Want To Keep Discus?
O.K." KISS IT "!
By Jim E. Quarles

When I was asked to write this I said to myself, how do you really tell people that more discus are killed with kindness than in any other way? Will they believe me?

I guess I'd better explain " KISS " first. It stands for

Sounds bad, but it is a simple truth. Discus fish, at least the wild ones are tough as nails. I suppose some of the newer strains or hybrids can be also. But I will confine my remarks to the wild ones that I have had, and maybe also, a few of the cookie cutter types that I feel remain as strong as an ox.

Years ago we used to get wild discus shipments and they would come in torn and starving, with fins half rotted off, gills full of parasites, and guts full of worms. So, how did we overcome all these problems? Well we kind of got lucky. In ignorance, no one had told us to dump five gallons of anti-biotic into the holding tank, nor to boil the skin off them with other chemical compounds. We just put them in tanks and fed them real good and gave them hiding places until they calmed down. Some times we got carried away and put a little rock salt and methylene blue to stop the fin rot they all seemed to have.

You know something? It worked! No one had told the fish they needed any of the other stuff like formaldehyde, gentamicin, or two dozen other items, that today, seem like just what the doctor ordered for every fish when the left gill beats two or three beats slower than the wiggle of the tail fin! Those dumb fish did not know they were supposed to die without all that stuff. Boy, how stupid can a fish get?

One of the things we had going for us was that, it was rare to get small fish from the shippers. About 90% of the fish were grown adults or near grown fish. Now a days that is rare, when it comes to buying discus. Most of the time today small fish are shipped and anyone with half a brain should know that the smaller the fish, the harder the shipping is on them. In fact, today I see shipments come in with fish two centimetres or less, shipped in not more than a shot glass full of water, in bags so small they can't even turn around. For crying out loud, give them a chance at making it! I would not treat a rabid skunk like that, and to make it worse, some shippers put 'Knock out drops' in the water, to slow down the life process of the fish. If this were almost any other kind of animal you could
and should be charged with animal cruelty.

How tough are Discus'? I am not sure! But I can relate to you some events that might tend to put new light on the subject. One early spring here in California, I experimented with some discus by placing them outside in a fairly large pond. The pond had a few Koi, and nothing else. The small filter had stopped working a long time before that and I intended to get a new one or repair the old one. But I never got around to it. I put ten ( 10 ) young adult discus in the pond. The water was 79F degrees at the time, but here in Sacramento it gets 100 to 115 degrees in the late spring and summer months.
I did not even give the condition of the water a second thought. The only thing this pond had going for it was, it was shaded in the late afternoons and evening, plus it had a small spray bar which would cool the water when the timer turned it on. As for food? I had been feeding the Koi, pellets, and I just added small amounts of flake food for the Discus' once they were in place. The pond had the usual supply of flying bugs, and I am sure the fish got a good deal of food from this source as well.
When the weather started turning colder, at the end of September, I caught the Discus and moved them to the indoor tanks. Boy was I surprised! They had grown huge, and had the brightest colours I have ever seen with these fish. They were at the peak of heath and growth. Now remember the conditions they lived under. No water changes. Only water replacement from a garden hose as needed. No anti-biotic, no super-duper chemical treatments. Nothing was added to the water except flake food period. I did not lose one single fish. Later, a year or so after that, I had a 15 x 15 foot doughboy swimming pool that was 4 feet deep. I used a sand filter on it. Since my children were away at school it was not being used. I drained it and washed it down to rid it of any remaining chemicals, refilled it and when the water reached 80 degrees out in full all-day sun-light, I dropped two hundred 3 inch brilliant blue discus fry into it. I installed a spray bar off the return side of the filter pump that kind of made a fine water Veil over the surface when the filter was on. This kept the water temp. at about 99 degrees all summer long. I fed live brine shrimp. Sometimes flake food, and again, I am sure they got bugs from time to time that landed in the tank. Once again, in September I drained the tank and I had 172 of the most beautiful young adults you ever saw.. Sure I lost a few. But I would have lost that many in the hatchery room and maybe more?
Dr. Axelrod told me he used to keep his discus in twenty-gallon tanks and rarely changed the water. He just replaced it as needed. The tanks were so dark with green algae you could not see the fish unless you saw them swim by the front glass. I have placed pairs (off their spawning cycle) in tanks and actually forgotten to even feed them for long periods of time. One time I just happened to notice that one of the tanks was full of penny size fry and the water was so low the tops of their fins were almost out of the water.
Now I don't recommend this kind of treatment. But I also don't recommend that you stand in front of the tanks with a stop watch and count the gill beats, divided by the volume of how much chemical you placed in the tank over the past 48 hours.
Discus' are a lot tougher than you think. It's the keepers that are weak; they just can't seem to understand that nature is a better doctor than they can ever become.
KISS IT.

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