Largest US Discus Breeders

[diskus24.de]

What's the use of this method. you have to keep these fish always in a seperate tank, combining them in a community tank or with other Discus will always give parasites the opportunity to infect the fish.

Not to mention the fact they're not used to parasites so when infected they will have no resistance.

Discus (and not only them) do not build any resistance against parasites, they get used to it and can handle parasites - as adults. But have you ever seen baby discus dying one by one because of gillworms transfered from their parents? Check out forums around the world. Tapeworms and others not to mention are a major diseases and present in all forums. Because of the deseases many beginners jump off this hobby and even experienced ones are more and more desperate. Time for a change!?

In fact, over the years a lot of parasites have build resistance againts various medications. It is becomming harder and harder to fight them. What's the use of this?

I look at parasite free from two perspectives, the breeders and holders perspective. For breeders having healthy discus is nothing but good. Yields are good, Fish are healthy and cost of medication is zero. A Hobby Breeder can muster the discipline necessaray to hold a facility clean. For commerial breeders it's harder when having other people working for you.

For holders there are two ways of handling:
1. Buy nearly grown up's and set them into a community tank. They'll get infected - maybe, if other discus are already present you should anyway have a quarantine - that's it. Deal with deseases, if you can.

2. Run a parasite free Tank. In Germany meanwhile a lot of other fish are parasite free to have, including a lot of L-Series. Plants from Damer & Mensch are meristem aquaculture, artifically raised. They have never seen any parasites as well.

With parasite free discus the choice is yours. I don't want to go into a discussion over 'parasite free fishes are more sensitive' because the opposite is right: They are far much stronger then others at same age, because they never had to deal with parasites. This is proven experience.

Seeing is believing. I have been to Piwo,s parasite free hobby facility. At that point in time he had approx. 2.000 Discus at all ages - not 1 fish staggering or dying. It's great fun for a hobbyist like me to see thousands of agile and healthy discus swimming.

And for the fun of it i stay attached to my hobby.

Regards, Rudolf

[moik]

WHAT TREATMENTS AND WHAT KIND OF MEDICATIONS DO THEY USE TO ACHEIVE PARASITE FREE DISCUS??? vERY CURIOUS TO KNOW..

Discus (and not only them) do not build any resistance against parasites, they get used to it and can handle parasites - as adults. But have you ever seen baby discus dying one by one because of gillworms transfered from their parents? Check out forums around the world. Tapeworms and others not to mention are a major diseases and present in all forums. Because of the deseases many beginners jump off this hobby and even experienced ones are more and more desperate. Time for a change!?

In fact, over the years a lot of parasites have build resistance againts various medications. It is becomming harder and harder to fight them. What's the use of this?

I look at parasite free from two perspectives, the breeders and holders perspective. For breeders having healthy discus is nothing but good. Yields are good, Fish are healthy and cost of medication is zero. A Hobby Breeder can muster the discipline necessaray to hold a facility clean. For commerial breeders it's harder when having other people working for you.

For holders there are two ways of handling:
1. Buy nearly grown up's and set them into a community tank. They'll get infected - maybe, if other discus are already present you should anyway have a quarantine - that's it. Deal with deseases, if you can.

2. Run a parasite free Tank. In Germany meanwhile a lot of other fish are parasite free to have, including a lot of L-Series. Plants from Damer & Mensch are meristem aquaculture, artifically raised. They have never seen any parasites as well.

With parasite free discus the choice is yours. I don't want to go into a discussion over 'parasite free fishes are more sensitive' because the opposite is right: They are far much stronger then others at same age, because they never had to deal with parasites. This is proven experience.

Seeing is believing. I have been to Piwo,s parasite free hobby facility. At that point in time he had approx. 2.000 Discus at all ages - not 1 fish staggering or dying. It's great fun for a hobbyist like me to see thousands of agile and healthy discus swimming.

And for the fun of it i stay attached to my hobby.

Regards, Rudolf

[diskus24.de]

I have a step-by-step instruction that has been published in several german magazines - unfortunately in GERMAN Language only.

But i am in touch with the author and inventor of the method to see if he has a translation. If not i will translate and publish afterwards.

This may take some days - and your patience. I will publish asap in seperate thread.

Thx, Rudolf

[moik]

Would kindly appreciate the information when you can translate it...Very curious to know the medications and how they go about acheiving parasite free stock..Thank you in advance..

I have a step-by-step instruction that has been published in several german magazines - unfortunately in GERMAN Language only.

But i am in touch with the author and inventor of the method to see if he has a translation. If not i will translate and publish afterwards.

This may take some days - and your patience. I will publish asap in seperate thread.

Thx, Rudolf

[GlennR]

Thanks everyone for the great responses so far to this thread.

It is too bad US breeders can't (or don't think they can) compete with imports. Maybe that will eventually change with the success of smaller US breeders. I will be getting my fish from a local breeder when I am ready to set up a tank.

