[Fish Guide] Wild Discus Care in Your Home Fish Aquarium

Wild Discus are the beautiful type of fish, if you like Discus in the fish aquarium hobby, you should be a fan of them. For taking care of Wild Discus, there have some steps that aquarium owner should do regularly in order to keep them healthy.

So let’s start from tank setup.

Fish Aquarium Setup for Wild Discus

No matter how bad you want to have Wild Discus in your fish tank, first things should be considered is to provide good enough space for each Wild Discuss. In general, Discus are peaceful fish, but they do establish territory. Especially in the breeding season, the mature pair of Wild Discus would find a spot that has no other species around, prefer quiet and slow water flow to prepare for breeding. In the wild, the area that covered with branches and a driftwood with the shape of straight up, wild discus habit like to find those place to chill.

We always prefer to provide fish for a natural alike environment in order for fish to stay claim in your aquarium. For 70 gallons fish tank, we preferred to house NO MORE than 6 wild discus, this ratio we have tested the better for wild discus to stay claim and relax. It also it provides space for them to growth.

For aquarium decorations, the simple aquascape will be the better. You should place some stone with 1 or 2 large size of wood would be enough. Remember, we are not doing design of fancy layout aquascaping planted tank. That is the most common mistake that I have seen many fish keepers do. The put so many rock and stone, with lots of wood and plants for their Discus. Well, if your fish tank is 1000 gallons, then that will be no problem. But in general, 70 – 100 gallons home aquarium you will need t consider ongoing maintenance, and the water quality for wild discus.

As you see many Pinterest and Facebook photos, those planted tank Fish Aquarium looks cool with discus? Yes, those are for demo purpose. But you cannot house them for a long period of them. Why? It is because Discus prefer water temperature higher than average aquarium plants needed. They like to stay in the temperature range of 27 – 29’C, and most plants prefer 22-26’C for healthy growth. This is a conflict for the aquarium setup right?

Water Quality for Discus Fish

Straight Forward, you will need crystal clear the water if you want your Discus to live healthy and happy. Whether you keep Domestic Bred Discus or Wild Caught Discus Fish, you need to make sure your fish tank with crystal clear water. Unstable water parameters or bad water quality can be caused Discus fish in stress or diseases.

For Wild Discus, you need to make sure the parameters in the range of pH 6 – 7, with softening acid water can claim the fish. Eventually, they will show you the beauty side of them. We preferred to place some Indian Almond Leaves in your wild discus fish tank to lower the pH and soften water.

Frequently Water changes preferred for Wild Discus. Some preferred weekly water changes, but again fish keeping hobby you are dealing with live species, not a computer or smartphone. There have no “One Rules Apply to All Situations” for the aquarium hobby. If you feed often 2-3 times a day with 6 discus in your tank, then you should do water change more frequently. Why? Well, in common sense, more the fish eat the more waste will produce. Eventually, water quality is turning bad quicker. Personally, I do the water change every 3-4 days, for my Wild Discus. If the fish in fry or juvenile stage, I even do daily 80% water change. But we are not talking about breeding and grow out juvenile this time. So, we just keep it in a frequent Water change is fine.

As we mentioned about water temperature previously, the range of 27 – 29’C are most suitable for Wild Discus.
Any internal parasites or infections fish disease, we warm it up to 30-33’C for healing.

Fish Food for Discus Fish

Most of the wild discus don’t eat dry food or pellets, and you have to take some times to prepare live or frozen food before feeding.

Brine Shrimp – fry/ juvenile discus.
Tubifex worm – young discus (1.5 inches size)
Bloodworm, Blackworm, Beef heart burger – young discus (2 inches size) to adult discus.

Daily Feeding – 2 times a day preferred

Discus Fish Deworming

Flagellated protozoan is a common problem for Discus Fish. Even you have good water quality, there still have a chance to cause that. Ok, we do not go for fancy terms, let’s make it simple to explain for fish keeping like you and me.

Internal Parasites

When you see your wild discus in Darkness Skin or Unclear Eyeball, most of this case is causing internal parasites in your fish body.

Recommend Medicine :

Waterlife Octozin

Aquarium-Munster HEXAMOR

https://www.aquarium-munster.com/en/fresh-water/remedies/hexamor.html

External Parasites

When you see your wild discus fin rolling, white spots or some little white worms move on the body. This is the sign of external parasites. Take action to do the treatment as soon as possible.

Recommended Medicine and Treatment :

– Daily Water Change 50 – 60%
– Add Aquarium Salt
– Also check out Aquarium-Munster Remedies and see which infection your fish cause

Basically, we covered most daily cares for Wild Discus here. Keeping Wild Discus is not that difficult. Again, like all other aquariums as long as you maintain good water quality and early prevent fish diseases, they do not have any problem at all. I keep my pairs of Wild Discus (showed the picture above), since I have them for 6 months so far, they did not have to do deworming. And I heard some fish owner do a monthly regular deworming process. In my opinion, less medicine for animals are always live healthier, and stronger.
You do good prevention, you do not need to apply much medical treatment for them. Clean food, Clean Water, Clean fish tank are always the first rules for my aquarium.

So, if you caught up any problem, please don’t hesitate to ask in the Comment section below.