Discus

Hi Jason

Ok, from this spawn, I have only kept back 6 fishes, and sold off the rest. Of the 6, 3 are more than 9-bar,1 is completely barless and 2 are 9-bar fishes. I will add more pics tomorrow as my camera battery has just died.

 

Beautiful discus
Need to gain more experience and knowledge and get a second tank

 

Thanks Andrew they look beautiful and are really gaining good shape. I need to get some stuff from you at the end of the month Ill PM you soon.

 

Yes, these guy are turning out to be quite interesting and we will have to wait and see how they mature.



Here is the guy with absolutely no barring whatsoever.

 

Love the intensity of the red eye on this guy

 

This fish is starting to colour up very nicely.

 

Very pretty indeed. At what size do they usually attain their adult colouration?

 

Is there a bit of pigeon blood in him?

 

Hi Hennie

This fish certainly does look similar to a checkerboard, doesn't it? But no, both parents are snakeskins, ie more than 9 vertical barred discus. Its going to be interesting to see this one develop.

 

So winter has hit the Cape, and with that brings the onset of discus spawning activity.

I recently acquired a pair of spotted snakeskins ( penang eruptions/oriental dreams ) on loan from a hobbyist in CT. This pair had spawned about 5 times in a community tank and thus were unable to raise any fry successfully. So we decided to move them to my facility and give things a go. The first thing I needed to sort out was what seemed like a heavy flagellate infestation, aggravated by the move no doubt. So with an aggressive course of metro we now have the pair back to 'normal'.

During the treatment they happened to spawn which led nowhere, but on their second attempt here, their fry went free swimming on Friday 05.06.2015.

Lets see if they raise them up properly as they are very young parents ( about 12 months old )

 

Yes @Reedfish penangs are very attractive and im happy to have this pair. Last year I crossed a leopard male with a snakeskin female and created my own line of penangs. So with this new line im hopefully able to do something in terms of enhancing the red dotting overall down the line.

Flagellates and in fact all parasites are really a negative feature when it comes to discus. One is forever managing around a potential problem. With my parasite-free discus on the other hand, things are a breeze. Now that my pf discus are 2 years old and ive had them pf for 2 years, I can state that down the line, para-free is simply the only way I want to keep discus.

 

Very pretty parents.

 

Yes unfortunately the average discus keeper will constantly be exposed to parasite ridden fish. And all the problems that are associated with that. Time and again guys post here about discus issues which are in my opinion the result of flagellates when something is out of sync in their tank ( eg your filter issue, my moving fish to a different tank etc etc ) This ticking time bomb is just not there with pf fishes. Plain and simple.

Yes obtaining pf fishes is expensive, imagine the cost to land them here in SA with our weak rand......but it was done.

 

One of the reasons I never started keeping discus, as much as I like them, is that there is too much of a grey area regarding what constitutes a "quality fish". On the one hand I was constantly told to start with good quality fish or my journey would end in tears. On the other, I was told that all discus inherently have internal parasites. And mixed into all of this was a large variation of prices. Honestly, it doesn't make sense. In my opinion, a good quality fish that I pay a grand or more for, shouldn't be a "ticking time bomb".

 

@Broder yes I agree. A good quality discus is a good quality discus, but if its not para-free, then it doesn't matter how good the quality it is, it WILL have flagellates. And then it is up to you as the discus keeper to manage the fish correctly so that these flagellates don't become an issue. Then the next issue of parasites ie gill fluke becomes another management/treatment problem when breeding starts. Quite frankly if you can do away with all these problems by going the para-free route, its a no-brainer.

Paying a grand or more for a discus is not a 'get-out-of-jail free card' in terms of parasites.....

 

Agreed, it would be a no-brainer if parasite free fish were available, but in sleepy towns like East London, any kind of discus is hard to get hold of. To be honest, I've never even seen a single fish that I would have bought with confidence in this town... Ever! Say for arguments sake I find a supplier of "parasite free" fish, how would I even know this was true? It's only a problem that would surface weeks or months down the line and by then the buck has been firmly passed to me

 

Exactly my sentiments, ...so I never kept Discus either.
But I am surely tempted to set up a tank with PF Discus, ...just waiting for the Prof and pHishman to pave the way so I can sponge off them :laugh:

 

Cant wait to see what you produce this season andrew>good luck sir