Having the Right Tank for Your Discus Fish

Most unlike dogs and cats, fishes can be deemed easy to keep. Even if you don’t have a big backyard for your dog to play and exercise in, a good corner with about a meter or two of space is enough for you to have a relaxing aquarium to look at. You don’t have to train them, and side from the occasional cleaning, they can be kept wherever they are already placed. All the work though, and the expenses, come before the fishes arrive. 

Like fishes taken out of the water, well, literally fishes that are taken out of the water, your discus fish will need a tank where they will live on. Unless you have a river flowing through your house, the fish tank or the aquarium will be your discus fish home for the rest of its life. So you will need to provide it with a habitat that will be conducive for breeding as well as living a life that it’s used to. 

You have to note though that there are certain tank requirements for a particular breed of fish. With the discus fish, you will have two main concerns, and this is its depth and volume. The depth and the volume of the tank will be based not only on the size of the fish, but also on the swimming habits of the discus fish. A deep tank is usually the norm, 18 inches would suffice. With the volume of water, most discus fish experts would agree that for each discus fish, 10 gallons would be necessary. 

To maximize the surface area, a rectangular tank is usually recommended. When buying a tank, the surface area is one of the important considerations. The tank surface area is necessary because this is where the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchanges. So if you have 3 to 4 pairs of discus fish, a 75 gallon tank would be good enough. If you can, try to add an outside filter, especially if you have a large tank, s this will be able to help out in increasing the aeration and the filtration of the tank.

The need for a large tank is not only because they can grow big, but because they grow big fast. So if you plan on buying a smaller tank know and just upgrading to a bigger one later on, you may find that this would be futile. You would just be spending more in a short period of time. A small tank will just stunt their development and will stress them out. But also remember, if the tank is too big, the young discus fish can become overly skittish and can also stunt their growth. 

If you can afford to, buying two tanks is also advisable, especially if you can afford it and you want to breed your discus fish later on. You can use the smaller while the discus fish are young, and later on as a breeding tank. 
