My New Group of Red Batata X Jacarecappa from Hans Discus

[Seanliftsnyc]

Hi Everyone.

Since these are pretty popular fish at the moment, I thought I’d share my journey of keeping this group of 6 Beautiful Discus that I picked up from Discus Hans USA in Delaware last Friday.

So I’m not new to keeping Discus, I’ve kept domestics a few times, as well as Wild
Greens. This will be my 1st time keeping discus from Hans and also with his new supplier Discus X. I will update daily and let everyone know how things are going with these guys and document what I hope will be way more up’s then downs.

1st off I’ll add meeting up with Hans was great, he’s such a gentleman and his new facility is awesome and all the fish look absolutely amazing and healthy.

I picked out 6 Red Batata X Jacarecappa at about 4.5 inches and they will be getting housed in my 90 gallon aquarium that is powered by a Fluval FX6 and a Fluval 407….the tank is set up with 2 filters because a few years ago it was home to my African Cichlid group of peacocks and haps and with those fish over filtering is always better than under filtering….either way I’m sure these guys will get used to the flow of the tank, I’m not worried as I also kept a group of Wild Green Discus in there last year and they didn’t mind the flow. The tank light in case anyone will ask down the line is a Fluval Plant LED which I consider to be one of the best lights on the market. The plants are beautiful, but not real and from a company I miss terribly who is not longer in business, elite cichlids. The substrate is CaribSea super naturals crystal river sand.

I’m going to post some pics of the beginning of the journey after Hans netted them out and I will update daily on their behavior and overall how the experience is going with these guys.

Feel free to ask questions as I will be posting daily and viewing the forums.57482976-B24C-499A-8FC4-0CA1652AF66E.jpg45898375-2556-42C9-B3CB-942DB91A1F2D.jpg

[Seanliftsnyc]

After the 4 hour drive from Delaware back to Long Island City I floated them for about 20 minutes to temp acclimate them which is 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and than slowly added my water to theirs for about another 30 minutes. The only thing that worried me was that Hans PH is in the mid to high 7’s and my PH is in the mid to high 6’s usually sitting at about 6.8
Nether the less they went in pretty smoothly and I left the lights out for about 24 hours and it was time for the game of let’s all hide in the corner for a few days. Slowly but surely they began to explore their new tank and I was able to snag a few pics of them in all their glory. As for feeding it hasn’t been anything to out of the ordinary for new discus. I tried to feed them some Tropical D50 flakes on day 2 and 1 of them sort of went for the food while the others sat back and didn’t show any interest. Day by day since adding them I’ve been using 2 different types of food, both flakes. One is the D50 flakes and the other is from a company Ocean Nutrition and this is their reef flakes which are high in protein and my previous group liked very much. I will also be using Sera granules once they settle in…right now I feel they sink way to quick into the sand and would rather that be a food I’m using once all are really going for the food.Attachment 134577

We are on day 6 and as of this morning 3 of the the 6 went right at the flakes with no hesitation while the other 3 didn’t seem ready to make a go at them yet. I will try Al’s Freeze Dried black worms this evening and monitor who eats and who doesn’t. From my experience and all the advice I’ve gotten this is some what normal behavior, I mean I remember it taking weeks for one of my Wild Greens to become interested in food, but after we did he never skipped a meal again. Hopefully they get more and comfortable over the next days and really begin to settle in.
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Attachment 134577

[brewmaster15]

Sean,
Thats a great start to your Tank Journal ! Thanks for taking the time to post it. I'm Glad you took me up on the suggestion to document the Journey here. I'm really looking forward to watching these beautiful Discus grow. Pretty sure you got this but anything comes up I'm sure we can get you through the rough Patches.

Enjoy the beauties.. I knew you would be back into Discus again lol.
Al

[jeep]

Those are really nice! Congratulations!!

[AquaticNerd]

Super nice looking fish. Like others have mentioned, I too love the wild look in domestic form.

