Very Rare Wild Cobalt

[fishfarm]

Hi All, David is correct. Wattley is "the man" and it took him years to develope his famous strain of discus, You should see how the Asian breeders crowd around him when he goes to shows over there. Bing Seto developed the cobalt discus in the late 70's crossing Wattley's fish with wild fish.
Degan is as *** and knows nothing about discus. I spent 3 days with him in Penang, that was enough for me! Axelrod is a publisher and not a fish person, enough said.
I import wilds and am not any kind of expert, The Peru blues caught me off guard and I thought someone had released some domestic blues into the Nanay that had crossed with the greens in the river. All the fish in the Nanay are introduced as it is not a s natural discus habitat. Dick saw them and thought they were just real blue wilds. Who knows? Lee has them now so well see it they are a pair and breed some blue babies. Ain't the forums great! Ken

[Martin_HONGKONG]

To many of us that keep wild discus, we have a passion to keep the terminology right. They are only, blue(Royal blue), green (RSG, Royal Green), brown (alenquer,), heckels (blue face, brown, red based, yellow, painted heckels) and their hybirds such as I'ca, Maderia.
Lately we saw pictures of 2 specimens of wild caught Snake skin.

The rest are domestics, such as blue diamond, red angel etc. The name cobalt implies a domestic fish and may cause a lot of debt. The pic here shows a RSG with lots and lots of blue which is rare, but with very little amount of spots. It suggest to me, it is either the result of inbred from many generations or a tank rised individual.

When I have questions on wilds discus, rays or pleco. I would ask David over the phone or PM him! I am sure David have seem more discus that I would imagine.

Martin

Wow.

Hi All:

Now that Ken has mentioned about someone may have dumped a few domestic-made blues into the rivers, that draws back some memory I had on hearing about that. It was way back maybe in the 70's when I heard news of someone dumping fish into the rivers of S.A. ???

But in any case, here is a not-so-elaborate photo of the fish in question. I refer it now as a cobalt/blueberry mix.

--Angie--

Ken: All is well with two Wild Peruvian Greens! Soon you will see photos of them. Thanks for the info. ;D

The camera I've used is the DigiCam that comes along with the PC. I hope you can see better details of the photos.

This so-called "Wild Cobalt" is a female. She has a distinctive marking around her. It's a dark circle that outlines her shape. It shows slightly (as she didn't stay still) near her tail end and cauldal areas. She spawned about two months ago with Ken's Wild Peruvian Green. Unfortunately, my Clown Loaches and Panda Corys ate them!

--angie--

This photo is the picture of a Cobalt (according to the books and to many people on the forum and auction sites). Notice that this one has very little striation shown (it's either faded or none at all). The striation is a deep rich blue/violet tone that is only shown when fish is (i guess) stressed. But usually he is powdery blue with violet tones. [I hate to say it, I thought this is a Violet Reflection and it may be but ???]. Thanks for looking. --Angie--

[Fishin dude]

[quote author=fishfarm link=board=22;threadid=17251;start=15#msg179488 date=1080053909]
Bing Seto developed the cobalt discus in the late 70's crossing Wattley's fish with wild fish.
The Peru blues caught me off guard and I thought someone had released some domestic blues into the Nanay that had crossed with the greens in the river. All the fish in the Nanay are introduced as it is not a s natural discus habitat. Dick saw them and thought they were just real blue wilds. Ken


[/quote] Frygirl:that draws back some memory I had on hearing about that. It was way back maybe in the 70's when I heard news of someone dumping fish into the rivers of S.A.

If the cobalt was being developed in the 70's, would someone ship to the Nanay River to just let it go and breed?? ...I think not.
All the boxes of fish that were freed were wild.....the plane was overweight, so bye bye to 40 to 70 boxes.

[wildthing]

It used to be cheaper to ship fish out of Brazil via Peru, hence why the original Green discus fish were in Peru to 'escape' in the first place..I don;t know about any planes, I heard a boat capsized but I guess it is already another mythical event.
. The a-hole that originally had the " accident' was a low-life called Bustamente, who ripped off just about everyone at one time or another & is now persona non grata in the fish world, except for a very few people that don;t know their history..... These days he would probably be prosecuted by Brazilian authorities for biopiracy.

