Recent Competition of Singapore and Malaysia Discus Club 2010

I have seen the pictures of both the competition and I must say, as usual the standards are very high. And the fishes? ABSOLUTELY STUNNING! It makes me feel more 'into' this hobby once again~! To create my perfect Red Strain! Do surf around the respective discus website to view the pictures, I tell you, you will be glued to discus after that~!

Update on the recovery

Well, I have been busy for the stretch of the past 7 to 8 months and I had forgotten on the update on the recovery of the fishes. What I do remember was that after the potassium permagenate treatment, I stopped doing it after 3 days as there were no hints of slight improvement. So wat I did right after that was, I added just a hint of Japanese yellow powder (the water turn slight yellow), 4 heap tablespoon of salt and turn the heater on to 30 degree celcius and on the aeration high. I think I did remove the sponge filter and I remember doing daily water change (2 hours before the water change, remember to switch off the heater or the fish will have a temperature shock!). Viola~! After 7 to 10 days later, the fishes recovered, but of course, I did the medicational treatment for about another 5 to 7 days to get them stable and back to health. No losses were reported but it is really boring everyday to see sick fishes. SO! Always keep your fish in the best of health if you really want to enjoy this hobby! That's all for today!

Sick. Sick. Sick.

Just 3 days ago, all my fishes fell sick. Even those carrying fries which is in the breeding tank were also sick and all the fries drop dead like ants.

Its the time of the year again. Everytime between the start of August till around December the weird thing happens. All the fishes WILL be sick. I do not know if it is due to the water. I hope not. But it's also the same time last year that all my fishes died. Literally ALL of them. Fingers cross, I hope I will be able to save this breeding squad.

I had just introduce 3 adult fishes into the community tank (which all seems healthy to me) and right after that, all fell sick. Yes I know that I need to quarantine new fishes in a seperate tank but I haven't had any spare tank~! Anyway, that is not suppose to be an excuse for it. It's poor management. I learnt my lesson. Next time I shall ALWAYS QUARANTINE all fishes that I buy.

The funny part is, I am also hearing alot of hobbylist facing the same situation as me. All the fishes will crowd in one corner with their fins clamped. There is no visible onset of any diseases nor any broken tails. Juz 1 or 2 pieces of fishes had their tail turn abit whitish. But the main behaviour of all the fishes are clamp fins and crowding together in one corner.

I do not know what disease it is and how to combat such a situation. So I used Potassium Permaganate coupled with about 2 heap teaspoon of salt (water quantity is about 60 litres) and putting the heater on at 28 degrees. I did this for the pass 2 days with water change daily and putting the same dosage of medication. The result was, they are still sick. However they have spread out around the tank. They are no longer crowding at one corner although they still had their fins clamped.

Anyway below are the picures of the sick fishes with the unknown cause and disease.

Squad in the Making

After so long, some updates on what is happening. I am still reshuffling the team by tranfer listing some of the not needed players (too many players!) and upgrading the squad with more quality enhancing players. So yup, still in the progress.

Reshuffling of The Dream Team

It's been a long time since I last came in and blog. Wow~! It's a whopping nine months in total since my last blog. Well anyway, to cut to the chase, the last time those fishes that was used for my breeding project were all scrape off the team. Either they died (so sad) or was put on the transfer list and sold off.

Anyway, everything is new now and I will only be focusing on two strain. Namely the Reds and the Spotted strain. This two strain shall be created by my Dream Team and some albino genes will be incorporated as well. So the total combinations would be normal Red discus, Albino Red discus, normal Spotted discus and Albino Spotted discus (Albino Leopard, Albino Leopard Snakeskin, Albino Penang Eruption, Albino Singapore Fireworks and its family variations). My eventual dream fish shall just be name simply either as Spotted or Reds (with the word Albino in front if it's a albino, that is).

So stay tune for more updates!

Albino Alenquer

Albino Red Golden Diamond

(without enhance)

Woah latest update- Yesterday night around 8pm the Albino Intermediate pair spawn again! This time round there were more eggs on the tile. So fingers cross, hopefully they will hatch and grow into adult fishes in 8 months time...

Long Lost Update

It was a whole month since I last updated my blog. Anyway, was busy with my work schedule and at the same time combating the bacteria and viruses that all my discus had been infected for unknown reason.

What seem to be weird was that the fishes was sick just overnight with no symptom. They were eating happily today and sick the next. The diagnosis was had to define as they were having cloudy eyes and slim and velvet problems coupled with rotting fins and tail. I did a read up on diseases and found that it was rather close to what was term as the "discus disease". That is the fish will darken, clamp its fin, fin rotting away, slime and velvet and 0thers. I tried to fix the situation with alot of different types of medication. I used Oceanfree products for fin rot (greenish color) and slime and velvet (blueish color) medication, Japanese Yellow Powder, Myercin K, aquarium salt as well as a product that is meant for discus due to "mysterious" water problem.

After about one and a half month, they are back on track with slight recovery. What was observed throughout the whole episode was that the water seems thick and that I suspect it could be due to ammonia, nitrate or protein in the water. Another that could have caused this epidemic was that probably one of the fish was sick and that it have spread to the other fishes. As the bubble was low I speculate that the low oxygen level could have made the fishes even worse. So all these could have contributed to the sickness of the fish.

So after combating the disease I have learnt quite a few things. From here I also understand that the tap water that I used for my fishes was unsuitable for the fishes. Looks like I have to think of a way to condition the water...

Till the next blog.... Adios~!