This thread has been great for me. I have basically decided to add Discus to my 150g planted tank just to prove you wrong. This thread is really bad. What breeders do is one thing what people who love fish do is something completely different.
Discus are an endless money pit!
- Thread starter Stan510
- Start date
Never heard of a fish that NEEDS a UV filter... I agree that those fish are most likely being mis treated and its wrong. I look at freshwater fish keeping in this way: "As long as you know the basics of aquarium keeping, no fish is too hard to keep in the freshwater community ". Now of course if you have hard water, than stick to hard water fish. But all fish practically all have the same main needs (not including GH, PH, and other variable water conditions).I borrowed from Scotty Kilmer of youtube.Look at this mega aquarium..looks near perfect. Yet,those Discus are on a death spiral..sunken in above the eyes and dark bands and no red in the eye. It's why I warn people over and over,Discus are NOT community fish,or bright light fish. They want peace and calm and pure waters with UV filters. It's just the way it is and YouTubes endless vids of Discus in planted tanks are showing fish that were just added and all were dead in the first year if even half that long.
I don't even know why the consultant put them in. He must know they are not drop in fish.
Pretty sure no one screamed at you or said that you should be banned. If you didn't want other opinions you shouldn't have made a thread
Discus are like any other fish they don't need to live in a perfectly clean environment to do well, no fish comes from such conditions, all fish live with all sorts of filth around them just like people and all animals do.
I may add this to my signature
Discus don't have a bare clean tank in the wild.
The problem with discus is the people breeding them and screwing them up. And I'm not talking about the average bloke who has a pr of discus in his loungeroom. I am talking about breeding facilities in Asia, USA and other countries around the world. These professional breeders separate the eggs from the parents and artificially rear the fry up in large numbers so they can get more young to sell. They put loads of chemicals in the water to kill alleged diseases the fish carry. They overstock their tanks, feed the fish on things that live in sewer ponds (this is more of an Asian breeder issue), and inbreed the fish.
Baby discus need the mucous off their parents as a first food and no amount of stuffing about by man, can create the exact same nutrition as the parent fish can. Jack Wattley, the famous discus breeder spent years trying to make a fry food for baby discus so he could get more fry. Other breeders have done the same or followed Jack's recipe. All these breeders have the same problem, weak fish. In my opinion, he screwed up. Baby discus need to be with their parents so they can eat the mucous off their parents (like mammals get colostrum from their mothers milk). They need to eat biofilm and ingest microscopic organisms to help their digestive tract, and they need to learn basic discus language and behaviour. None of this happens when eggs are taken from the parents and fry reared in sterile tanks without their mum & dad.
I have seen discus kept and bred in normal planted aquariums. The babies are left with the parents and feed off the parents. Those baby fish live long healthy lives in normal aquariums with gravel, plants, other fish and an assortment of food. And they don't need any more medications than a normal non discus type fish, nor do they need a UV steriliser. Why, because they have developed an immune system from feeding off their parents and living in a tank with lots of microscopic organisms.
Now I'm not saying they should be kept in a filthy tank, but the babies should be allowed to feed off their parents and live in a normal tank so they can develop an immune system. This does not happen in bare glass tanks with UV sterlisers running 24/7.
A number of shop owners and myself, have seen similar things with other species of fish (rainbowfish, barbs, cichlids) that have been artificially reared in bare glass tanks that have UV sterilisers running continuously. The fish grow and do well, but succumb to all sorts of health issues when put in a normal planted community tank or a tank with other fish. The fish just haven't developed a decent immune system because of the super clean conditions and UV steriliser.
If you add contaminated food like tubifex worms and daphnia grown in sewerage ponds that often contain drug resistant organisms, indiscriminate use of anti-biotics and other chemicals like organophosphates, then that is going to add to the problems. Add inbreeding and you are simply weakening the fish and creating a problem for yourself and anyone who wants to buy those fish.
You need to remove the gaps between your signature to make it smaller so it doesn't take up as much space.I may add this to my signature
Ok. Will do! I did that to separate the sections sorryYou need to remove the gaps between your signature to make it smaller so it doesn't take up as much space.
But mine should take up a lot of space so no one misses my posts LOLYou need to remove the gaps between your signature to make it smaller so it doesn't take up as much space.
That looks much betterBut mine should take up a lot of space so no one misses my posts LOL
Thank you, I'm liking it a bit better as well lol
it's all good
The signature actually looks a lot better now and is easier to follow. Good job
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