Introduction

This is my first entry in a new blog. As the name suggests it's about my experiences setting up a new aquarium to house some Discus fish - It'll be good to keep track of the project as it goes along and maybe if problems arise any readers will be able to comment and help me out!! I've kept aquaria off and on since I was about 14, but they's always been general community tanks of various sizes, up to about 150 l or so. However, I've always wanted to keep Discus and over the past year or so I've been drawing up plans for the (well, my) ultimate Discus set up. My main considerations were that it needed to be big - Discus are reasonably demanding and to keep a sizeable shoal I think should have a fair volume of water. The max size we can accommodate in our living room is a tank about 150cm X 70cm X 77cm (L X W X H). To reduce the amount one of the corners protrudes the front of the tank will need to be 3 sided, in the shape of an angled bow. The total volume is about 750 litres, although with substrate and décor the actual volume of water will be less the that. It needs to look good so it will need to be built into a cabinet which will hide all of the equipment. You can't buy a set up like this off the shelf, it needs to be built to order, which is exactly where we are at the moment. After extensive searching of the internet I settled on a company called The Classic Cabinet Company (http://www.theclassiccabinetcompany.co.uk/) who so far have been very helpful, not only taking on the build but also providing some good advice on the finer details (of which more in later posts). They will be supplying tank, cabinet, filters and lighting, and crucially delivery. The rest I will need to source and sort of for myself. One of the advantages of being made to order is that I can specify various holes to be drilled, for filter pipes etc, which will greatly improve the way it all fits together and the ease of maintenance (again more of that later). The delivery should be around the end of Jan '07, but there's a fair few details to be sorted out before then... As the project progresses I plan to post some pictures and further details and plans and of course, as we add the fish details of those too.