Chapter 5 - Selecting Discus

Before buying fish, do some research. Find out all about the local breeders in your area. Find out the mail order places that are within shipping distance to you. Look for importers of discus. Search the net, the yellow pages. The best source for information is word of mouth. Ask experienced hobbyist, join your local discus association, join an online discus forum.

The point of all of this is to find out where you can get the best discus for cheap as well as gauge the quality of the fish on offer. In my experience there are a lot of people who sell poor discus for a lot of money, and at the opposite end of the scale a very few, very rare bunch of people who sell very good discus for very cheap. The people who fall into this latter criteria are who you need to search for. Generally though, if you go and visit many of these places you will get a very good understanding of the scope of discus hobby in your area. You will see first hand the general quality of the fish and you will quickly learn what to expect from good discus stock. This will enable you to quickly judge what is good and what you should avoid. You cannot do this by looking at a few fish from one fish shop alone or a few fish shops. Go see them all, take the time to look before you buy. Go see every discus within 30kms of your home! Remember that discus live for a very long time and it is important to start off with a good bloodline if you are planning to breed later on. It is better to pay a little more for good quality fish than to pay cheap for second grade fish.

So what is a quality fish? A fish with good shape, color, of good health and free of deformities of course. But there are other measures of a good quality fish that are more difficult to judge and downright impossible to gauge before buying the fish itself. I am talking about strength in terms of immunity from diseases and problems that are common with discus. You can go along way to raise your chances of finding these types of fish by looking for healthy specimens at the shop but you can’t really tell until you bring them home and raise them yourself. Generally, in my experience, the best place to look for top quality fish of this nature are breeders themselves. They know which is good and which is not quite good, and usually the best ones are not for sale, but you can still get high quality fish from them. I have only seen very few good quality discus from pet stores or general fish shops and the good ones are few and far between. The best in terms of fish shops by far are shops that import from breeders overseas. This may be a local thing for Sydney siders only but I have noticed that there are very few good breeders in my locality and of those few, happen to all be Discus Association members. Basically again, look around and judge for yourself. Find someone you can trust that knows a great deal about this topic. Join your local discus association.

What to look for

Generally when you look at discus they should be plump and have a good body shape. The fish should have a round shape with an almost vertical nose. Avoid "Mediterranean nose" where there is a slight bump of their forehead. Their face should be full and not emancipated. They should have small eyes that are proportional to their size, large eyes could be a sign of stunted growth from a young age. Their eyes must be clear, bright and nicely colored, by clear i mean clear as water, you can see this by looking at the fish front on, their semicircular lenses bulge outwards from their face, and these lenses should be clear and free of spots/cloudiness etc. Check for fin damage, splitting or fin clamping which can be a sign of bacterial or fungal infections or water quality problems. Discus with a knife edge dorsal fin have probably been sick over a long period of time. Watch their breathing, larger discus should be breathing at a rate of one breath per second with the gills acting in unison. A little faster when they younger and much more when they are excited by food, confrontation or when they are startled. At rest their breaths should be easy, and constant. Their gill plates should cover their gills properly as short gills covers which exposes their gill membrane should be avoided. Watch out for gill clamping on one side or swollen gill membranes. Look for fish that are not dark in color or have faded colors, fish that don't hide or cower and come to the top front of the tank when you suspend your hand over the tank. They should not have long, white stringy faecies and are devoid of strong indications of Hexamita or hole in the head disease which shows up as small holes or patches that are present around the eyes, forehead and lateral line of the fish, sometimes with puss oozing out of the holes.

If you can, try asking if you can feed the fish you are intending to buy. Look for the ones that are feisty eaters, the once that are brave and outgoing. Avoid fish that have a genetic eye problem where they cannot see directly in front of them. You will notice these fish by seeing them constantly strike just below food that is sinking in front of their face and missing it as it sinks to the bottom. Healthy fish are brave, feisty eaters and are nicely colored. Also find out about the use of hormones to color enhance the fish. These unscrupulous methods are sometimes used by breeders to enhance the color of fish at a young age. This leads to infertile fish at a later age. Color enhancing foods such as Tetra Color Bits are not the same as hormones, so don't get the two confused.

