TIME

Most of the time spent should ideally be enjoying your Discus aquarium.  Its usually better than whats on TV and there are definite benefits from sitting by a tank if you want to relax.  But there is an amount of "work" required to keep things where they should be.  

Aquarium maintenance should be fun and once you stop enjoying cleaning glass and changing water your fish may start to suffer.  A dirty tank will not provide a relaxing view or a healthy home for a fish.  The time you put in is definitely linked to your success with these fish.

That said it doesnt have to be too frightening.  I can only go on what I have found to provide a good balance of time spent working on it and time spent enjoying it.  You will soon find a balance of cleaning and maintenance such that your tank always looks good and runs without issues.  You can then enjoy seeing your fish grow, and change, and that happens quite fast in a Discus tank.

On average you will need a few hours a week spent cleaning, checking, testing and maintaining one of these tanks.  Theres some time required for preparing water depending on how you plan to do that and also feeding time.  Your fish they can need feeding four times a day or more.  An electronic feeder will probably not be able to help you either as these fish do best on frozen foods.  There are some ideas that can speed this maintenance routine up on the maintenance page.

So its not too bad, it should all be fun, but you need to be prepared if your going to travel as you cant ignore this routine for long.