Last Updated: 7/23/26

Quick Information
Description
Setup and Water Preferences
Sexing
Breeding
My Discus
Links and Pictures

I am new to these fish, so most of the sections below are empty until/unless I have time to fill them in.

Common names: Discus
Scientific/Latin name: Symphysodon aequifasciatus
Maximum length: 6 to 8 inches
Colors: Varies - combinations of black, blue, white, green, orange, yellow
Temperature preference: 82 to 90 degrees F
pH preference: 5.2 to 7.7
Hardness preference: Soft
Salinity preference: Low to medium
Compatibility: Poor
Life span: 10 to 15 years (if they survive)
Ease of keeping: Impossible
Ease of breeding: Difficult

I have wanted discus for years. I have studied up on them for a decade. In early 2020, my 26-year-old plecostomus died in my 65 gallon tank. After quarantining some other animals, I emptied the tank, disinfected it with bleach, soaked in dechlorinator, and let it go fallow, empty until early 2021 when I set the tank up with discus-compatible fish.

On 4/19/21, I bought my first two discus. I put them in a 20 gallon quarantine tank that was bare with some ornaments. I decided not to name them so as not to jinx it but then one started to go up to the other and bite/suck on her side, and I ended up naming the mean one Brutus and the victim Angelica. Brutus is a blue checkerboard discus, and Angelica was a golden pigeonblood discus. Angelica had been bullied in the store's tank per the sales girl who said that she and Brutus would be best buddies! She also said that Brutus was male, and Angelica was female even though they were only three inches long, and I have read that that is too young to tell! I had pulled the material off the Penguin Biowheel and had it in the filter of the 65 gallon tank for a month so it should have had good bacteria on it but maybe that did not work. The ammonia was up to 0.5 ppm on Thursday so I bailed half the water that night. Angelica died on Friday morning. By Saturday, the ammonia was up to 2 ppm despite the water change, Ammolock, and not overfeeding. I made the decision to drip acclimate Brutus into the 65 gallon tank that night. The congo tetras kind of flipped out over this huge new fish for a day but the two rams were like, "Hey, nice to meet you!" Brutus seemed like he had been there all along. He is confident and eating well. He does like to spit out half the food he sucks in, sometimes multiple times. Discus are finicky!

As of 5/12/21, Brutus is okay but has become a recluse, mostly hiding in the cave area I made. I went ahead and got two more discus slightly bigger than Brutus. These will be the last for the foreseeable future no matter the outcome. I wanted to get two more that were different varieties than Brutus but the store only had Brutus' variety and one pigeon blood who was not huge. Since she was in a tank with another blue checkerboard, and they seemed like friends, I got him too. The new checkerboard discus is named Caesar, of course. The pigeon blood is his wife, Calpurnia. Of course, I have no idea which are male and which are female. I finally got the 20 gallon quarantine tank to cycle the week before and moved it up a flight to the level with the water and tub drain because I cannot bail water up and down the stairs with my arthritis any more. So, Caesar and Calpurnia will be in quarantine at least two weeks unless there is some crisis.

I released Caesar and Calpurnia in to the 65 gallon tank after work on 5/26/21. They were drip acclimated. Brutus was excited but scared. Caesar chased him a bit.

As time passed, Caesar and Calpurnia kept beating up Brutus until he was small, black, and hiding most of the time but they were doing well.

Then, in early 2022, my three discus became more and more damaged. It looked like someone was biting and/or sucking on their sides and shredding their fins. I watched the fish off an on all weekend for weeks but never saw anyone harming them. I decided on 2/19/22 to move the two clown plecos and one ram to my 50 gallon aquarium out of desperation. I did not want to move the clown plecos and ram but, if there is a chance they harmed the discus, it was the better choice for the discus at least. The internet says that clown plecos and German rams never harm discus.

The discus seemed to stop having new damage after those fish were removed but Calpurnia and Caesar kept hiding 90% of the time and were not eating much. I found poor Calpurnia deceased on 3/10/22. She was 4.25 inches long. Brutus who is in the worst condition actually rarely hides. Caesar acts like someone is out to get him but who? The congo tetras stay away from the discus, and Calpurnia is gone. I do not know how to help the discus. Brutus is starting to regrow the support rays for his fins.

Brutus never thrived after I put in Caesar and Calpurnia. He finally gave up late on 4/5/22. He was only 2 7/8 inches. Caesar should be regrowing his fins and damaged areas but they have not really changed. On the plus side, he finally figured out how to eat floating cichlid pellets. I am hoping now I can cut back on feeding the messier foods that go all over which will improve the water quality, and Caesar can put on more weight with the dense pellet food.

Caesar died on 10/31/22. Discus want to kill all discus with them, and then, when there is one, they die of loneliness. After he helped kill the other discus, Caesar just hid all the time except to eat (when I was not looking), and he literally rotted with his scales shedding off even though nobody was bothering him, and he did not have any obvious disease. He just died from being alone and stressed. I measured him. He was 5.25" long and 5" high.

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So, I told myself if I survived a diagnostic colonoscopy on 7/6/26, I would try discus one last time. All the fish had died off in the 65 gallon aquarium, the last being a congo tetra who died on 4/17/26. A month or so after that fish died, I treated the tank with a full treatment of Kanamycin to hopefully kill off whatever bacteria seemed to be plaguing the fish. Since then, there were only snails in the tank. I kept putting in food, for the snails, but also to keep the nitrogen cycle going. The snails are a few sickly assassin snails, and a few of their "prey" snails which are a small species of ramshorn snail and Malaysian trumpet snails.

I bought three discus on 7/20/26. The intention had been to buy 5 or 6 as I had read that is probably why mine did so poorly. Now, I'm not so sure. Since it was Monday, the crazy fish people had raided the store over the weekend, and the pickings were slim. I ended up only getting three fish. The small discus section only had two left. From the big discus section, I got one fish that was $100. I've been listening to the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series all year, so I named the fish after the main characters. The bigger discus looks to be a powder blue. His (okay, I have no idea!) name is Carl. The two smaller discus are Princess Donut who looks like a pigeon blood and Katya. Katya looked pitch black in the store tank. I'm always so delicate with the fish, especially discus, and the employee catching them was very aggressive and chased Katya around for a long time. Being dark, she was hard to see. So, after a few days, Katya is not pitch black! She is a very dark version of the naturally colored discus pattern so she is very interesting.

When I had discus before, they hid, attacked each other, barely ate, and just withered away. So far, these fish only rarely hide, only rarely chase each other a tiny bit, and they are actually coming to eat. They aren't scared of me! I thought the fish I had before were normal but they were petrified. Why? Maybe it was not enough discus at the same time, although three is hardly a lot. Maybe it was the other fish I had that I was told were discus compatible and would make them feel safe but instead made them fearful, and they couldn't get enough food since the other fish hogged it all up. Whatever the case, it's totally different this time. I think the biggest improvement aside from no other fish was completely skipping quarantine which meant skipping dealing with nitrite and ammonia and huge time-consuming and fish-scaring water changes. Going right into a cycled tank is a totally different ballgame. The fish seem really content. Now, I just hope that they can avoid whatever infections plagued the previous fish that resulted in their fins rotting off. Since the tank was fallow for almost three months, I hope any baddies died off without fish hosts.

Photos of my Discus:

Photos are listed from newest to oldest.

I have not processed any photos as of yet.

Yeah, this is a crime! I am just too busy but I never got up any photos of my original discus let alone the new ones! You can see plenty of prettier discus on-line though so it's only my loss. I like to look back at past animals even though it makes me sad.

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