Quite a while ago Jack Wattley wrote an article for Diskus Brief. In it he described releasing some of his domestic Discus into a pond in Northern S.America, ( I have a feeling it was Guyana but I cannot recall) In the arrticle JW joked about how if you ever found a blue discus in the Amazon it was probably from him...much later on he denied that he had done that but there it is in black & white in his own hand. It must also be said that back then, in the 70's, there were not the concerns that there are these days about introducing non-native species into new places. 30 years is plenty of time to pollute the gene pool.

All the genes & by extension all the color variants that are found in domestic fish originated with wilds ( obviously)...so the wild population has the genetic potential for anything that we have created ( & maybe more) , and given the population of discus in the wild it should be no surprise at all to ( rarely) find a naturally occuring wild fish that demonstrates recessive gene combinations such as snakeskin or blue or fire-engine red or whatever we have bred in our tanks.
tens of thousands of square miles of Amazonia are still unexplored, so that gives quite a lot of space for Nature to work with the law of averages. We should expect maybe to see more "domestics" appearing in the wild

[jules]

New tank looks excellent Angie; along with the new inhabitants.

The Curiperas from Oliver are beautiful.

I can see the green in your Striated Blue- nice colouring. It would be interesting to see what appearance her fry would take.

all lookin good 8)

Julie

[Martin_HONGKONG]

David,

It was Diskus Brief, volume 1, 1994 Issue IV page 6-7.

In brief, 24 pcs of 4 cm Coerulea Turquoise were taken to an enclosed stream at Paramaribo in Suriname with a surface area approximately 100m x 60m. Mr Wattley, did not say rather if these group of discus were established in that area.

Mr Wattley also mentioned that a Dutchman had introduced the Cardinal tetra into swamp areas of Suriname with positive results.

Martin

[fishfarm]

Both of my Peruvian supplies now list blue discus on their price list. This is a recent addition within the past few months, all come from the Rio Nanay. Since all the discus there are not a natural population we can only speculate where blue fish suddenly came from. Peru aquarium told me they had 10 boxes in stock so there's quite a few being collected. The fish are obviously wild collected as they have bite marks and defects common to wild fish. They are beautiful and I'd be interested to see if they throw any blue fry or just greens when they spawn. Some have a few red spots, but nothing like a TEFE.

[FischAutoTechGarten]

I remember that story about the 'ponds' in Suriname that Jack Wattley was populating with juvenile Coerulia (really nice Blue Turqs) Discus.

I'll have to dig up additional info, but later it was found that 3 such ponds existed and that Marc Weiss raided them? Could just be urban legend. OK, I'm kidding about the MW part. Caused quite a stir in the Discus community back then.

Hi Ken:

I've got to let you know that you sold me one of the "Wild Peruvian Blues" (of the two WPG). I don't know if you can see the picture from the photos attached. But one of them (when I first got it last December) has completely turned to a Blue/Green as of the last two months. This is the one (that is a male) and went after my Wild Royal Blue (or Cobalt).

Also, when I got my Wilds inspected at JFK, the U.S. Wildlife has a list that refers the Discus Symphsodon as "Blue Discus". The list does not recognize any other colors of Discus. LOL If I didn't read David's posting re: the dumping of Blue fish in the rivers of S.A., I wouldn't have ever thought that the Wild Royal Blues/Wild Cobalts/Violet Reflections all possibly came from that batch of discus!

That was so illegal then to do such a thing (as it is now). But it turned out to be a success (as it seems today). Amazing. But it's not the same (meaning good results) as when one dumped their Snakehead fish into our Maryland Chesapeake Rivers a while back. That ain't cool at all. Stupid killer fish nearly ate all the crustaceans and was breeding like hell over there.
--Angie--

Hey, Jules: Thanks! Hard work for sure. I just cleaned out the tank yesterday (with a 3.5 pail bucket; cause my python is tooooo long for the force of water I have. ). Took me four hours to break down tank and filters and sterilize it all! Stupid algae growth all of sudden on glass near filter. How's your Royal Blue/Cobalt doing? ;D **Angie**

Thanks folks for the info. Yes, Ken, this forum is awesome. Learn alot; bumpheads alot; and laugh till I drop off the chair.

[Fishin dude]

Yes, great info!
I may have some Jack Wattley "wilds" from what I have been reading here. Like Ken said, they are beautiful...the black trim is replaced by blue irridesence.
I have a nice collection of wild discus...these are a great addition. Ken, Thanks for letting me cherry pick!

Here's a better shot of the Wild Peruvian Green.

A Wild Collection. This has got to be my favorite photo of all. These guys wanted me to take picture. LOL They literally knew what it was that I wanted. ;D