Marco's Fish-room

Hi @Reedfish,

At present I only have some Leopard Discus I am trying to breed and raise Parasite free. I hope to get a spawn done in the next few weeks.
Im raising a small Parasite free group of Blue Diamonds at the moment. Will see how they develop. They only 6 days old now, so progress is still slow at this stage
You know well that my first love lies with Wild type Discus - and its with Wild types that I will be aiming to work with in future.
Im not really a fan of all the smartie-box types

@Ladysphinx
I had a female Ram tested by a Veterinary pathologist a short while ago. Its one of those typical "dead in a day/week/month" type Rams.
What was found was highly resistant Spironucleus Flagellate organisms. These fill the small intestine of the fish, cause blockages, parasitic "toxicity" and malnutrition. Due to the inability to treat the fish for this parasite due to the high dosage required, its basically impossible to save them. I believe they are deliberately fed increasing amounts of drugs over a period of time, in order to suppress the parasites and make the fish 'dependant' on it. Unfortunately parasites become drug resistant in the process.
Its a vicious money making scheme.

The parasite free Rams I raise are not per say stronger than other Rams. They are just healthier - and they get a better start in life. They are very tough by all accounts, and you quite literally have to kill em with neglect for them to die.
They grow to a nice healthy size and offer very few problems
Ill post some photos.


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Whose blues marco? Talk. Lol

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These are stunning @Marco..

 

Those Black nights are absolutely awesome. I keep mooning over them because of how striking they are.
It's very interesting what you say about the parasite free Rams.
I have read about how the Rams are constantly on antibiotics making the parasites immune while weakening the Rams. It has even been suggested that the medication the Rams constantly receives damages their stomach.

 

Hi everyone,

I have not updated this thread for quite a while. After recent interest I figured its time I do a bit of an update.

Over the past months I worked at getting my entire fishroom parasite free.
What I mean with it being totally parasite free, is that all the fish I keep and breed are periodically tested and screened by a Veterinary Pathologist for both internal, as well as external parasites. They are dissected and certified free from any and all internal as well as external parasites.

Because I keep and breed Discus this is especially important to me.
In specific I am concerned with gill flukes, (which cause stunted growth, death in juvenile discus and general raising issues) spironucleus/flagellate (which cause issues in the small intestine of all fish, stunted growth, general ill-health, bloat and a variety of diseases and deaths are linked to this) and of course all intestinal parasitic worms.

So for a while now I have been running 2 seperate fishrooms. In room 1 I house all the fish that are not parasite free, and the 2nd room I sterilized and started afresh.
I then had the fish spawn, removed eggs and treated them and then moved them to the parasite free fishroom for hatching and raising.
It took a while with all the Discus and Rams, but now most of my Ram lines are parasite free, and apart from a Wild line Xingu Discus, I also only have parasite free Discus. Some of the Discus lines I imported from parasite free German Discus breeders

After the development of the Dark knight Ram line, which took me most of the past 2 years, I am now working on stabilizing and improving the line. I am nearly done with a parallel Dark Knight line which will make breeding and strengthening the line possible. Also hopefully I can start working on small colour improvements.
Apart from that I am stabilizing and breeding new and improved lines of all the Ram lines which I wish to breed.
I am now raising a new German blue line which should be a stunning new line. My Electric blues have fry for the first time and the Dark knight lines are also growing well.

Then i am also attempting 2 new Ram strains. It will take a while before I can tell if I am succesful, but in the meantime - I am at least having fun.

So I will share some photos of my Rams and some of the Discus. Hope I have not lost your attention.

Kind regards

Marco

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Dark knights

The original Dark-gene mutation occurred in the hatchery of Shahar Danziger in Israel.
I obtained a group of males which carried the Dark gene from him in February 2016.
It took me a year to get some true breeding "solid black" Rams
The name "Dark knight" foe some reason seemed appropriate and so I went with it.
Irrespective of Shahar also developing his own black line, and naming it - for some reason the Dark knight name stuck - and now they are called Dark knights worldwide.

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Powder blue


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please let me know if you ever have any of those dark knights for sale. I am in love

 

Intermediate for new strain

These are some specimens from the final generation in developing a possible new line.
From a pair of these 5 different strains are born.
The spawn in the photos exceeded 500

I'm especially impressed with the intense colour on their pelvic fins

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And then some Discus photos

All these Discus are parasite free. They are all between 3 and 6 months of age.

Red turquoise
Leopard
Turquoise
F1 Cuipeua Red

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@Marco you rams look awesome - nice work!

 

I follow many top Aquarists/hobbyists on YouTube and what you are breeding is up there with the best of them. This is really really awesome!!!!

 

I think it's safe to say you're doing some amazing work towards improving the aquarium hobby in South Africa.

Your fish are always top notch

 

Excellent work Marco.

 

Absolutely fantastic work @Marco

Stunning Discus but those rams.... that's just something in a class of its own

Well done!!

 

Wow! I love your black ones - beautiful.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I am very glad to hear that you guys appreciate my fish.

@Reedfish - I do not own any Tan-discus anymore. Some of my fish do carry some Tan-genetics, but only in one of the Leopard lines.
In my experience, as well as observation of countless fish imported from them, the male Discus from Tony Tan are mostly infertile. At best, the few males that show signs of fertility still leave you with very very few viable eggs. We've had some success crossing a Tan female to other Discus though. So at least some success.

I am now in a totally negative frame of mind where it concerns Asian-discus.
The overall quality, health and fertility of the fish from Asia is of such low standard that I no longer wish to have any association with it. All that their time and effort is spent on is pushing the colour types, with little to no concern of health, vitality and genetic diversity.
Its a dead end street.

Regards

Marco

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Hi @Reedfish,

You are now drawing me into an opinion discussion here
The Tan fish are great from a collectors perspective. Big, strong and most have very good colour. Shape not always the greatest but thats what you get from Asia nowadays.
Stendker - I dont want to get into a drawn out discussion about their fish. I will simply say this - if Stendker were the last and only place for me to source Discus from - then I would give up the hobby. Yes - its gotten that bad.

So to answer your question - where from?
I think each person first need to identify their goal. If simply keeping the fish is your goal then get from the big "Wall-Mart" type discus suppliers like Tan. You wont be disappointed.
If you wish to breed some discus it then gets very tricky.
You would then need to be very selective in your approach, get from well respected small breeders across the world. This will be expensive though.
What I think is then also vitally important is the management of these genes. The more refined the lines (think Albino Eruption) the more difficult it is to maintain.
If however you are breeding Brilliant Turquoise, then its much easier to inject unrelated blood via Wild discus into your blood lines. I do believe that to be the best way to go about it. This will improve shape, vigour and reduce the incidence of messed up black bars. I believe this is what should ideally be the approach in the long term.
Not this congestion of genetics we now see across the globe

Rgds

Marco

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