Spawning Heckle Question

[Lisachromis]

I am David Dollman and yes I successfully bred two wild Heckels together in July 1988 and got about 100 babies from the spawn. I got the parents when they were very small. I was able to go with a friend who owned a petshop to a wholesaler and obtained them there. I sent Jack pictures of the parents and he said yes they were indeed pure Heckels Jack traded me some fish in exchange for the babies. I lost the parents and all my discus when the angelfish-discus disease wiped out all my fish. If you have anymore questions feel free to contact me.

Do you have any pictures at all? Even ones from a regular camera that could be scanned. I think I can safely say this for everyone when I say "I'd LOVE to see some pictures of this"!

Oh, and for the others.... do you remember how you bred the Heckels? water parameters, food, etc...

[Apistomaster]

I hope some one who is successful in breeding pure Heckels is able to distribute the young so an aquarium strain of Heckels can become established in the hobby. The interest in Heckels is greater now than any time I can remember.
If they follow the same trend as most fish bred in captivity then breeding them should become more common place.

[Apistomaster]

I don't believe Heckels have never been bred in captivity, only that it has been a very rare accomplishment. I am mostly surprised that no one ever went on to keep a TR strain of Heckels going. There are alway these reports that something went wrong and the fish produced were all lost. I think given the number of people trying to breed Heckels is greater than any time in the past and we should begin to see some results fairly soon. Next few years should be very interesting. Like Heiko pointed out, the Heckels are extremely popular in Japan so the Heckel community has a much larger following and spawns should be inevitable.

I know that I have one pair that is especially promising. What I need to do is find a way to squeeze in another 75 gal tank and allot it to that pair and begin adjusting them from living in my tap water to conditions similar to those of the Heckel biotope. This pair is engaging in every form of pre-spawn behavior but are not likely to go any further in the group setting and in my tap water.
Curses to the limited space I have to work with.

[Göran Ekholm]

I can only say that i have done all i possible can but i only had pair cleaning a con but that's all, and i got some big and fat ones

[Göran Ekholm]

some more

[Darren's Discus]

Goran,
some great looking big heckels you have,all the best with them.


cheers

[Heiko Bleher]

Hi all of you.,

this is Heiko Bleher and I saw this interesting thread (only now?) and like to make some comments, for Larry E. Matincheck (as he mentioned my name), Larry (Apistomaster), Yoda, David, madfish and Göran:

Larry E. Matincheck:
1. I do not know if Larry (Apistomaster) claims to have been the first to breed wilds, i dougt it. He never mentioned it to me or anywhere else I know of. It also can not be, as the first breeders lived before he was born (all coming up in my volume 2, each detail of each and every first breeder).
2. It is definitely Wrong your statement, that Heckel-discus have been breeding in captivity for quite some while. Schmidt-Focke i.e. tried for 30plus years without success, and all I have seen so far (with only a handful of exceptions) were NOT Heckel-discus breed with Heckel-discus. There was ALWAYS a blue/royal blue or similar other discus involved. AND throughout Asia NO-ONE has EVER breed the true Heckel-discus. All those I visited (a few hundreds, all in my book II) thought they had done it, simply because they did not understand what a real Heckel-discus is (and many still do not know in Asia). The very same happens all the time with the real P. altum, everyone thinks that he/she is breeding them...
3. Show us one single evidence (pictures not words).
4. WHY should there be no market for F1 Heckles, that is ridiculous. One could sell thouysands every day (at least me...).
5. Let us see what Discus Hawaii offered them for sale, not words.
6. My collected discus was black, dark if you want, but I never didi I say it was yet black or like a Black Mollie black, there are very few such black fishes altogether.
Note: I am happy Al is taking this BS off.

Yoda: Great that you had/have eggs, but I dougt they will hatch with pH 6, or 67, and also not at KH 2-3. Nor with CO2. You should read what I wrote about Heckel-discus, parameters and habitats. Microsiemens must be below 20... and more things you must look/read at.

David: like Lisa said, we all would love to see some photos from 1988. Any available? Actually I could (and would love to) still include them in my volume II, as a permanent record for generations to come (as I did with Vol. 1). Please inform. And also: I will give a talk in Toronto on July 26th, maybe you can come.

madfish: if you saw those in Rio, can you tell me the store name? You know I am partly Brazilian and started my wholesale place (exporting Brazilian fishes, mostly which I collected myself) already in 1965 in Rio de Janeiro (that is why I called my company Aquarium Rio, later, end of 1967, transferred top Frankfurt, Germany). I know every store there and can ask next time (I am doing again to expeditions in August in Brazil).

