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When buying Discus there a a few things to look for before you make a decision.

1. Carefully observe the Discus you want to buy, healthy discus should be alert, curious, out in the open not hiding in the corner. Check to see if they look stressed or sick. Make sure they are not dark and are not all clamped up or gasping for breath.

2. Check to see if there are any sick or dying fish in the tank, if there is avoid buying from this tank. Make sure there is no presence of meds in the tank.

3. Check the body surface of the fish, no wounds, scars frayed fins ect.

4. Check the gill plates, make sure they are not short and that they cover the whole gill. Make sure the gill plates are moving together and that one is not "stuck", sign of gill flukes.

5. Make sure the eyes are clear and not cloudy or chipped or any other deformity of the eye. Check to see if they are red, sign of happy fish.

6. check to see that the spine has no deformities.

7. Check the way that they are swimming, they should be upright and fully open. If they are on the "lean" or swimming on an incline this could be a swim bladder problem.

8. Check for parasites, excessive slime coat, rubbing against things in the tank, white stringy poo.

9. Even ask seller to feed the fish. Healthy Discus should attack the food and not "pick" or spit out the food that is offered. This could be due to a very picky fish or that they are sick.

10. AVOID sunken bellies and foreheads. These are signs of starvation, parasites, wasteing disease. Healthy discus should have full bellies and thick foreheads. If the fish look like you have pinched them above the eyes avoid buying these fish.

11. Check that the eyes are in proportion to the body. The body should be round and the lips should not protrude at all. If the body is elongated or tear shaped these fish are probably stunted due to bad fish keeping.

12. Be very aware of juvies that are brightly coloured, they may be older than you think and are severly stunted or have been fed on hormones. Feeding juvies hormones can mean that the fish maybe infertile later in life.

Blue Diamonds: They shouldnt show any stress bars on the body or along the eye.
Pigeon Bloods: Avoid Pigeon Bloods with a lot of black specks on the body (peppering) they can be pretty unsightly.
Turquoise: They are generally late colouring. 2 inch juveniles with adult patterns usually mean that they are stunted.

Discus start to show true colour when they are about 4 inches and about 10-12 months of age.

Some more tips after you bring your discus home:
Always quarantine your new discus.
Avoid Mixing discus which were bought from different sources to avoid disease transfer.
Young discus need to be fed several times a day to maintain good growth.
Regular water changes help in keeping your discus healthy.
Avoid shotgun treatment for medicating your discus.

Trace






[span class="edited"][Edited by trace-russ 2004-03-10 17:02][/span]

[span class="edited"][Edited by trace-russ 2004-03-10 20:25][/span]

i would just add a couple more things...
when you say make sure eyes arent red, thats the pupil/center of eye, many discus have red outlines to thier eyes.
also..
Snakeskin breed of discus shouldnt be showing much color at young age, but you will see 12+ vertical bars, the bars
should be straight and not broken.
The turqs, have fewer bars but they should be unbroken as well.

Excellent advice trace, I would add a couple more things; if a younger discus does show a lot of color, it has probably been fed color enhancing/hormone food, choose another. Also, if you walk into a store and say, "I want to buy some discus." and they say okay, which ones without asking any questions about your tank/setup. LEAVE, LEAVE NOW AND FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!! If they don't care enough to ask about your tank/experience, they don't care enough to give their discus the proper care.

OOPS! Just read number 12, already covered. Duh! But I thought of another one. Golden/yellow colored discus don't have red eyes, their eyes should be a clear yellowish color.

[span class="edited"][Edited by techjak 2004-03-10 21:47][/span]

great guide! 1 question, does it matter whether you have several strains of discus together, or do they prefer to be the same? (like with cories).

Tom,

No problem putting any Discus together they all get along really well.

Trace

Lovely bit of info there Trace,

How did u go at Rods the other night.
Did u buy much.

Frenchy
ps; did u leave any goodies behind...

Hi Justin,

I got 2 goldens off Rod and a RSG juvie off Him and they are gorgeous.

Yes I left behind some goodies for you But Im glad I left the credit card home or could have spent up big time.

I now have to get another tanks but thats not a problem.. but I will have to try to sneak it in the house. Wonder if Russell will see it...

Trace

[span class="edited"][Edited by trace-russ 2004-03-11 23:25][/span]

tank what tank

Frenchy

Just to add..

Make sure that the fish's shape is round, not a football. A football shaped fish has bad genetics, and therefor should be avoided.


