Policies and Parameters
Far Waters Guarantee
We guarantee live delivery of all our fish. We also guarantee that it will be the exact fish ordered. Please read more about live delivery in "Shipping Procedures," but we will credit you for the cost of the fish if it does not arrive alive (we do not credit for the cost of freight). It is very rare a fish does not arrive alive and healthy. We also guarantee that every fish that leaves our tanks are of the quality described and free from any known illness or disease. If the fish is not as described, we will credit your purchase. We WILL NOT sell any fish that we have any reason to believe is not completely healthy. Our reputation relies on that. We will not simply take the fish out of the tank and ship it to you. Every fish is inspected before being shipped. If there is anything wrong with a fish that you have ordered, we will immediately alert you of the problem. Sometimes it's just a matter of adding a little antibiotic to a tank to cure a small scratch from a jealous tank-mate. If it is a simple solution, we will deal with it and ship it out as soon as practically possible.
To continue caring for the fish, and maintaining its health, you must keep proper parameters for discus in your tank(s). You must quarantine any new fish for a month before adding them to a community tank. You must also consider tank-mates for discus. Discus are generally tranquil and passive fish. They are not streamlined or designed to defend themselves against more aggessive and quicker fish.
How We Care For Our Fish
We keep the water temperature near 84°F, the pH near 6.8 with the tds near 180. We use a 40% RO and 60% aged tap water mixture. The water change percentage varies by need, but generally we do a 10% change daily. With our filtration methods, a larger water change is not required. The ammonia and nitrite/nitrate stay very low if not next to zero. We use several additives to our water to keep the fish happy and mating (we'll never tell).
We feed our fish a minimum of three different types of food everyday over at least four small feedings. WE DO NOT FEED OUR FISH ANY TYPE OF BLACKWORM. Most breeders and many hobbyists feed their angels blackworms. We are not making the claim that there is anything wrong with blackworms, we are just not taking a chance of the parasite or disease introduction that has been associated with blackworms. We feed Tetra Color Bits, Sera Discus Granules, Sera Vipan, Sera GVG, JBL NovoBits, JBL Discus Granules, HBH Rainbow Color, Red Sea TropiGro, live brine shrimp, freeze dried plankton, and Far Waters Formula (see our beef heart recipe below). After the beef heart feeding everyday we do our water changes.
Far Waters Formula
2 lb Trimmed Beef Heart
1 lb Raw Shrimp
½ lb Squid
½ lb White Tuna
¼ lb Mussels
5 oz Quaker Corn Meal
4 oz Earths Best Organic Strained Baby Food - "Peach, Oatmeal, and Banana"
4 oz Beech Nut baby Food (Stage 2) - "Carrots & Peas"
3 oz Chopped Spinach
2 ½ oz Gerber Tender Harvest Baby Food - "Organic Sweet Peas"
2 ½ oz Gerber Tender Harvest Baby Food - "Organic Carrots"
10 ml Poly-Vi-Sol (Enfamil Infant Liquid Vitamin)
We have listed the ingredients of our beef heart mix as a suggestion to
you. Every breeder and serious angel hobbyist has their own recipe, but
this works well for us, and the fish are very healthy. You can find many
recipes on the internet for beef heart feed, but the preparation of the
mix is all basically the same. May we suggest visiting www.simplydiscus.com
for other recipes and instruction on preparation methods.
Acclimating Your Fish After Delivery
There are many methods to acclimating new fish to your tanks. We have found the drip method described below is very successful in introducing fish. If you are serious in maintaining the health of your new fish, as well as the health of all the fish in your tanks, a quarantine tank is essential. Quarantine should be the rule of every person involved in the fish hobby. Every discus carries some type of disease naturally. It usually takes some type of stress to bring out that disease. Depending on the method, the stress of shipping may open a fish to a possible disease manifestation. It is certainly not the norm, but it is a possibility. So, use a quarantine tank.
Drip Method
-Turn the lights off in the tank that the fish
are being introduced into
-Make the room the fish are being acclimated into as dim as practically
possible
-Carefully pour the fish and the water from the bag into an empty plastic
bucket or pail (make sure it is tall such as a 5-gallon bucket)
-Add ONE CUP of water directly from the aquarium to the bucket
-Use regular aquarium airline to start a siphon from the tank into the
bucket
-With clothespins or some other form of clamp, pinch the airline to create
a drip from the aquarium water into the bucket
-Add an airstone to the bucket on a VERY LOW bubble, just enough to see
a few bubbles a second
-After the bucket is ¾ full, carefully siphon out half of the contents
-Fill the bucket to ¾ full again
-Carefully remove the fish and add it to the tank
