Hello all,
For those who have never seen my fish or fishroom before, welcome! For those who have seen my stuff before, thanks for keeping tabs on me!
A little bit about myself:
I am 23 years old and am fresh out of college with a B.S. in Neuroscience from Lafayette College where I also played D1 college soccer for four years. While at Lafayette I kept myself very busy with a variety of activities including fish keeping and fishing oddly enough.... which are my two great passions.
During my freshman year of college my discus obsession began and has culminated into what I have today as far as my discus and discus room goes. At Lafayette I met a cichlid legend by the name of Wayne Leibel, who is a dear friend and mentor to this day as we still talk very often. He bought me my first wilds upon graduation which was a group of 5 wild red spotted greens. With Wayne I performed 3 semesters of research on various danio species and their behaviors.
I also got the opportunity to be the first ever student be be given the title of Aquatic Specialist to the Biology Department. With this I was allowed to build a 150gallon planted aquarium in which I put discus. I was also a lab assistant for Developmental Biology for three years through which I basically was given a lab and did tons of really cool aquarium things as I was given almost free reign and a lot of room to add about 20 tanks, including my first ever attempt at a saltwater reef tank which still persists to this day.
At Lafayette I was able to breed a bunch of fish including wild convicts, celestial pearl danios, zebra danios, neon tetras, glowlight tetras, white clouds, and tiger barbs.
Another fun fact was that I was hired by the college to design and build a jellyfish tank for the Trenton State Museum which was on display for several months. I even build a small 10gallon jellyfish tank which I kept in my dorm room which was all the rage to watch whilst drinking adult sodas at our parties.
I am an avid fisherman, perhaps on par with my discus obsession so if anyone wants to talk fishing and discus I am your guy!
I currently work at Penn Neurosurgery where I do clinical research... Penn being University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. While I work I am studying to get into medical school and I also volunteer coach at my high school when I have time.
I recently worked with my father in constructing a discus fish room which currently contains a 200gal, 6 55gals, and 4 20gals. I also have 4 55gal drums equipped for again water.
Most of my fish are from Hans whom I visit to hand pick my fish down in Maryland. I do have several Lawrence Soon, Tony Tank, and Dexter Chung discus as well from various importers here in the States
My goal with discus is to produce high quality red spotted varieties of discus using my leopard snakeskins, leopards with ring gene, face spotted eruption, and albino eruption. I have my 5 wild RSGs that I would like to utilize in this endeavor as well.
I currently am selling some of my fry which is going pretty well and is helping me pay for my hobby. It is very rewarding to breed, raise, and sell discus as well as watch your selected few keepers from your group of fry to become nice and big adults.
Long story short, I'm glad to be where I am at with discus at this point and I thank you all for taking the time to hear my story! I will be posting lots of stuff very soon so stay tuned and please feel free to comment or ask questions about anything I am doing... I enjoy talking with all of you!
Ps... check out my instagram @ southjerseydiscus to see some cool things I've posted in the last several months!