Göran : first of all I like you, already because you are one of the few to use your own name on the web (what I think everyone should do, to avoid many problems...). But I think you have really beautiful Heckel-discus, congratulations, but you are NOT doing all possible as you say, by what I see on the pictures.
1. Wild Heckel-discus do not know PVC pipes.
2. They do not know empty aquariums (missing at least fine sand) - remember they are WILD fishes.
3. I do not see anything NATURAL in your aquarium and they are lookig for it. Have a look at my Bleher's Biotopes on my website. To get an idea.

That is all guys, I must go,

all the best

always

Heiko Bleher
www.aquapress-bleher.com
www.aqua-aquapress.com

[Göran Ekholm]

I have with fin sand i almost all me tanks and rots and fore months, from late November to march i collected live food every day for them, almost all me tanks are biotope tanks, i have your book i brought it from you in Duisburg.

I learned from a German gentleman that lives in Sweden breeding true Royal Blues in the 80`s not semi royals but true fullstriped Royals about the fine sand, you had learned him!

I keep me Heckels in Ph 3,8 and a conductivity of 12-22 microsiemens, i have bin carrying water from the forest collecting it from a peat swamp fore months by hand daily for kilometers!

Believe me when i say that i done all i can!

Here are some of me tanks, but its difficult to see in the dark water, but if this is not a heckelbiotop under the dry season then i don't now how to do!

I also feed them with food made of sea mussel and fruits like strawberries and blueberry's, mango, bananas and all kind of tropical fruits and berry's!

I simulated the rain season by chancing all the water and put ed in a forest of plants. I have seen photos of namunda blueface heckels breeding, but i believe that the true Rio Negro heckels have never been bearded.

[Heiko Bleher]

Hi,

it all sounds very good and you have paid good attention. Now the thing is yo wait and continue. The other suggestion I can give you:
Rio Negro Heckel-discus normally spawn in nature February-to April (seldom or never in January), during the raising and flood season. They will retain that spawning-period for sure.
I.e. Nhmaundá Heckel-discus will spawn during the month of November-February, hardly before or after, so they will retain that period as well (and I saw one, which is for sure from there).
But more about the different periods of Heckel-habitats is in my book, as you know.

I am almost sure, that Barbara has Heckel-disus from the Rio Negro and they cleaned at the time this year when it is also in nature...

Patienca is the Italian word.

best regards

Heiko

PS: did you see on my site what you missed in Poland...

[Apistomaster]

What I claimed and is fact about my breeding wild discus is this:
In 1969, when I was 17 years old I was the first to breed wild discus in the inland Pacific Northwest USA, East of the Cascade Mountain Range in Eastern Washington, East of the Cascade Range in Oregon, all of Idaho and all of Montana. I make no other claims of being first. I also operated the largest purely Tropical fish shop in the state of Idaho at that time. That is a matter of Public Record, repeated several times in articles written in the Lewiston Morning Tribune, a leading daily Idaho newspaper. They found it interesting and I had dropped out of high school to keep up the shop.
I make no other claims of being the first.
I bred one pair of wild Royal Blues and 2 different pairs of wild Browns.
I did not breed any tank raised discus until my F1 wild fry grew up and began spawning.
Not long after(1970) I did acquire some juvenile nickel sized brown Discus which had been imported from SE Asia by the now defunct tropical fish importer, Long Beach Fisheries,Inc. located in Los Angeles, CA. Those were the second tank raised Discus I ended up breeding. I was able to raise and sell enough Discus to allow me to attend LCSC three years without having to hold down a real job. I am surely the first of their students to have ever done that.
I hope that clarifies my statements of fact.
The facts are that there were mostly breeders in the Asian communities of Seattle, WA and Portland, OR who were also breeding Discus. I only saw plain colored Brown Discus being raised by any of these breeders and the breeding pairs were tank raised discus. None of them were breeding any wild discus at that time. I tracked down every breeder of discus in the Pacific Northwest USA I could find to meet with them and compare notes.
I am only familiar with the ancient Discus history of the Pacific Northwest although I was aware of some others within the Asian community in San Francisco were producing a fairly large number of tank raised discus contemporaneous with my own efforts. Maybe some were spawning wild discus, too. I simply am not that familiar with what others were or were not doing outside the areas I described above.
I hope I have clarified the extent of my Discus projects I had going on in those nearly 40 years ago.
Heiko is correct in his understanding that I have never claimed to be the first to ever breed Discus. To think anyone ever might have thought I made such a ridiculous claim is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.

