Dietary requirements of Heckels

[Apistomaster]

I want to open this thread to the dietary requirements of our Heckel Discus.
All wild discus but specifically Heckels eat far more plant material than most of our preconceptions of discus diets as traditionally formulated warrant. This has a bearing on the optimum health of our Heckels and ultimately whether captive breeding will be successful.

As H. Bleher has so thoroughly documumented, the Heckels have definite preferences for fruits from terrestrial plants and that spawning seasons are closely tied to their availability as well as the high water season.

Our ability to adequately duplicate these parameters is not here yet but some conclusions should be kept in mind. Once your Heckels are well acclimated at the very least do not hesitate to increase the amount of vegetable mater in their diets. At this time the easiest way to simulate their vegetable intake is to ensure that they are fed algae wafers. These wafers lend themselves well to the detrital grazing habits of Heckels and they will, given the opportunity, eat a considerable amount of these.

We have far to go but I just wanted to point out that it is a mistake to feed your Heckels exclusively high animal content based foods without an equal emphasis on providing them with algal/detrital foods for them to graze on.

The actual foods Heckels eat in the wild have yet to have a commercial equivalent developed, let alone marketed, but H. Bleher has provided many clues as to what these as of yet invented foods should contain. Until that day do not overlook the omnivorous nature of Symphysodon discus (Heckel).

Larry Waybright

[Apistomaster]

I have noted that some Heckel keeper's find their fish will only eat one or very few foods. Ths is not just a Heckel phenomena. All fish become habituated to the most available food source. This is only a temporary thing. Your Heckels will after some period of transition, accept a wide variety of foods.

Case in point. There are numerous volumes dedicated to the selective feeding of trout, even bearing titles such as Selective Trout.

This is common to most fish. One should make every effort to broaden the base diet of the discus. feeding decreasing amounts of the habituated food along with other foods is the easiest way to accomplish this.
Larry Waybright

[puertoayacucho]

Hi Larry,

I wonder... taking into consideration Heiko's observations, could it be that when waters rise and flow over into the surrounding land, the fish gain access to these terrestrial fruits and vegetation, at other times, fruits ripening and falling into the water from the trees on the river banks?

Most of the water in the Upper Rio Negro system is almost identical in most properties to Guyana Shield Blackwaters (GSBW) where P. altum is from. A considerable percentage of the Rio Negro system receives GSBW. I am very familiar with the "altum environment" and there, aquatic plant life is virtually nil (due to the very acid and organically stained water), though this is variable and in some places, some aquatic vegetation is available where conditions are favorable. As far as altums are concerned, they are more carnivorous inclined but also take to terrestrial fruits. It is frequent to find fruit fallen from trees in the water. I have even seen fruit loaded with FF larvae being eaten - and they prefer to eat the larvae first before munching on the fruit. I even took this experiment home.

Of course then, the Rio Negro basin extends through a much larger area which allows much more diversification in conditions thus allowing the fish to migrate to areas according to their needs.

Would a heckel population tend to "hunt down their veggies"?, that is, migrate to places where there is more edible plant life available, or would they tend to stay in a same area and switch from veggie to carnivore according to the season.

When we comprehend this type of behavior we have more data and tools to try and simulate a biotype in a more integral manner.

Ed

[brewmaster15]

Hi all,
I wonder if it is not necessarily the plant and fruit matter that the wilds, particularly the heckels are feeding on and thats important.. or if its the vitamen and mineral content of these foods..

These may be lacking in their normal aquatic diet during the leaner times of low water levels.. and then once availible with the floods of the rainy season...The heckels use these to meet those difficiencies.

I am not questioning the documention of what heckels eat here.. but The reason for what they eat may be of interest since we can not duplicate what they eat in the wild...we can however suppliment what it is they get from those fruits and plant matter....should we be able to identify them..

Ideally I would love to see amino acid work ups done on discus at the end of the dry season compaired to the end of the rainy season.
The data there could help pinpoint dietary needs that we have yet to ID.

hth,
al

[Ed13]

I really think that discus are eating fruits because of the opportunistic nature of fish. And you have to assume that it is easier for them to pick at a banana or mango(only examples) that are more available through the river than to hunt for pray or waste energy searching for other foods. The fact that they might need the added fiber and vitamins from fruits and vegetables because of the lack of minerals in the water is merely a byproduct of the neccesity and availability of such food surces

[brewmaster15]

Hi Ed,

Have you ever heard of geophagism? Its the process where by animals actually ingest dirt and rocks to get dietary minerals....Of interest is People do this as well in very poor non-industrialized areas.. I remember when I was in college, my professor showed us pictures of tropical indiginous people that were literally nawing on rocks... Its common in the USA in appalachia as well.

