Why Discus?

Hi

I often get asked the question "Why discus?" Some people dont seem to understand what the fascination with these great fish are.

Ive learned that the best answer is "You have to 'keep' them for a while to fully understand."

Ive been in love with Discus for the greater part of my life. Maybe these pic's of my fish, with a recent batch of fry, now 2 months old will better answer- "Why Discus?"

 

Wow!!! Well done!!! And also love the parents.

 

Amazing!! What a rewarding experience it must be to see these beauties raise their young.

 

Really stunning fish, those parents are real beauties! Great batch of fry!

 

The kings of the aquarium. Love the fish. Once you start with discus, there is some thing about it that's hard to explain. They are truly amazing fish to keep. Nice fish man.

 

+1

 

So rewarding when you see an image like that (beautiful parents and full tummies)! @Marco let us know when you are ready to let some of those babies go!

 

Hi Marco,are those wild caughts?And is there a heckel in there as well?

 

lokks great!!! +1

 

Beautiful pics man! Those are lovely fish as well! Sho!

 

Hi,

Thanks for the comments guys.

@richardnuss - these all have homes already unfortunately. They will be going in the next two weeks. Next time. . . ?

The adults on the right are a pair of Wild Tefe Greens. Probably my favourite Discus.
The pair on the left, the parents of these juvies are not Wild and not Heckel either.
I have decided to call them "Madeira Royal blues" as they resemble the Wild fish from Madeira.
It took me a while to track their origin but got closure on that late last year. The fish were bred by a gentleman who has since lost all his Discus to "plague". He bought a few Wild Blue Discus which were Imported by Len Duval. He then bred a male Wild Blue Discus from that group to a female Snakeskin discus he had. The female i cross checked and she resembled what some call "Green Snakeskin", but I have never seen them around.
The resulting fry were then of the Snakeskin and 9 bar type, with some 9 bar fish having this Heckel type midbar.
Its actually very rare for this to be passed on I have learned. I got some of both types and @jedigenie's fish are from the Snakeskin fish I first bred. They look very similar to the original Snakeskin "grandmother".
They are thus not Wild, and Id even be reluctant to rely on the facts as I got it, but nonetheless, they are what they are. The possible "green" gene from grandmother is believable as some of these develop into fish with some red spotting and typical green colouring, where others are more blue type. The offspring tend to be all over the place in appearance though, with some being basic browns to others almost perfect Royal green and/or Royal blue.

Long answer to a short question.....

Rgds

Marco

 

@Marco Hope they are going to good homes! Please keep me in mind for the next batch, they look like great stock and we know they have been raised on the best diet!

How has the "parent-less" parasite free experiment gone?

 

Beautiful looking Discus. Does that strain have stripes ?

 

Hi @richardnuss

Mmmm, thats a tricky question.

Firstly, treating the eggs and then hatching them away from the parents proved a big problem. The first treatment I used which involved formaldehyde baths resulted in +90% of the fry having swimbladder issues. The few that would remain were ok but its hard work and tiresome to go through the effort of raising <10 fry artificially.
I then recently got the whole chemical procedure sorted out, with excellent results! Upwards of 90% hatch rate with very few fry showing any ill-effects.
Then the next problem arose. There is a big difference between raising 10 fry artificially and raising 150 artificially! So the first batch was a total disaster with deteriorating water conditions resulting in all dead.
I then designed and built an artificial raising hatchery which relies on small containers in a large water volume. This proved to work perfectly well and I managed to raise 90% of the fry to the 4 week stage. Unfortunately then the problems arose again and I realised either I reinfected the brood, or the pf-process failed. I lost them all.

I then had to restart by AGAIN sterilising my fish room. This is nearly done. I will then restart all the tanks and retry. At least all the "parts" to the process are sorted out, its just putting them all together that is proving to be troublesome.

Rgds

Marco

 

Sounds like major work - but then again, all good pioneers are not shy of doing hard work!

Keep us posted and good luck!