It's not that I think that a pigeon discus look nice. There are lot of fish that look very nice. I have also breed this fish and the solid types. You have to if you want to sell fish.
Well someone develop a strain that have a light colour body. And the fry don't find the body. You have to use foster parents. Or develop a solid discus. When this fish get sick have way to show the stress bars or get dark. The beginner doesn't se this and fish dies.
Maybe that's an improvement when it's come to colour. But all this inbreeding/crossing/etc we get fish have hard to swim, reproduce. Etc.
Understand that I not that idealist. I like discus and think it's fun. And I'm not 100% in my opinion. It's hard to write, you get so much miss understanding compared with talking.
In Sweden we have a lot of importers of fish. They talk about theirs quality and expensive discus. They have never breed a discus and don't understand how hard it's is to breed a good discus. Then this 15 years old boy comes to the store and want to sell some discus. And the first thing this importer its bad discus not hottest line will not sell. How will that help the next generation of discus breeders or the hobby?
Or if I have a F1 discus that I have work hard to produce. I know that this fish don't ever compare with well know breeder. Then this hobbyist come home to me an it's a **** fish. Take a look at my discus. They lock very nice but the only comes down to he have $$$$$ to get this fish. He knows nothing about breeding or takes care of discus.
That's why I some time sound "evil". This it's not the case and I hope you don't get offended. I'm so tired of all this quality or quality that. It's all comes down to make $$$$ in companies.
Today I have only discus 1 fish from a well know breeder kitti. And the rest are wild or produced in my hometown. They don't all look the best. But I know the history of every fish back the last 3 - 5 generation.
Well one friend work over 2.5 years to get his first discus to breed. The first off spring looked like hell. But I took one of he's first females and made a cross with one of my. The look on his face when I gave back some discus with the female he had produced. 8) ;D
I hop U understand my point...
Johan Nilsson