[Göran Ekholm]

I will never give up! But i will regret for the rest of me life that i missed Crakow! I had to work, it was panic on one of the construction sites, and i had no chans it was kayos.
But i still need to get some juvs from me to Barbara, so if there is and one that will travel from Sweden to Crakow please PM me,

I will some day breed Heckels! If i live that long!
But i really must admit i hate them some days!!!!!

[Moon]

I will never give up! But i will regret for the rest of me life that i missed Crakow! I had to work, it was panic on one of the construction sites, and i had no chans it was kayos.
But i still need to get some juvs from me to Barbara, so if there is and one that will travel from Sweden to Crakow please PM me,

I will some day breed Heckels! If i live that long!
But i really must admit i hate them some days!!!!!

I do agree with you. Keeping discus is a love/hate relationship with me too. When I go down to my fish room and all of the discus come to greet me I'm happy. When one or two are in the back corner of the tank looking miserable I.m not happy.
Recently, my group of Heckels have not been quite normal. Sometimes they eat all the food and on some days just hang togather and won't eat. Not quite sure what to do.

[Apistomaster]

Hi Moon,
My Heckels do the same thing. I think they are a naturally bipolar species. They range from being as tame as a discus can be to cowering in fright over something as simple as putting on a dark jacket from the opposite side of the room. I have come to accept that they will have their off days. Their bad days always pass.

Hi to Goran,
Goran, your pairs of Heckels are beautiful. I have been able to get Heckels to the point of cleaning potential spawning sites and in all other ways, acting like a mated pair in the past and with my present group of 10. Mine have always been in lightly planted tanks with pieces of wood. The "pairs" have either chosen clay pots containing large specimen of E. bleheri Amazon Swords or smooth pieces of bog wood as the sites the guarded and cleaned. I have had them make trial runs as if spawning but just like everyone else, I have never had an actual spawn.
If enough of us keep trying long enough, someday someone will make the necessary breakthroughs and produce some tank bred Heckels. I hope it happens in my remaining lifetime. I wonder what will happen first, successful breeding and raising pure bred wild Heckels or man on Mars?

[brewmaster15]

Heiko,

Note: I am happy Al is taking this BS off.

For the record... I interceded in this thread Over a Year ago when it went off track..


to quote...04-09-2007, 09:40 AM (see post 23 this thread

to be honest it doesn't matter to me either way....what I do I know is this thread went way of track Larry and it started when you deliberately took a pot shot at another forum member that had not even posted in the thread yet... I don't know how you expected it to play out...but it has played out exactly how comments attacking others play out on a forum... with a return attacking comment.

I think its time for you and Shin-shin to take it off the forum.....This is not going to go anywhere but downhill from here....

I'd rather not lock this thread, but I will if need be.


Thanks,
al

again...please note that this was last year.

If you have other concerns of how Our Forum is Run...please feel free to discuss them with me anytime by PM. Thank you.

-al

[William Palumbo]

WOW!...Hard to beleive I started this thread over a year ago...Where does the time go? I have seen a lot of nice Heckles on here and was intresting hearing about the different ways Heckles are trying to be bred...from all over the world!...We are probally complicating something that could be easier than we think. There is probally just a slight trigger to take our Heckles from cleaning the spawning site...to actual eggs being laid. Could be something as simple as varying water levels, or photo periods...but harder to know at what lengths to take them, or what combination to execute them in. I read an old article once about a hobbyist trying to breed a certain type of catfish. He wound first begin by first lowering the tank level...turning off the lights, and with a camera strobe made it look light lightning, loud music for thunder, while he filled the tank back up with cold water , raising the water level as would happen in the wild...basically he was simulating a thunderstorm. Supposedly it worked for him. I guess we can only go so far with water chemistry and types of food before we need to move on to other areas....Bill