1)Stan, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to participate here on Diskusforum.se. Maybe we should start with a little background on you.. What do you do for a living?
Hi Matte, It's my pleasure! I direct television commercials for a living. All sorts, Cars, Electronics, F&B, Snackfood/sweets ... I just get my assistant director to yell 'Action' and 'Cut' with nod! :D
2)When did you first get involved in Discus? Any memories you want to share?
When I was very young, about 30 years ago, I noticed this very shy electric blue striated fishes at the market and bought two small brilliant discus but fail to keep them alive. Was very sad.
Much later, in year 2000, my housemate Carl kept african cichlids and I thought why not? But this time I wanted to read more before I started so I bought a lot of books and chanced upon some Discus books by Bernd Degen.
At the same time I also notice a red eyed blue devil in one of my local fish stores[LFS]. Of course I have no idea it was a Blue Diamond and blue diamond before that used to be very expensive. So I started with 2 Blue Diamonds and a red snakeskin. After a week I had already bought all the discus in the shop-all 7 of them! After that it was hunting for discus around the whole town EVERY weekend! I would have gone to almost every LFS in my State of the Federal Territory and also some in Selangor to hunt only for discus! I suddenly had from one tank to 11 tanks of discus.
Before entering every shop I would pray that they would have to most beautiful discus! hahaha!
Sadly most don't even sell discus!
3)Do you have any other hobbies besides fish Keeping?
I have had lots of hobbies, the current active ones are Aquascaping- this is quite satisfying and photography of course.
http://www.my-mac.net - Malaysian Aquascaping Club. I help start it together with a close group of friends Dominic Song, CJ Loong as founding members where we share all ideas and exchange plants, have meetings and workshops.
4) What other fish do you keep?
I have Altum angels, zebra plecos, and a lot of small fishes and cherry shrimps for planted tanks.
5) Do you have any new or ongoing projects at the time? If so what can you tell us?
I'm currently working on a planted tank for discus, it's a 5x2x2 tank fully planted and I'm going to enter this in a planted tank competition. I would also like to keep more wild fishes. I'm going to get RSG-red spotted greens. My friend has brought in some very nice ones and are just out of quarantine already.
I'm helping the DSM-Discus Society of Malaysia design their 1st
poster- Malaysia Discus Gallery I. I'm also helping some of my friends take pictures of their fish. If you think my 3R is nice, wait till you see the ultimate red fish!
As for breeding I don't have the time or space except for some minor experiments.
6) What lines of fish are you working with now? Do you have any breeding pairs set up?
I have one pair as an experiment. It's a Golden Albino male X A mix breed dark red fish I call Rose Merah. I hope to get Alenquer looking red fishes with albino gene F1 and recross hope to get lucky!
7) What do you feed your discus and how often?
I feed BH mix-1-3 times a day. [more if I want to 'pump' them!] Frozen blood worm cubes as snacks in between everymeal. I occasionally feed them some non-colour bits, frozen mysis or brine shrimp as snacks.
My fries eat slime for a week with some BBS, then start frozen daphnia after 2 weeks and after 3 weeks are starting on a little BH once daily. I feed them as often as I can and tell my anybody in the house to do so as well in small quantities. When I come home I just do WC and feed them again! Slavery!
8) What kind of husbandry do you do on your tanks...wcs, tank wipedowns etc.
For the tanks with drip, the use a powerhead +overhead filter box.
That is cleaned monthly. The prefilter sponge is cleaned every two days. The tanks normally have very clear water so I only use a siphon to remove the waste before every meal especially in the morning.
9) Filtration preferences..what do you use?
For juvenile 2-4 inch fishes I prefer 100% WC before every meal depending on time of day.
For 4 inch above fishes I put them in drip tanks with powerhead overhead filter box filters. Drip is adjusted to roughly 60%-100% overflow daily.
For fry-and brooders just sponge filters.
10) I would like to ask you to describe your quarantine procedures in detail..so that more members can benefit from your experience.
Depending on the source, if they're from overseas or out of state, I try to put the new fishes in a different place far away from my fish room. [the porch!]
QT is simple, open up Andrew Soh's book, tear the QT pages out and stick on wall... [kidding] His advice is very good and everyone has their own way because of access to chemicals/medications.