Living things inherently know what they need to survive...No one knows how it works...but it seems to be true biologically. Theres many examples.

Take calcium.. mice will go out of their way to find old bones and discarded antlers.. and they will naw on it for calcium..especially in the fall and winter.

I Think that discus are opportunistic as you say...they mouth the food multiple times before they eat it...but they are also notorious for not readily changing what they eat in captivity... a trait their wild cousins should share biologically unless... theres a strong reason for why they eat what they do in the wild.

Also think about the condition of these fish...at the end of the dry season... if they are thin from the relatively leaner times.. deficient in vitamens and minerals is extremely likely, IMO

hth,
al

[Apistomaster]

Hello All,
I thought that one of Heiko's main points made in hs new books was just how dependent discus were on terrestrial fruits and flower. He wrote that he could predict their presence by just identfying the overhanging vegetation within their habitat.
Larry

[standoyo]

I noticed my heckels love to chased food that moved. Small fish and shrimps. They're much more aggressive than the domestics and ignore pellets and take the occasional frozen food[FBW and mysis]. Their favourite food is live tubifex.

[plecocicho]

HI all discus lovers, let this be my first post.
Among discus species, that are recognized by Bleher and Kullander, S. discus lives in the most extreme enviroment and has a highest procentage of plant material in his diet. Extreme acid waters harbour a relatively smaller diverity and numbers of freswater crustaceanes and insect larvae. So specialy in drought season food is really scarce, so fish had to adpat to find alternative foof items. One of them is detritus, which is found in great quantaties in Amazon rivers in all water types.Some of the fish families have actually adapted to use it as a only food source e.g. Prochilodontidae. Other alternative food is food from the above, like fruits and fallen insects. Since there is a far more greater chance that that happenes in flooded forest 8migrating insects, who are caught by rising waters, fruit component becomes relatevitaly more important, so that even in flooded forest, which are relatevitaly rich in animal food items, large part of the diet still has plant component. This leeds me to the speculation, that S. discus is more fructivoring than carnivoring species among discus speciesis. So maybe the diffulcuties that the people experienced with this species, was due to the lack of plant material in their diet. so it loks almost like a animal cruelty act (harsh prosumption, i know), that people once, and sadly, still do feed them with beef hearth recipes.
LP

[kaceyo]

Interesting thread.

[Apistomaster]

HI all discus lovers, let this be my first post.
Among discus species, that are recognized by Bleher and Kullander, S. discus lives in the most extreme enviroment and has a highest procentage of plant material in his diet. Extreme acid waters harbour a relatively smaller diverity and numbers of freswater crustaceanes and insect larvae. So specialy in drought season food is really scarce, so fish had to adpat to find alternative foof items. One of them is detritus, which is found in great quantaties in Amazon rivers in all water types.Some of the fish families have actually adapted to use it as a only food source e.g. Prochilodontidae. Other alternative food is food from the above, like fruits and fallen insects. Since there is a far more greater chance that that happenes in flooded forest 8migrating insects, who are caught by rising waters, fruit component becomes relatevitaly more important, so that even in flooded forest, which are relatevitaly rich in animal food items, large part of the diet still has plant component. This leeds me to the speculation, that S. discus is more fructivoring than carnivoring species among discus speciesis. So maybe the diffulcuties that the people experienced with this species, was due to the lack of plant material in their diet. so it loks almost like a animal cruelty act (harsh prosumption, i know), that people once, and sadly, still do feed them with beef hearth recipes.
LP

I have been thinking along these line. I have been offering a little variety of soft fruits like bits of peaches, apricots, mango and kiwi to my Heckels and they do nibble on them until its gone.
They already had shown an interest in regular algae wafers more than I have noticed before of any other discus. I had a large variety of plecos sharing their tank for a year and that was how I noticed that the Heckels were so interested in foods I wasn't used to feeding my discus. Then later this year I purchased Bleher's Discus and read the results of stomach content analysis.
In the relatively biologically sterile environment the black acid water has it makes sense that if this is the only water Heckels live in that they must have a way to exploit whatever source of food they can find. Simulating the make up of the detritus that they normally feed on is a challenge. The algae wafers have been one way to come closer. I do think they are more dependent on terrestrial fruits than we have thought and this is a factor in why they breed less frequently in captivity than other species of wild discus.