my fishes were good in shape after 7 days around.
For discus you need to always maintain the water temperature up to 30 degree Celsius.
I know this temperature is quite warm but as said, Discus are warm water fish. They are raised in warm temperature. So adding them to a new tank, if the temperature is not maintained, this beautiful fish will had a lot of stress which can be an issue for both for the fish and the owner. So maintaining the water temperature in the case of this fish is necessary.
Secondly what I personally find interesting about this fish is their body shape. Have you ever heard of the angelfish or saw one?
I hope you might as angelfish are one of the most common kind fish while keeping fish. Well this discus fish has the same kind of body structure where there boy is flat, having really small mouth which doesn’t opens up that much . Discus are low movers which means they can not move much faster.
They can have red or yellow colored eyes
which can be really attractive and their body coloration is too much to inhale. In the wild there is not this much variety available but due to captivity and breeding in aquarium tanks, a lot of color variation are seen. Discus are really calm fish that we all know they are doesn’t makes them fully calm in different ways.
Yes while in the time of eating they are really calm eaters, they will not swim faster to get to food but as they belong from the chiclid family, they are territorial.
Males are mostly the territorial kind. I have seen males fight a lot when they are kept together in a tank. I know you have seen a lot of instagram posts where people are keeping a lot of fish in a tank and they are calmly swimming by but a lot of them are just kept of for some period of time or something else can be done.
Well male discus are really territorial so while buying discus fish, my recommendation will be to get 4 to 6 discus together where 2 will be male and another four will be female. In this way they territorial fish problem will not happen. And my suggestion will be always to get them all together when buying.
If you have an intention of buying them separately it will often create an issue. Fishes will be different sizes and shapes which can be an issue.
In terms of tank mates
discus can be kept with small fishes. You can not just keep any fish as their tank mates as discus are slow movers and slow eaters. Most of the time they are bottom dwellers which makes their feeding process slightly difficult.
My suggestion will be to add small tetra fish or other small fishes which size can be near 1 inch to keep as tank mate.
Or in other case what you can do is you can only keep discus fish together in the tank. This will be most safest way. Also you can create a planted tank for you fish. Discus wont gonna create an effect over them as they would not gonna destroy our decoration. I know it hurts when you decorate a live plant tank and it gets ruined by your aquarium fishes but in this case discus got your back.
Usually they are really slow eaters and as mentioned back, discuss are bottom dwellers so feeding can be an issue if you add some pallets which will float at the top!
I am not saying that the wont gonna eat out of the top but what I am suggesting that you should try to give some shrimp or pallets mixture into the water which will eventually reach the bottom.
And I must remind you that do not add something frozen. Like people can sometimes by mistake add frozen food to their fish but in the time of the maintenance of the discus fish, you shouldn’t add frozen food. Instead if the food is frozen, leave it for a while it will automatically decrease it’s temperature !
At the end I will say keeping a discus will be worth-it because of the decent coloration of this fishes.
So consider having a school of them.
I will meet you tomorrow with a new blog in a new day! Till then, stay safe and keep your pet’s safe