Ph & Wild Discus

Let's talk about Ph in the Wild Discus here. Many find it impossible to keeping a healthy Wild Discus with Ph 's above 7 or alkaline Ph' s. A false question in my view and experience when exporting Wild Discus to so many places in the world with chemically different waters and have feedback from our customers. 

There are places in the World where the water is alkaline with Ph 's between 7.5 and 8.0 and in fact the Wild Discus live, grow and maintain for many years. We can not expect them to have fabulous and vibrant colors as they can get with Ph's between the 6 and 6.5 we advise. On the other hand with harder, more mineralized waters the usual small holes in the head with which we collect them, typical of the lack of minerals, are non-existent. 

When they leave their environment, where the waters get to have Ph of 5.0 to 6.0  and hardness of 10 microsiemans the Wild Discus arrive to our company with hundreds of small holes next to nostrils and face that they eventually disappear over time. Even faster when they enter waters with enough minerals. In our company the water has a usual pH of 4,5 .

Naturally it goes up to 5,5 with the oxygenation, since it is extracted from a well to about 60 meters of depth ... 

          Water Test from Santarem Discus tap water 

This way when the Wild Discus arrives from the Jungle there is not a big difference between the Ph from where they left and the Ph from the  Santarem Discus Company water.

If during the first 3 months we maintain the Ph in the 5.5 during the quarantine, four work is to increase weekly the values of Ph with sodium bicarbonate in small amounts. Thus maintaining the water between Ph. 6.2 to 6.8. It is important that during this period there is no more than 0.5 Ph variants because these imbalances cause stress in the Wild Discus.

All this process is done in a thorough and controlled way and preparing the Wild Discus to be exported, where they will find harder waters and with higher Ph's. It's not serious the Wild Discus moving from a Ph of 6.5 to Ph's higher. The opposite yes could cause some problems such as acidosis, basal eyes, torn fins, stress, etc. something we do not advise.

When we export our Wild Discus we are always at the disposal of our customers to know what Ph has in their companies in order to send a Ph the most identical. This in order not to create imbalances in the quality of the water in terms of Ph the arrival of the Wild Discus to the destination. We know that the time they are inside the bags this same Ph goes down and when the bags are opened after a few hours with the mixture of oxygen from the air that Ph goes down again. So we look at all these factors and situations

We have as before mentioned customers with Ph over 7.5 even arriving at Ph. 8. The Wild Discus live happily, grow but unfortunately ,  breeding  is almost impossible. Because they need a low hardness to create. The osmotic pressure of water with Ph of 8 but with hardness above 300 microsiemans, the eggs become white. That is Wild discus can be maintained with Ph of 8 but it is almost totally impossible to breeding , with high hardnesses.

                            

Vitor Hugo Quaresma