My 135g Tank, Thinking Of Changing Substrates ? What Do You Think

I bought this 135g made in 1982 on craigslist a year ago, had a custom angle iron stand he had made for the tank in 82 and I re-sealed the tank and cleaned off the surface rust and repainted it. Beautiful tank and it being 1/2 inch thick glass it has no center brace like all modern tanks have I really like that.

Its been running for a year or so now and I have black sand in it, its not powder like sand but more grainy..

I have like 30 neons in it, bout 7 or 8 diamond tetras, and I had about 4 adult discus in it, but due to dealing with some disease a discus gave me 2-3 years ago I have been having a hard time getting the numbers up. I bought a discus that passed quaruntine for 2 weeks but it was a carrier or something probably discus plague and it wiped out about 8 of my discus and has killed about 12 more in the years and I can't get rid of it, and I can't get myself to cull the ones I have.. But that's not the subject.. I finally have more discus now that didnt die.. I bought 15 of them from a online store thinking maybe only 4 would live and surpisingly they all lived but 3 lol.

So now I have like 19 discus.. too many for this tank if they were all adults but they aren't only 2-3 inchs, and I have a 92g I can move some too later on.

Anyway my question "sorry I get carried away" is this. Discus change color based on their surroundings.. the darker the substrate the darker the discus get.. I have some red ones that are like dark brown/black almost and same with some blue ones that are too dark in color. I'm tired of seeing this and I'm thinking of changing the black sand out but I'm not sure what too. The issue is discus tend to bottom feed I noticed once food isn't floating they will peck the bottom, so with black sand it makes it easier to see food. Also black sand shows poo very easily and I can clean the tank without much effort.

If I go to white sand the food will be harder to spot.. but the poo will be easier to see and I'm also worried itll show TOO much ive seen white sand first hand as had a tank with it and it showed too much of everything.

I have some floramax original which is a redish type of rock in storage I could use but I'm not sure what to do..

Here is my tank.. What do you guys think ? Keep the black sand deal with some of the discus being really dark due to the substrate.. or switch it up to something else ? And what ?

 

Here is another pic.. for some reason this forum makes the pics really small even on a link from a uploader...

 

wow this website sucks for uploading pics... well hopfully you guys can tell what the tank looks like...

 

 

I would deal with the darker fish personally. If you go light the fish may wash out and look worse. I have no experience with discus so you may know better any that.

Have you considered doing a mix? You can also look into the red blasting sand. Lots of lj bichir keepers go with this because the black and make them turn green and light sand washes them out. I think it's called Bartlet or something like that

 

Yea I was thinking white might makke the discus too light of a color.. Because they cab go to black to very light color based on the substrate.

I mentioned I have floramax original. have you seen that before ? Its a red color. was thinking of going that route since I habe it already in storage. You mentioned red so maybe red is a better choice so it isn't too dark or too ligjt for the discus that adapt their color to substrate color

 

I've never had red sand before so I have no experience with that.