My previous group loved the ocean nutrition flakes - they just hated having to chase after all the small flakey bits because it usually didn't have a whole lot of large pieces. There was another flake food they really liked as well, I think it was Xtreme Aquatics Krill & Spirulina flakes.

Looking forward to seeing your journey!

[Willie]

...my PH is in the mid to high 6’s usually sitting at about 6.8 ...

D*mn!

[Seanliftsnyc]

Thanks Al

Yes I’m glad to be back housing some discus, as always thank you for all the advice…very much appreciated my friend.

[Seanliftsnyc]

Thank you.

I’ve kept wilds before and while I absolutely loved them, I wasn’t a huge fan of how long it took them to settle in and the med process that it took to get them stable, just goes with the territory I guess. So if I can keep a good looking group like these Batata and not have to go through a 3 month long process to get them stable I’m all for it…we shall see, I’m curious to see how the next few weeks go with these guys….fingers crossed.

One of my groups of domestic discus loved the ocean nutrition flakes so from now on I make it a staple in any discus tanks. They also really loved the Tropical D50 flakes as well. I’m using both of these now with a group of Alenquer I’m keeping and they leave nothing behind.

[Seanliftsnyc]

So gave them a light feeding last night to see who would go for the flakes
and only 3 out of the 6 we’re making the attempt to go after the food. So after the initial
Pinch I decided to give something else a try. Not my go to, and definitely not a fan but I decided to just give some frozen blood worms a go….Needless to say they all went for them, now that I see all will eat and they’re just picky mofos, I’ll give Al’s freeze dried black worms a go tonight. I’m also happy to say they didn’t seem to bothered by the light being on, they huddled for about 5 minutes after we turned the lights on and then all came out and went exploring. I’ll chalk it up as a successful night!

Snapped a pic of a few passing by to say hello.
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[dagray]

Beautiful fish.

I am planning on getting six at 2.5 inches from Hans

[Seanliftsnyc]

Thank you!!!

He’s got em at that size…I saw them all when I visited him at his shop. All looked super healthy and active!

[Second Hand Pat]

These are beautiful Sean and think I like these more then the F2 Batata which seem to be mostly striated throughout the body. I am liking the striation around the rim. Were there any more color solid red in the larger sizes?
Pat

[Seanliftsnyc]

I’f I must be honest….looking at all the tanks there in all the sizes between mine and the other straight Red Batata….they all looked very similar. None struck me as being a lot more solid than others, some had a darker ring around them, some had some more speckles, but none looked as solid as I thought they would. Essentially looked like the same fish just in various sizes. Now it could also be that people snatched up the more solid ones when the shipment arrived? But who knows! I did however see on discus x Facebook what looks to be a very deep red Batata….way deeper than anything I saw at Hans shop.
I’ll post a pic down below. 39E4F13C-C838-483D-A74A-74A446CF8C51.jpg

[jwcarlson]

I'm not saying this to be negative about Discus X at all, because everyone does it... I think. But there's certainly some cherry picking and a little color vibrancy shifting going on, probably. If you look at how differently colored the hands are. Presumably it's the same person's hands. They're all so stinking beautiful, though. I've been thinking about getting rid of my Stendkers and starting another growout with something more "wild" looking. I probably won't do that though.

hands.jpg

[Iminit]

Great looking discus Sean! About a year ago I bought this guy in front locally for $15 the size of a quarter. 0B8664A3-849E-4E53-84A2-B6820DB9E756.jpg it’s 6” now and I’m happy with it .
Really like those 2 blues. Thing is like any pet store you have to buy as soon as possibly to when they arrive. I’ve bought from Hans before. His Stendker discus. For me their durability just wasn’t there. They just could’nt be mixed with almost any other type of discus. So being he’s moved to Asian discus I’m interested to see how your’s develop. How long of a trip was it for you to get to his shop?