Heckels bred on a commercial scale?

[Eddie]

We are looking for Heckel Heckel pair manitu.

[manitu]

We are looking for Heckel Heckel pair manitu.

as you might know its the female that usualy doesnt breed in captivity

so to have a willing female is a big start!!


regards

[plecocicho]

Manitu post pictures of those two anyway.

[Ed13]

When they post me pictures of their ponds, underwater videos of parens caring for their fry i would start to believe it.

If I was a commercial breeder there's no way I'd show pics of my setup or anything that could give away how I did it, I went to the trouble to achieve this why should I make it easy for my competition

But, you better beleive I'd be bragging about it all over the world, WITH PICS of fry to adults (anything that was marketable size really), even if it's just pics of the fish out of the water in buckets or nets.

As a hobbyst, home breeder, I'd definitely share

[ShinShin]

Heckels are being and have been being bred in Asia for years. I don't care what Larry, Heiko, or anyone else says. I have PERSONALLY seen a tankful of Asian bred Heckels in Portland, Oregon at an importer's house. Ray Kosaka sold Asain bred Heckels 10 years ago. Dennis Hardenburg bought some of these Heckels and spawned them and shared his experience right here on Simply. Yeng has pics in his 2nd book of them, and told me in personal correspondences that the reason no one is breeding them in large scale is that there is no market for them. It is a small group of people who would buy them, and it is not economically feasable to produce them. Most are being used by Asian breeders to cross breed, looking for new starins of domestic hybrids. One of the sponsors here offered them for sale not long ago. Not everyone likes Heckels. They find the 5th bar obtrusive, and are, quite frankly, the ugly "disckling" of the discus family. There is a store here in the Pacific Northwest that still has wild Heckels in their tanks from last season.

There was an article in FAMA a few volumes back that gave the name of a breeder who is currently producing them right now.

Mat

[Eddie]

Hey Mat,

I wasn't disapproving anyone but it would be really nice to see some young heckels in a tank.

Eddie

[illumnae]

Hi Mat, I don't think it's in dispute that Heckels have been bred...even Heiko has said that a handful of people have managed to breed them right? (I may be wrong, typing this from memory). However, there is a difference between a one-off (fluke?) spawn, and a commercial farm churning out heckels by the thousands. In the post I mentioned when I started the thread, the person seems to think that Heckels are rubberstamped out by countless farms in Malaysia.

My question was more of whether they are being bred on a commercial scale. From your post, it seems that you also think that they aren't being bred on a commercial scale?

Just curious though, the tank full of bred Asian heckels you saw...how did you know they were bred and not wild?

I think this thread is probably going to go down the way of the debate regarding altums...some are convinced that some Asian breeders are churning out altums in farms while others believe that only Linke has managed to breed larger quantities of altums. what is it about Asia that spawns all these rumours?

[Apistomaster]

Mat has his observations and the rest of us have ours and they are likely to remain worlds apart.
There are plenty of people who would gladly buy tank raised pure bred Heckels.
Mat is not much interested in any wild discus as far as I can tell except to say that Heckels are bred but no one wants them. Why do they bother breeding these Heckels we never see if it isn't worth their while?
That some wild Heckels aren't selling in a shop in the Puget Sound area is no surprise. More people are into African Cichlids and Reef fish in that market. No shop in that area ever had a well set up wild discus display tank with fish in good health during the 30 years I lived there.

[TankWatcher]

I would buy tank raised pure bred Heckels. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. I have seen some gorgeous wild heckels swimming in other ppls tanks. With Asia so close to OZ, why can't they send some to us. There's lots of us here who would buy, if reasonably priced. Surely, the price could be made more reasonable if they can breed them on a commercial scale.

[Eddie]

There seems to be quite a bit of Heckel Discus here in the shops in Japan but I am not sure where they come from. They are quite larger, about 4in and they tend to have damaged fins. The LFS always gets juveniles of other strains. I have yet to see any young juvenile Heckels here in the stores. It would be cool to see some, I'd get them. They really are regal and there is something about there shape and color. Totally different personality than my crosses

Eddie

[Apistomaster]

