Discus & biological filtration with pH of 6.5 or less???

[Biggen]

One of my currently cycling tanks has a pH in the 6.2 area. After finding out that nitrification stop at around a pH of 6.5 you can imagine that I was a little set back that the cycle has stopped at this low of a pH. So I decided not to use Baking Soda (which is what I do in my other tank) and use crushed coral to see if I could raise it and keep in stable that way. I broke up some pieces of coral I had, placed it in a mesh bag, and set it under my filter intake. Hopefully this will bring up the kH and pH of my tank over the next few days. I only started yesterday so nothing much has changed.

But anyway, back to the topic. This got me thinking about discus tanks. How in the world do people get nitrification going with pH's in this area? The only thing I can think of is that they don't worry about biological filtration and simple change the water every day. If that is the case, I will surely never own a discus tank. But even this doesn't make sense because it would be impossible to vacuum out every little piece of waste and food. The ones you miss would begin to decompose and even after a water change, the ammonia would skyrocket without nitrification taking place.

So how in the world do discus tanks work??? My curiosity is dying to know.

 

[80gJoe]

To me, cycling is cycling and can't be rushed or forced. It may take a month...
I have the limit of 8 Discus in my 80 gallon tank. I use R/O de-ionized water from my Aqua FX Baracuda water treatment system. I've been very lucky at my first Discus aquarium as 2 of them are trying to breed.

My opinion is to stick with basic 'cycling' methods, and then do the testing of pH and other water parameters later on.

Hope this helps some... I'm no expert though. :|

 

[Biggen]

Thx Joe. Yeah I understand that cycling can't be rushed. However, I am about two months in on one of my tanks and it still isn't cycled. Nitrites are over 1ppm. After checking the pH of the tank, I noticed that it is as low as my test kit go: 6.2. It probably is even lower. Now that the pH has been raised to around 7.3 or so, cycling should continue normally.

I was just curious how people could cycle a tank with this pH. According to everything I have found about nitrification, it stops around the 6.5 pH area.