This section "Discus Care" will give you an insight into keeping Discus fish. The various sections outline the conditions they require and a guide to choosing the right equipment.

The care of Discus is really not that hard its all about keeping water and buying quality disease free fish to start with. The majority of tropical freshwater fish keepers with some experience under their belts will be successful at keeping Discus if a little extra time and effort is applied.

Regular water changes and testing of water parameters will ensure your Discus are kept in prime condition.

Discus were once hard to keep due to a lack of understanding of the water required, Those days are long since gone with the development of water preparation equipment such as reverse osmosis and metalex filters, this all now makes things so much easier for the Discus keeper. For successful Discus keeping a hobbyist must take care with water quality and invest in a range of test kits in order to monitor the water parameters. These can be chemical indicators or even better electronic devices but the latter can be expensive, however I would certainly recommend at least a electronic Ph meter as this makes the daily routine much easier.

There are some great books out there that will help take you from no understanding to an analytical chemist if you wish to go that deep.

Over the months I will write about water and offer some good rules on what you should & should not do, The Discus Fish UK forum is a great place to ask questions as the enthusiast there are exceedingly switched on and most questions will be answered in detail by a variety individuals.

If you are not a member I would recommend it, or you can email questions to me.

Sadly, some Discus fish keepers do not invest in the correct equipment until something goes wrong, by which time it may be too late. Quality Discus are expensive, but they will give immense pleasure over many years and the investment in some good test kits & water preparation equipment WILL pay dividends in the long run.

The new fishkeeper keeping Discus may be somewhat apprehensive and worried this need not be the case and one main thing to remember is don't panic or dose with chemicals and treatments as a knee jerk reaction to a poorly fish, observe them every day and look for the small changes. After a couple of months however you'll wonder what all the fuss was about!