Discus Sexing

Don't believe anyone that tells you they can tell the sex of a discus (esp a juvenile 2-4 inch discus) 100% of the time. It is very difficult and usually you can't tell until they are actually laying eggs. I know of a good method listed in the Diskus Brief called the tangent method which uses the angles of the fins in relation to the tail fin to gauge a discus’ sex but hard proof has yet to surface. If you want to maximize your chances of getting at least 1 pair of discus you can do this: buy 2 larger juveniles, 2 medium juveniles, 2 small juveniles. From this if you are lucky you will get at least 1 mating pair. If you are very lucky you will have 2 mating pairs, and if you are extremely lucky you will have 3 pairs!

Shop around

Basically shop around and buy from a reputable breeder or dealer. See what conditions they are kept in etc. Here is where it pays to learn whatever you can about discus before buying: You can judge good quality discus stock by their owner's knowledge and passion of and for discus. Put simply, the more the seller knows, and the more devoted he/she is about discus the more likely they are to be of good quality. This is not entirely true all the time but you can understand were I am coming from when you approach a LFS which stocks sick fish and you ask them simple questions you already know the answer to and they get it wrong! This happens way too often. It is a sad fact that one too many LFS workers are giving out the wrong information to shoppers. Basically if the guy is telling you things that are reducing the chances of you buying fish then you can be almost sure they are an honest dealer and they are telling the truth and not simply trying to sell you something. This is a logical thought process for all purchases and not just exclusive to buying fish! Also if you see potential problems such as a tank of discus that are kept with angelfish (a real no no in a lfs situation), or a few nice looking discus kept with one or two dead or dieing discus it is best to avoid the entire contents of the tank.

Take a long time to choose your discus stock. It pays to pay a little extra for good stock than to save a few quick bucks on poorer quality stock and have to put up with them for the next 10 years, provided they survive that long! If you are unsure, don't. Avoid situations where you are buying on impulse by making sure you are ready for your first few fish. Clear up a whole afternoon in your schedule so you can just do your fish stuff all day without distraction or the need to rush. Buy them in the morning so you can carefully monitor them all day. If something is not right or you are unsure then don't buy them. Be Patient! One week or two is a nothing in the timeline of keeping discus. They live for upwards of 8 to 12 years if cared for properly and a week or two spent in preparation is not going to set you back very far at all, and will go along way to ensuring total success.

Local Fish Shops and Culls

I recently read an interview with a very reputable discus breeder regarding all aspects of his involvement with discus. The interviewee will remain unnamed as I am not sure if I can use the info here but I want to bring up an issue to light regarding good quality stock. This breeder is probably one of the world’s best breeders and he has a strict cull routine for the fry that he produces. Culls are when you get rid of the bad fish from a brood of fry either because of shape, color or deformities. At the last cull (when the fish are quite large) the culls are sold to lfs, with the rest being sold by the breeder himself. These “culls” are still better quality than most of the fish out there as they are the second batch of routine culls (ie. Not bad fish just not perfect). So the issue I want to raise here is that I have noticed this in lfs but they are not very good quality at all! I see many fish that are of very, very poor quality, football shaped, short gill plates, and strange finnage problems. My point is to be aware that this is happening everywhere and that these fish are not sold any cheaper than the fish that can be obtained straight from a reputable breeder themselves. In fact I have seen some very ugly looking fish that I cringe at when I see them and are being sold for ridiculous prices! I won’t name any examples but I will simply say I felt outraged that a fish like this was being sold! I could hardly recognize the fish as a discus. This is not a isolated case as I have visited 20 lfs in my area within 60km of my home and it is a reoccurring phenomenon.

In conclusion, shop around and find a good, reputable dealer or breeder and don’t encourage lfs to sell such poor quality fish as there is a definite morale line between CULL culls and not-perfect stock.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws