discusman54, i am a newbie to this site, but not the hobby in general, and I was instructed by this site to do a three day blackout to get rid of a lot of algae I was having problems with. I have 4 discus, and they are fine now, but they were very irritated with me, once the blackout was over. As instructed, I was to do a water change before and after the blackout, and the "after" part was the toughest part. I ended up more or less just changing the water....not really vacuuming anything.

They were extremely shy with me, and "skitting" all over the tank once I tried to turn the lights back on, after everything was unwrapped.....then I was supposed to do a water change! Perhaps you will have better luck then I did, and maybe your fish are happier with you and your care for them, then mine are with me...who knows

Anyways...my only suggestion is when you unwrap everything after the blackout, turn lights on slowly, and try to get them re-accustomed to things before trying to get in there and do a water change......like open blinds a lil bit....feed them, open blinds a lil more...wait a while, maybe turn on one light on the tank...stuff like that

I felt like I was starting over with them....and going back to the "shyness" from when they were "new"

I also lost a cardinal tetra in the process! haha....we all know discus like to eat lots! Those are the only issues I noticed when doing my blackout last week

Works great for the algae issues tho....good luck!
Eric