Hi Robyn,
There will never be a commercial market for wild types be they captured or bred that will ever compare to the popularity of the multitude of colorful hybrid forms.
There is a place for every ones' preferences. I do think that the number of discus lovers who are drawn to the wilds is growing now that we have have several decades of the pretty bred forms to choose from.
This is true of the Apistogramma spp ,other Dwarf Cichlids the Angelfish, wild type Betta spp, Endler's vs DeltaTail guppies, Catfish and of course Discus.
The wild fish are attractive in their own right and they let us enjoy a fish in it's natural form. this often entails greater demands to keep them well and usually a greater challenge still to breed them. we keep fish because we love nature and there is something about us that craves having nature at our finger tips.
Fancy discus keeping and breeding bring out a different side of our nature. we have been domesticatcating animals since the early stone age. man made fish development is often a venue to test and show off our skills at producing prize winning fish which becmoe so domesticated that some of the essence of the wild forms are lost. those who want to keep the wilds often are more motivated by the challenge of simulating their environment sufficiently that these often more difficult fish to breed provide a tremendous personal sense of accomplishment that having a wild animal breed in our care brings. one can just keep them and imagine they are seen through a window into nature doing what comes naturally and that may be award enough.
But there are some tropical fish like Heckel discus or Pterophyllum altum angelfish that have stubbornly resisted the efforts of many a skilled aquarist and just scream out the challenge; breed me if you can and have been doing that for sometimes more than 5 decades with only enough documented reports of success to let us know it can be done but leaves us with the big question of how? Not the occasional incidental success; that proves little more than that it has happened. The bigger questions are how and what do we have to do to repeat the deed. It's an aspect about biology of these fish than demands a scientific method. If they were easy then many of us who care now about them would not be nearly as interested in them as we are.
Wild discus and Heckels in particular, are not everyone's cup of tea but for those of us who care and hope to see them breed in our care, they represent some of the pinnacles of accomplishment in our hobby.
We who love Heckels and/or P. altum share many of the same types of challenges in our efforts to advance our understanding of these fish well enough that they may reasonably expected to breed more regularly in our tanks but always demanding more from us as aquarists.
I can and have coached many new domestic discus breeders to success but only the wilds still give me the run for my money I desire.
I love my domestic discus...all the way to the bank.


.

[AlexR]

Dear Heckel Enthusiasts,

in my opinion the problem with raising Heckels in a commercial scale is a little bit different.

With my TEFE Red Spotted juvenile, I realized that they grow much slower than other, non wild discus. The selection based on size, nearly all breeders will remain with the biggest discus per generation to breed the next generation, leads to very big and fast growing strains.

Wilds, F1 and also F2 are by far not selected to this point. It took nearly 24 month to get the F1 fully grown up and fully colored.


This is not possible with breeding in commercial scale. The commercial strains have to show color with 12-16 weeks, also huge and high bodied. F1 and F2 are always not so high bodied, the risk is that local dealer are not able to feed them right, so this young discus will get a more long oval shape, not the right high shape.

So it is much easier for the dealers to sell more high selected strains than natural ones.

Alex

[Eddie]

How about somebody does it for themselves and not for a commercial scale. I'd love to see the development from eggs to adult.

Eddie

[Ed13]

I love the shape, markings and royalty of wild discus. However, I've made up my mind that unless I find someone that does business like Kenny( besides the customer service, the Qt, sterilization, and discus only set up) or that I can import them myself from SA ( actually did the research and contacts just need the money, local, and sometime to let the market here grow unless I get to export to the USso it'll be a few years) I'll stick to domestics. So the thought of pure tank raised wilds is very apealling to me, especially if they are from a reputable breeder.

[Heiko Bleher]

Hi guys,

I cannot believe some of the guys here claiming that Heckel discus are breed in Asian (that is Symphysodon discus x Symphysodon discus).

I just came back a couple of days ago from AQUA FAIR 2008 in Kuala Lumpur where I judged 260 discus; before that I judged the discus at the AQUARIA 2008 in Shanghai, before that I visited breeders in China and Hong Kong as well as Singapore and India, all this after the 7th international Discus Championships in Germany at the begin of October 2008 where half of the 360 discus in competition came from Asia. And none, in no place mentioned, has breed Heckel discus, only some few Heckel cross here and there. NO ONE in Asia has EVER breed Heckel discus, 99% of all Asian do not even know what a Heckel discus looks like and very few, if any have ever seen a wild discus (except for Japan, that is a different story but also there NO ONE ever breed a Heckel discus and they know very well all wilds).

So people can say what they want, but what goes on in Asia I know very well as I have seen it durng the last 4 decades traveling all the time there with my eyes, almost every year around Asia and no one has every done it there. In my upcoming volume II of Bleher's Discus I will also show that no one has ever breed Heckel discus in Asia, as I have for my book almost every Asian discus breeder interviewed. And one can see that some breeder who thought that they had breed Heckel discus were just a cross...

I have nothing more to ad to it, people can say what they want, but I only believe what I see.

All the best,

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