Nature or Nurture

[chrisc]

As i get into the discus hobby its clear what identifies a discus as quality or not. What im curious about is how much control we have as keepers/breeders over the quality of the fish. Lets say you buy a shipment of 2-3" fish. Their genetics are already locked in. Can you in fact turn an average discus fry into a great adult discus specimen through good husbandry? Obviously in some aspects bad husbandry will lead to bad shape, color, etc. I guess what i wonder is, can an award winning fish be cultivated or is award winning from birth, your job is to simply not screw anything up.

Chris

[smsimcik]

An award winning fish has great size and perfect round shape. Those are genetic traits. Our job is to not screw anything up while growing out discus with superior genetics.
An average discus genetically, can't be turned into an award winning fish with good husbandry. He'll just grow up into a nice, healthy pet quality discus.

[Filip]

Award winning hibrid/ Home breed discus is usually the one hand picked best looking discus out of 200 others from the same breed.
When a breeder raise its batch he gradually cull , select and rate his brood in classes A, B, C etc. . The AAA grade are the best few of the whole brood and ussualy the best one of this selection gets to be the champ.
We regular hobbists ussualy can not get that lucky with just 10 bought average price -juvie discus .

Striations , patterns and colouring is more of a question of genetics while good shape and size is something that we can achieve with our diligent upkeep .

[Señor Discus]

Award winning hibrid/ Home breed discus is usually the one hand picked best looking discus out of 200 others from the same breed.
When a breeder raise its batch he gradually cull , select and rate his brood in classes A, B, C etc. . The AAA grade are the best few of the whole brood and ussualy the best one of this selection gets to be the champ.
We regular hobbists ussualy can not get that lucky with just 10 bought average price -juvie discus .

Striations , patterns and colouring is more of a question of genetics while good shape and size is something that we can achieve with our diligent upkeep .

Great info!