HTH,


Daniel

ok trace now has me very worried about most my discus 5 of the 7 are 3" and under all very brightly colored i will describe these by the name my lfs gave them (if that's there true name i have no idea) 2 are checkerboard pigion blood: yellow with an orange streak right behide it's gills and white dots all over, 1 pigion blood with alot of blck "peppering" i thought it looked cute lmao, 1 purple diamond it is like a brick red that looks purple different ways it turns, now the biggest worry i have is a blue opal he's only 2" at best and is really bright colored did i pick badly with these? i mean you said if small ones show there colors early stay away

hi, i`m new to discus i have.
2 blood pigoens with a little sprinkle of pepper 2.5 inches
2 blue diamonds 2.5 inches
1 that has no coluor and black stripes 1.5 inches
with the roundness of the discus does that include the fins. i love my discus already and i`m learning a lot from you guys,can you also tell me a little about a slim coating these guys lose.thanx

thanks for the guide

---

''All the clown fish and yellow tangs in the world cant save you now!''

thanks for the info

In response to ful, the slime coat that discus have is in many ways the same as that of most fish. It is a secretion which is designed to both insulate and protect the fish, an added twist with discus tho is that the slime coat serves another function. When rearing young the slime coat provides food for the free swimming fry. Discus young actually eat the slime coating from their parents bodies, so needless to say slime coats are very important in raising discus.

nice thread, with some good advice too about things to watch for. To many discus breeders these days are more than will willing to pass on bad Grade B stock

http://www.white-worms.com

Yup, not a bad guide at all , and watch for suspiciously large sensory pits on the head in youngsters especially , but also in adults.

Hexamita (two distinct strains) is endemic in many discus breeder facilities,and petshops, so dont be fobbed off about vitamin c therapy and calcium boosting, theories, its the parasite itself that creates the nutrient drain and vitamin loss on the fish, though badly fed fish will show more visible symptoms sooner, and die from the infection faster.

Merely countering it dietarily is not effective therapy IMHO, the fish should be deparasitised properly and have its diet addressed. Its fob off culture designed to get you to accept an unhealthy and infected fish. Any sign of hex, dont touch em ,or any discus on the same system. Breeders who allow their fish to catch hex should be backtracked and excluded from your list of prefferred suppliers. IMHO advice given along dietary advice to cover and suppress hex symptoms is a culture that need not be tolerated, and aquarists who allow hexamita into their aquaria by purchasing fish from this veritable legion of BS'ers, have only themselves to blame.

Suppression is not better than cure, and people should be most watchful and careful of who they take advice from in this area. IME most of the people who have been espousing dietary suppression of hex symptoms have a vested interest in the industry of discus supply,and are retiscent to run proper QT or cough up for treatment and have for many years been trying to make acceptability of hex incidences without treatment the norm. The hobbyist doesnt have to stand for that. Choose hex-free fish, and improve discus keeping culture by doing so.

Just a heads up FYI. I have never failed to treat hex successfully. Diet beyond aiding recovery and replacing tissue damaged by the parasite had nothing to do with it.

Seems a shame as happens for so many people , to keep nice clean disease free tanks not to be let down by an unquarantined common hobby fish, but by the very one you were hoping to achive excellence with- the discus, only to be let down by BS advice from a so called "pro" on discus.

Just a heads up on a whacking great trap that awaits the newbie discus owner. Hex affects many species, some clearly, some assymptomatically, even seen synos with it. You dont want it in your aquaria, every time a fish gets sick or stressed for any other reason, it will be there, lessening their chance of recovery, hitting them again and again throughout their lives, unless of course, it is eradicated.

Even fish with excellent immune systems may still fall with it, not all can cope, no matter how much dietary aid you give. It will always be there, weeding out the temporaily weakened fish, amking mishaps more serious, increasing the impact of other diseases, giving other diseases a vector for infection, increasing death rates, lessening your chances of keeping the fish alive long term, even if the fish is not immediately killed by it.

Over the short term you might see some fish with hex start to regain condition on dietary therapy, but ultimately sooner or later, it will get them or something associated with it will get them. Some fish live with hex for years, but ultimately its usually complicit in their eventual deaths.Untreated, its a bit like living with aids, though obviously its a protozoan, and any fish on the same system or in the same aquarium could also contract it, even UV doesnt provide complete protection, poo gets about on a system , and it can be ingested directly from that, most fish are by degrees coprophagous.

Are some discus breeders and petshops really unscrupulous enough to let hex kill fish slowly to ensure you keep buying a fish that costs in excess of $50 , and are they really cost cutting to the degree that they wont control it on their own systems? Hell yeah, we know they are. To some, that would be considered a business plan. Dont fall for it.