National Aquarium in Baltimore: bad discus?

[univmd]

Have any of you seen the discus tank at the National Aquarium in Baltimore? I went to the Aquarium last week and was shocked to see hole in the head disease on one of the the three discus. The tank also did not look very clean and the other two discus did not seem very round. I wrote an email to the Aquarium but did not hear back. What do you think about the discus at this world famous aquarium?

Also the 3,000 gallon discus tank at the Barnes and Noble next door (managed by the National Aquarium in Baltimore) is now closed. I heard that it was the largest planted tank in the U.S. Employee said that the tank leaked before last summer, what is going on, are they going to fix the tank? What happened to all the discus in there?

With warm regards, James:balloon:

[RickMay1]

without seeing the fish or the conditions I really don't have any educated comment. But as far as shape goes, the perfectly round shape we are all after isn't really a natural shape for discus, yes their are some naturaly occuring round discus from the wild, but most discus are less then perfectly round shaped. Those fish were likely wild,as I'm sure that is what they wanted to show.

[Dying for Discus]

I had a very similar experience when I lived in Kentucky for a year. I went to the Newport Aquarium. They had three wild discus. They looked awful. Their aquarium looked OK, considering they used black water, but the discus were thin and terrified. They were so stressed they were black. One in particular looked like he had discus plague, even though it was probably stress-shredding.

RickMay's got a good point. When you think about it...a lot of discus probably do look like that in the wild. I don't know if I could use such bad looking fish as educational specimens though. :( poor guys.

[terps]

Have any of you seen the discus tank at the National Aquarium in Baltimore? I went to the Aquarium last week and was shocked to see hole in the head disease on one of the the three discus. The tank also did not look very clean and the other two discus did not seem very round. I wrote an email to the Aquarium but did not hear back. What do you think about the discus at this world famous aquarium?

Also the 3,000 gallon discus tank at the Barnes and Noble next door (managed by the National Aquarium in Baltimore) is now closed. I heard that it was the largest planted tank in the U.S. Employee said that the tank leaked before last summer, what is going on, are they going to fix the tank? What happened to all the discus in there?

With warm regards, James:balloon:

According to Rocky Mountain Discus website, the National Aquarium Staff is supposed to maintain the tank at Barnes and Noble. Maybe they don't have the funds available to fix it yet. It's probably not a minor job to fix a tank that large.

http://www.rockymountaindiscus.com/Discus.htm

[Discus-Hans]

I've also seen the low quality Discus in both tanks, the wilds in the Barnes & Noble tank were very low quality with deformed fins etc.

Last week I was with my kids at Inner Harbour and saw the tank closed, they are still working on it.

Hans