New Member

[annmark61]

Hi Everyone
Just join the site, looking forward to reading the articles and getting some info and advice,
Mark

 

[Aiken Drum]

Hi Mark

Welcome to the community. Looking forward to seeing and hearing about what you are up to.

What kind of fish do you keep or are thinking about keeping?

 

[annmark61]

Hi
I keep Discus , I've kept fish for as long as I can remember, from Guppies to Pacu's , Snakeheads to Oscars and a lot in between, the best of it is, you never know enough, love hearing of tricks and techniques .
How about yourself?

 

[Aiken Drum]

I'm just a small scale hobbyist with a couple of community tanks and a bit of time available to help out on the forum.

Your discus are amazing.

 

[annmark61]

Thank you
I'd just say that small scale is probably harder to take care of than larger tanks, I love community tanks, so much going on.

 

[Andy Sager]

Hi and welcome to the site.
Those Discus are beautiful. They look like some of the wild ones offered by Santarem Discus. (Santarém Discus Plus ) When I had my Angelfish hatchery, my partner was the discus guy. I had a personal connection to Jack Wattley so he was doing primarily his fish. As an importer, I'd get the basic wild ones but they were nothing in comparison to what Santarem is getting now. Seems like the natives weren't giving " the good stuff" to the US importers. LOL All the colors that have been developed are interesting but to me, you can't beat the colors on good healthy wild ones like this.

 

[annmark61]

Hi
Thank you for the welcome, I love the wild Discus , especially when the tank is setup like the Amazon river bed, I would imagine there's little room for error when keeping true imported wild Discus. Did you have trouble keeping them?
Regards
Mark

 

[Andy Sager]

Hi
Thank you for the welcome, I love the wild Discus , especially when the tank is setup like the Amazon river bed, I would imagine there's little room for error when keeping true imported wild Discus. Did you have trouble keeping them?
Regards
Mark

No. That's because our warehouse was set up with Culligan filters to soften South Florida's rock hard water and lowered the pH so when they arrived, they were in basically their natural water parameters.
As for little room for error, one of the nice things about wild discus is that they tell you when things are not right. You just have to learn to speak Discus. If they don't feed and lighting isn't the problem ( they don't like bright lights) , it's most likely the water. If they turn dark after being medicated, it's the water. If they don't interact with you, it's usually the water. The key is that they come from moderately flowing water and we tend to keep them in still water. That means their water is cleaner than most fish's water that we keep. So you just need to keep clean flowing water. Unfortunately, today's fish are more prone to have internal bugs than before so all new fish should be dewormed and debugged if the seller didn't already do that. It's not like the old days where they were collected in areas that were very acidic so not much lived in that water. Now, they are getting them from many different areas so many different waters. A former boss of mine is Brazilian and he said they used to get Discus in areas so acidic that no bugs were found in the water. It was too acidic for them to live in that water.
That all said, I still think wilds are worth the trouble.

 

[annmark61]

That's good info, I went through a period of keeping Stendker Discus bred in Germany, they bred in tap water, very easy to keep for someone starting off with Discus, They are super tolerant of a wide range of parameters, although not for the purist, they are a beautiful fish if kept in a species tank.
Lots of info online about this breed.