any one else out there keeping tefe discus

hi guys just woundering is there any one else out there keeping wild tefe s or any other wild strains for that matter.intrested in what ya s have .how many. how you s found keeping them.am so intrested(obsessed) with wild discus i just find it fascinating that these fish came from there natural habitat ie the amazon.any way would love to hear back from ya s guys



craig:)

Craig I have to agree with you they are really nice to keep, I found them much better and more interesting then my tank bred. I will hopefully get to keep some again at some stage. My goal is to bred the blue face heckels if I ever get the chance to get my hands on some and when I have both the time and money. Its nice to see your stock are doing well, biggest problem I found keeping wilds was trying to get them to except commercial food, spent alot of time with messy beef heart, they do well on it but the tank maintenance requirement are just too much but well worth the effort.

hi zoom mine are feeding on jbl discus pro granuale s and frozen krill and blood worm seem to really enjoy it yeah the hekels are hard to come bye and will put a dint in your bank balance to hans discus have them but dont ship over to ireland altho i think he has a friend who has them in the uk i will root through my emails and try find the uk based firm that do them just so for future prefrence you can see price and how handy it might be to get them over here.my dream is to collect wild discus from the rivers but another dream is to breed my tefe s.have 4 now so might get another 2 and see if any will pair up have a little trick when i do water changes i put the water into a watering can witch has the big spout on it so im trying to mimic the rain during the rainy seasons but mine are not big enough to breed so ill just keep up that routine and see where it gets me


craig

fishmad1234 wrote:

hi zoom mine are feeding on jbl discus pro granuale s and frozen krill and blood worm seem to really enjoy it yeah the hekels are hard to come bye and will put a dint in your bank balance to hans discus have them but dont ship over to ireland altho i think he has a friend who has them in the uk i will root through my emails and try find the uk based firm that do them just so for future prefrence you can see price and how handy it might be to get them over here.my dream is to collect wild discus from the rivers but another dream is to breed my tefe s.have 4 now so might get another 2 and see if any will pair up have a little trick when i do water changes i put the water into a watering can witch has the big spout on it so im trying to mimic the rain during the rainy seasons but mine are not big enough to breed so ill just keep up that routine and see where it gets me


craig

Craig, you should have a chat with my brother in law Arabu1973, he has wild green tefe's too & is a discus fanatic. I think you two would get on like a house on fire.

Yep Craig, 2poc's brother in law is a wild discus fanatic, he has a pair of tefe's I once had and spawned but I never managed to try much more at raising the fry as I promised them to Russell who also was a big discus fan (think he has gone back to the marines now), dont know if Adrian has had any luck with the Tefe's since he got them from Russell though. But Adrian has a lovely collection of wild discus, he's your man at the moment for wild discus.

Cheers
Alan.

It's been some years since I had wild tefes.
Fantastic fish.
I spotted some wild browns in a LFS recently......they support my argument that the Brown Discus is one of the most beautiful of discus. Perfect shaped discus.

I think that I'd prefer to set-up a wild-discus-only tank rather than plonking them into my CB discus tanks. I'd have to talk J around to yet another discus tank (which went from 3 discus tanks to 4 yesterday as it is anyway.....sneekily set up the 4th tank last night ).

As others have said here, wild discus often come in looking like tattered fish with a potential problem of not eating and having too many worms/parasites. All of that, however, can be treated if a bit of tender care is given in the first few days and weeks.

ian

hi ian yeah some browns look great alright im just totally obsessed with wild discus i dont think ill ever keep another fish.if i had the space id love a tank for each wild discus strains have a tank for blue s a tank for brown s a tank for reds and a tank for red spoted green discus maybe on day:) .i never really seen them in shops till out in f.f.f didnt know what strain to get but as soon as gav showed me the tefe s i was in love hahahahahh amazing quality.wilds seem to have a better personality then captive breds for example one of the new tefe s this morning was chaseing a danio around never seen this happen with any other captive bred discus ive had and a while back one used to chase a cherry shrimp around in circles around a bit of wood very fun to watch.the difference in wild s at feeding 2 they will nip at plants bite bits off and have a little snack on the tiny snails that are in the tank.i suppose in the wild there just grazers have heard the some time s eat small fish to so wild discus really will just eat what ever come s there way.i dont know if this is true or not but was reading online that some experts belive wilds are easyer kept then cb discus they have been exposed to every thing the amazon had to throw at them and survived there fore having good immune systems where as the weaker one s would have died off.i might be wrong but it seems wilds are starting to be more and more popular again these days



craig

Craig, slow down on the enthusiasm…..you forgot to add any paragraphs to your last post. (I see some hidden full-stops though).

I was actually tempted to get some green discus on a visit to Gav’s place….but I bought some of the small baby discus instead (as a pressie for my OH). Prices were good.

There are problems with Wild Caught discus. I would NOT say that they are easier to keep though. There is a lot of acclimatisation to do first.

But part of the problem with Captive bred discus may (and I’m only saying ‘may’) be that many are sub-standard in quality in the first place and have maybe not had the best start in life.
In principle, however, captive bred discus that have been carefully selected and raised give the keeper a much better chance of success.

Back in the days (here we go….’when I were a lad…’) the Germans were breeding discus of such high standard and such toughness to accelerate discus keeping forward; if not having the funds to buy such very expensive captive bred fish then one would need to pay the still high prices for wild caught discus (and battle against some comparative odds to go with it) or buy sub-standard random crosses (my first discus were blue x brown….dirt cheap, not great, but better than most random crosses I see today)

As for ease of keeping Wild caught: the region that the specimen came from dictated the ease of keeping somewhat. Discus come from quite varied water qualities. Certain localities tend to adapt better than others…and this was particularly true of days when there was a very heavy reliance on what came out of the tap. My water came from Birmingham…very hard water.

Discus are grazers….but are happy to feed from all levels of water, and eat a great variety of food (and sometimes it is that variety of food that leads to gut to problems in fish)

ian