Stuff I learned this weekend

As you know I spent the weekend at Cary's place and stole all of his available fish. I wanted to jot some notes down here before I forgot. These are just some observations that I made while in Detroit...

- anal is the last word that would be used to describe Cary regarding his Discus. He sets up good systems to do the necessary tasks and then lets the systems do the work. His water changes are done by overflowing tanks rather then drain & fill. It wastes water but saves time and from what I saw, time is precious in his life so it's a worthwhile compromise. He even overflows his breeders with RO/tap water.

- he feeds his fish 3x a day, mainly live cbw, frozen bloodworms & beefheart. His feeding is pretty haphazard, tossing worms into tanks as he dashes down the row but all of the fish get fed and all of the food is eaten. I never saw him siphon a tank bottom but I was only there for 2 days and the tanks were never dirty so something must be happening, maybe he was doing it while I slept, maybe Jack did it (not likely).

- he has very few lit tanks. All of the breeders are on the top rack and only get ambient room light. The other tanks have tiny 30g canopies stretched over 3 tanks. The fish don't care and the algae doesn't build up so the glass stays cleaner. His fish don't act scared no matter who approached the tank, that's probably because they're used to him knocking his knuckles on the tank to see how they're doing (a bloody annoying habit, I felt compelled to save as many fish as possible from that ritual :P ).

I'm certainly not knocking the guy or his methods. It was amazing to see how commonplace it was to have pairs breeding. There had to be about 12 tanks with pairs in them and most had eggs or wrigglers. He'd walk by & notice that one pair had laid eggs while another's eggs had hatched and keep walking to the back room to slam a pound of bloodworms flat on the floor so he could open it & pick out the broken pieces. He's basically letting the fish do the work and he's merely a spectator. That sounds logical but the ease at which he's accomplishing this task is scary. It makes sense that if you provide clean water, good food and start with healthy fish then you'll be successful and he's a good example of how that strategy works. It helps that he does all of the background research, gets his fish medicated properly when required and analyzed at a lab if necessary but once the fish are stable & eating they do all of the work. Something to copy for sure.

Thanks for the opportunity Cary.

Dave

[brewmaster15]

Hey Dave,
Did you take any Pics there?

-al

Yup

http://forum.simplydiscus.com//index...;threadid=4980

Dave,
Dang that must be one sweet trip!!!

Miles

[April]

sounds like the cary i know...confidance .and knows how to read his fish.
mannerisms etc...and learnt by eye what to see.
its experience id say.
i wanna go. ;D
remember what everyone says...if you try to make things too perfect...you dont get breeding? think carys overflows and floods might just be the way to go. lol.

[DREW]

Your a good spy Dave. You should work for the gov :P Did you leave any adults for me.

drew

[gary1218]

Dave,

Did you have time to CLEAN the front glass on his tanks so when he takes pics of his discus we can see them better ;D

GARY

[BLUEKNIGHT]

Hey Dave Again thanks for sharing with us and also thanks for stealing the red melons. ;D

DAVE LOL!

I MUST SAY DAVE IS A MAN THAT KNOW'S WHAT HE WANTS. 8)
YOU SEE DAVE COULD NOT KEEP HIS EYE ON ME THE WHOLE TIME CUZ HE WAS SO KIND TO WORK 4 HRS FOR SUE LOL REMOVEING A VIRUS FROM OUR COMPUTER. NOT JUST ONE BUT 250 OF THEM YA DAM I KNOW. MAN MY SCHITT IS SUPER SPIDER MAN SPEED NOW. THANKS DAVE. ;D


DAVE ALSO TOUGHT ME A FEW THINGS OR TWO!
AM A DETROIT STREET FIGHTER AND DAVE IS A BLK BELT IN I'LL KICK THE LIVEING HELL OUT OF YOU, LOL!
WE TOOK SOME TIME OUT AND PUT SOME MOVES ON EACH OTHER. YA DAVE HAD A BLK EYE BUT IN THE END I WAS CRYING FOR DADDY!!! OR MOMA.


DAVE MY THUMBS STILL HURT FROM THE LOCK MOVES HEE.HEE.HEE AM CALLING MY LAWYER. ;D


DAVE WAS ALSO VERY GOOD WITH JACK AND SUE THEY BOTH
LIKED HIM VERY MUCH AND JACK HAD SOME FUN. I GUESS ITS CUZ DAVE'S SON IS THE SAME AGE OF JACK. THEY GOT ALONG GREAT!
THANKS DAVE,

TAKECARE
WENDY LOL!

P.S WHEN YOU BREED THE CROSS I NEED A FEW FRY OK?
TANKS :

[cgrim10]

"His water changes are done by overflowing tanks rather then drain & fill".
wow, so how many gallons of water do you use a day there cary? what is the % of water changed in 24 hours? and you overflow "aged tap and ro mix" on breeders? i have got to hear how this is done. how about a penciled sketch??
great looking fish there, many thanks to dave for the great pics and taking the time to share them, and for his take of carys setup. thx cg

Craig,

not sure if Cary does it the same way I do,

If your tanks are drilled with standpipes and you can pump your water out of your holding tanks, or even out of the tap if you have no chloramines etc.

its easy to run a water-line above a row of tanks with a valve, just open the valve and "flush" the tank till its clear, or even a hose will work.

wastes water but you can walk away and do something else without too much worrying about getting water on the floor.

Just make sure you put a screen or sponge on the standpipes, so little fish don't go down the drain.

hth

P.s Cary when can I come over?????????????????????????

No, no time to clean the glass fronts. That's pretty obvious from the pictures I took. There are usually blackworms dried on to the front of the glass on many tanks. If Cary was a better jumpshooter they'd be cleaner I guess. No time to clean them though.

Craig, Jason is correct. There are standpipes in each tank that just overflow when excess water is pumped into the tank. There is a big ol' pump in the RO tanks that goes to some pipe running to each tank. Ball valves regulate how much water goes into each tank. So you produce the RO, store it and then just pump it in whenever the mood strikes you. I imagine his RO is running 24/7 and he's just adding tap on regular intervals. He's got no chlorine in his tap water so he can do wc on the rest of the tanks direct from the tap, also by overflow.

There's no great secrets to behold at Cary's place. Just good sytems in place that work and allow him to enjoy himself away from the tanks. It's all stuff that has been discussed endlessly on these forums. He also had a lot of empty tanks so that lessened the workload too. But from the amount of fry I saw they won't be empty for long.

Dave

p.s. Jason, there was no screen on the standpipes. This is the first line of culling I guess... Stupid fish get sucked out of the tank. 8)

[ronrca]

Thanks Dave for the valubale info and thanks Cary for allowing Dave to 'spy'! Helps with 'designing' my own fish room which is under way now and construction has started on a 'trial' rack system.

Does Cary have a central filter system or every tank has its own filter?

Thanks again!

All tanks are individually filtered.

Dave

[DarkDiscus]

Dave,

Thanks for the very cool pictures and your tale of Cary's hatchery. I am going to add a link to this thread to Cary's interview so people can always find it!

John