Welcome to the Second Edition of the DPH Tank Project.
October 2001

My name is Davis Gailitis.
I have been kindly asked to help out with the DPH Tank project and pass on some of the knowledge and experiences I have learned along the way in keeping a planted Discus tank. I view this as a great privilege and honor and will endeavor to help as many as I can in future installments to this page.

A little about my current setup:

I have a 100 gallon fully planted Discus tank set up that has been running for almost a year now.

The occupants of the tank are:

• 5 Adult Blue Turq/Red Turq crossed Discus
• 25 Amano Shrimp
• 2 Panda Corys
• 2 Golden Spotted Ancistrus
• 2 Ottos
• 2 Rams

If you would like to see the beginnings of this current setup you can view it from these links:

Planted tank setup 1

and also:

Planted Tank Setup 2

The above article is also a "how-to" on how to plant a tank using gravel and sand as a substrate. I will be using this same method when re-aquascape my tank next month for this project. I would like to take you through creating a planted tank from the very beginning.

The reasons I am starting from square one again is that my current setup has many small problems that I wish to correct. One of them being that my Discus do not have enough room to move around in! I only found this out when I moved my 5 Adult Discus into the tank from a Bare Bottomed tank that they were growing out in.

I also found out that due to where I planted some plants it made it very difficult for me to prune them correctly! For example: Do not plant a large Sword plant in the corner of your tank behind a couple of others! It is almost impossible to prune the back leaves in the corner because you can not see what you are doing! Poor planning on my part created this problem when I initially planted this tank!

These are some of the bits of knowledge I wish to pass on to you as we go proceed with this project, along with many others.

A CALL TO ALL DPH TANK READERS!

Since the original "contest" between a salt tank and fully planted discus tank ended when the salt tank owner quit the contest, I would like to make this page a little more reader participatory.
So, a call to all readers!
Please send in any ideas you may have about what you would like to see on this page in the future. Also, if you have any pictures of your planted tank please send them in. I will be featuring them in a planted tank of the month section:)

Best wishes to all and I hope we can have some fun with this!