What Wilie said
Last edited by Second Hand Pat; 01-19-2018 at 10:54 PM. Reason: Needed a little help .
Mama Bear
People who haven't been keeping discus very long might see a beautiful, round-bodied, show-winning discus and put all other discus up to that standard like I did. A lot of posts here talk about football-shaped discus being bad and only circle-shaped discus are good. That's why I made this post.
After receiving some great comments I did more research, not just looking at the show winner but also all the competitors. I posted picture examples here incase anyone else might be interested in this topic. I'm sure people who have been on this forum for 10-20 years have no need for this post.
When we refer to football shaped we are also talking about fins included, not just the body.
Larry Bugg
NADA - Vice President
Atlanta Area Aquarium Association
Hello Hiedi, if you are interested in quality, look at discus from international shows, the quality at the internationals are far better than that at most of the domestic shows. Like that picture I posted, it was from an international show. Also, shape will to some degree depend on strain. The best shaped strains are by far turqs, followed by blue diamonds. The reason for this it that they are far closer to wild discus genetically speaking. Throughout the years many of the newer strains have been heavily line bred and inbred, this enhances whatever feature they are focusing on, however it also exaggerates their faults too.
Thank you Larry. I think maybe I've been a bit confused because a lot of the really bad quality discus look sort of look triangle and boomerang shaped to me but everyone calls them football's so I thought they were referring to just the body and that anything football shape is bad. I'm sorry for my confusion.
Thank you Zac. I will look at the international shows. That's interesting about the linebreeding and inbreeding. Makes sense.
Last edited by HappyFace; 01-20-2018 at 01:58 AM.
I would like to add that you generally can not judge a discus from one picture. An odd angle can make a nice discus look "off". You really need to see a discus in person IMO.
Pat
Your discus are talking to you....are you listening
Hi Larry,
Just playing devil's advocate here, but I think we're seeing more and more "nice" fish with round bodies, plus the fins. I can see how you'd like the dorsal, anal and tail fins to be generally round when combined, but how are the round bodies judged, and what about streamers? At this point, I tend to ask for round bodies plus fins.
Poor fish.
Thank you Pat. That's a very good point.
This is exactly what I did with my last batches of discus. I asked for a circular body without the fins, circular even when the fins are clamped. One of the sellers acted like they didn't understand what I meant.
According to Andrew Soh's book discus the naked truth, These extremely high bodied strains are actually a deformity caused by a particular strain of bacteria. Basically, it's a harmful bacteria which is why it deforms the fish. Also, they do not breed true as it is not a strain as such, but simply a deformation. If you breed it, some may become very high bodied, but this is not genetic rather it is phenotypical, caused by the bacteria spread from the parents. Personally, I would avoid these strains.