QT tank should be bare and approximately 18"height and depth. Length depends on how many fishes you have. Should not be so crowded you can't see them. Should not buy only one or two fishes as this would be very stressful for the new fishes. Keep lighting low or medium but constant. All equipment for QT must be wipe down soaked in diluted bleach and rinsed before use. Nets and cloths should be dried in the sun. UV light from the sun is an effective disinfectant. Wash your arms/hands with mild carbolic soap!
Only one airstone/heater, that's it nothing else.
Temperature should be 28-30C, taking things slow is better if the fishes are weak in my opinion.
Throughout QT, aerate highly as medication depletes oxygen or absorbtion of oxygen by fishes is reduced.
Potassium permanganate-PP bath- mix medium purple colour in a white bucket, put fishes in, make coffee, pull a chair sit and watch till their slime starts coming off!!! [The time varies with your PP concentration/water temperature/dissolved organics in water so this is the best way I think!] Then quickly catch with disinfected net and put them in QT tank that has water with 1 part per thousand salt [1 ppt].
Observe for two days. No food except some frozen blood worms to check if they're interested in food. Good ones would be greedy! Keep tank clean.
Third day, I usually put metronidazole. 250-400mg per 40 liters. every
12 hours 100% WC and redose for 3 days.
Skip one day, I would put some praziquantel. 1 pill[250mg] for 80-90liters.
Antibiotics are optional, this is usually done if the fish has persistant cloudy tail/cloudy eye.
For this this usual is OTC-oxytetracycline, amoxicilin, neomycin, gentamycin to name a few. good to keep different types. This treatment should be performed for 7 days minimum. WC every two days for stronger medication like gentamycin/neomycin.
If I have to mix with my existing fishes, i normally put the stunted fella in the QT tank 1st to try and catch one from the QT tank later to put into the main tanks. If I have no time, I would put all of them in the main tank and do another external treatment like
Formalin+Fungus Cure[Victoria green B+neutroflavine] for 3 days, then do 100% WC and then add 1ppt salt.
11) We all have our own ethics when it comes to medication use.. can you elaborate on your views?
I actually like to use less medicine. Antibiotics are normally only a last recourse. I would only use it if was a desperate situation and alway a full course of 7 days minimum. It's easy to create a superbug if we're not careful. I pefer holistic approach, using chemicals sparingly as well.
I count on common salt-NaCl2, Potasium permanganate-PP, household bleach as very important items to have.
12) Do you have any advice for hobbyists looking to buy discus? what should they look for?
Buy healthy discus from reputable sellers. Quality is something you can learn from forums like here! If you can choose, always look for bright eyed fishes with no clamped fins, no cloudy fins, and minimal deformities. Go for thick-set round fishes that are breathing slowly and don't have any open gill covers.
Some deformities are genetic and some are environment caused, so if you're breeding fishes, some torn/broken fins or scarred rough scales are ok.
It's a good idea to go buy fishes as a group than to buy alone because if you encounter any problems, you all can share notes and check all different medication used. [and also console each other over the phone!]
13) When you look at a fish what do you like to see?
Clear red eyes!
Healthy and active fishes. Fishes that look at you! ha! Even if they're a little scared but if you offer food they should at the minimum look at your hand. I love to see my fishes attack the food!
RGD juveniles
14) What would you like to personally accomplish? In the discus hobby.
A discus and planted tank that I can be proud of.
Visit the Amazon.
Publish a Discus photobook.
Make a Discus documentary.
15) Do you see any negative aspects to the Discus Hobby these days?
I would say supply is not meeting demand and the price of shipping is exorbitant nowadays. As a hobby we are actually having it good, a lot of myths are being debunked and bad practices are actually being phased out through education in discus forums.
16) Have you had any mentors in this hobby, that you want to recognize?
I read a few books by Bernd Degen in the early period of my hobby and tips from so many and I found fish forums where I met my Xiao Kaki friends David, Chong....
Later I got to know Andrew Soh and his book 'Discus the Naked Truth'.
Andrew is great fun to sit and have coffee with whenever I go down to Singapore. The stories he tells are a laugh a minute!
my favourite pic!
--
Warm regards
Thank you Stan for all the answers and pictures!
Stan Chung.
Here will we post Interviews with breeders and hobbyist from around the world.
- Matte_g
- Posts: 4369
- Joined: 24 Nov 2007, 00:34
- Real Name: Mattias Gustafsson
- Location: Stockholm
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