Interesting Wild Discus

Hi guys,

For all the Discus lovers out there, I found this photo of a Wild Green Discus and immediately noticed the interesting Stress Bar formation that can often be seen in Snakeskin discus, or more so from the 9 bar fry resulting from Snakeskin breeding.
I refer here to the irregular barring seen on this guy. Interesting to see this on a Wild specimen.





Kind regards

Marco

 

i buy my fish food from a discus breeder and i got to say Discus are the king of freshwater fish.im a fan of the naturals but even the tank bred strains are really spectacular.among the best scenes i have ever seen,i saw last week.it was a pair of adult discus with the fry stuck to the male.ive seen it in pics ,in the profs posts but never up close ,definately something that leaves you in awe of natures awesome-ness! and what a feeling it must be to say as the owner you helped :wink:

next year i will make my first attempt at keeping them,in the mean time, im getting my infrastructure together and gaining knowledge from the pros

 

Discus porn....thanx for sharing @Marco....

 

Hi Marco,This is not the first time that I see this in green discus. You may know that Hustinx in Belgium show their discus in the boxes as they arrive from South America and amongst those there was also one which had basically a snakeskin pattern. I specifically kept these pics because of this abnormality. In the first pic you can see the group of fishes, the "snakeskin's" head is obscured but you can see his body, and in the second pic the poor old "snakeskin" is being held in the hand.Murray, I am glad that we are getting you there, take your time and do your homework carefully, that is tremendously important in keeping discus, we see so many failures from persons rushing into this without proper planning.Kind regards,Dirk

 

Hi @Dirk Bellstedt

Thats a very nice fish in that picture of yours.
Now this of course leaves open a discussion which I have had with several ppl. Dale Jordan says there is no such thing as a wild Snakeskin, I think Bleher says there is, a few other "names" in the hobby also seem divided, yet this must be proof that it is a mutation that took place in the wild possibly long before it ever happened in the tank environment.

What is your opinion Prof. Dirk?

Rgds

Marco

 

Why do they transport the discus in such shallow water that they can't swim upright?

 

They dont actually transport them like that. They do this when they "drip" them in, so by the time they are upright again they just remove them by hand and place them in the new tank

 

Yes Marco,

I think this shows very conclusively that the "snakeskin" type does occur in nature, no doubt about that.

Just like there are mutations such as pidgeon blood (my least favorite discus), albino, (my next least favorite discus) not to mention gruesome mutations such as bulldogs (persons breeding them should be shot) there must be the snakeskin mutation which popped out somewhere. Although this is a mutated form, I still think this is one of the few that I can live with and which I do not find so objectionable.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Oh I see. Thanks for the clarification. But doesn't it put a lot of stress on the fish if they lie down like that?

And I agree that bulldogs aren't too good looking either. http://www.alivenotdead.com/attachments/2010/10/15/16/176514_201010151631561.thumb.jpg

 

Those are gorgeous. The are really majestic fish

 

Hi Danelle,

When discus are transported over long distances and for periods of 24 hours as these discus would have been, they deflate their swimbladders and arrive lying on the bottom of the container. This is very scary if you do not know that they do this, it looks as though they will all die shortly afterwards. However, they recover quite well, but what happens on arrival is Hustinx syphons of the water as far as possible, takes a quick few pics and then they slowly with an aquarium hose let the water from the tank they will place them into, into the box and in this way the fishes can acclimatize slowly and a lot better. You do not put discus into a plastic bag floating in the tank as they struggle more and damage themselves, so you put them into the box as shown.

Nothing to worry about.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

I agree with you completely, not to mention these white things you sometimes see. . .no discus should be white! Each to his own I suppose.

And Prof. Dirk, of course the Snakeskin has given us lots of very beautiful fish, all the Eruptions and Leopard snakeskin fish would of course not have been possible without this mutation, so yes, Of them all the Snakeskin is the best mutation, with no second best that springs to mind. . .hehehe

Rgds

Marco

 

I have enjoyed this thread. What great pics. There is nothing like a Wild caught discus.

 

@Reedfish

Wow! You dont know how jealous I am right now! I cant tell you how desperate I am for some Xingu browns! Unfortunately chances of finding them here are very slim!

Any chance you can send them to me. . . ?

Hehehe

 

That's a bargain