The information about parasite free fish from Germany is interesting too. I am looking forward to learning their methods. It sure sound like a goal worth persuing.

[plecocicho]

Parasite free discus keeping is not uncontroversial issue in Germany and many experienced discus keepers and knowladgable authors, like the compentent and always objective Hoerst Koehler, editor of Diskusbrief have a lot of critical opinions on that issue.
Also one thing, flagellats are not parasites but comensals(comensalism is a type of relationship, in which host has no losses or wins, but the the other species in this relationship gains, in case of discus and flagellats, second nourish on food particles in the discus gut). Only by unproper diet (too much proteins, too many fatts, colagen fibers,..) does the population inside of discus gut explodes and becomes parasitic by shear numbers.

[diskus24.de]

I am reading diskusbrief from Horst Köhler since many years, Mr. Köhler is competent without question. Especially treatment of Discus deseases is one of his favorite subjects, he has written a book on it.
My favorite subject is Filtering and i have written 2 Articles for diskusbrief in 2008 about that.

In Germany we have been through many discussions in several forums and of course there are different oppinions about that issue. The good thing is that reading these post helps a lot to make up your mind.

Regards, Rudolf

[Spardas]

I am reading diskusbrief from Horst Köhler since many years, Mr. Köhler is competent without question. Especially treatment of Discus deseases is one of his favorite subjects, he has written a book on it.
My favorite subject is Filtering and i have written 2 Articles for diskusbrief in 2008 about that.

In Germany we have been through many discussions in several forums and of course there are different oppinions about that issue. The good thing is that reading these post helps a lot to make up your mind.

Regards, Rudolf

If only google translator work as well as it should, , we can read these articles as well.

Do you have a link of these discussions in a german forum?

[diskus24.de]

This is one thread for instance:

http://www.diskusportal.de/viewtopic...=parasitenfrei

If you use the boardsearch, type in:

"parasitenfrei"
"parafrei"
"parasiten frei machen"

and you will get results.

Further there is a section of it's own for "Parasitenfreie Diskus"

http://www.diskusportal.de/parasiten...iskus-f29.html

Search in http://www.diskusportal.com with a.m. phrases should also yield some results.

Links to Parasite free German Discusbreeders, even if you just want to take a look at their Galeries for Pictures ("Bilder"):

http://www.diskuszucht-piwowarski.de => Trader CANADA: http://www.discushouse.com
http://www.easydiscus.de
http://www.michel-diskus.de
http://www.discusman.de
http://www.perfect-discus.de

Following link leads to Gerhard Rahn, inventor of the method:

http://www.rahndiskus.de

My recomendation is to read the topics "Parasiten", "Erfahrungen" and "FAQ-Liste". Even with the translator working not that perfect i think you'll get the picture.

Regards, Rudolf

[diskus24.de]

To keep you informed:

Yesterday i posted a list of links do Parasite free Discussions, Portals and Breeders in Germany here, but i am still waiting for approval ...

Rudolf

[akumastew]

To keep you informed:

Yesterday i posted a list of links do Parasite free Discussions, Portals and Breeders in Germany here, but i am still waiting for approval ...

Rudolf

We are all looking forward to reading the discussion, once it has been approved.

[kaceyo]

That should be some very interesting reading.

Kacey

[akumastew]

Think...

if we all apply this methodolgy and it works...

Eddie's post counts per day will go down 400%, as we wont need a disease section anymore.

[diskus24.de]

the content of the desease section may change, but don't bother, it will not dissapear or drop significantly ...

[DANZIGER - DISCUS]

Hello
It is, really interesting thread!
I do not know what is the number of commercial Discus breeding farms in the U.S.A but I can tell that Discus breeding in commercial quantities is not an easy task and there is a need for big investments with a high risk and there are a lot more profitable and secure spices of tropical fish to breed.
In order to go commercial with Discus farming there is 2 ways (as I see it) -
1. Start small as hobby breeder and get larger through the years.
2. Be a hobby breeder get crazy and establish a commercial Discus farm...
You might get lucky...
I met Mr. Thode (Peter) at Duisburg show 2008 and he is a very nice man with a lot of knowledge who breeds (as I know) very nice Discus and owns a big Discus farm.
To the second issue of this thread I can tell as a parasite free commercial farmer that the way to achieve it is very simple but hard to do...
My commercial farm runs from the middle of 2006 and I never used any medication or chemicals in this facility.
All the Discus raised in the parasite free farm were raised artificially and they had no contact part to the spawning to any Discus, most of the parasites do not survive 60 hours with out a host and also when the larva hatches it still cannot host parasites since the inner organs are not yet functioning.
At the same way I created a Parasite clean brood stock which is active since 2008 and it seems to work...
From the tests I have made it seems that those parasite free Discus are not weaker than any other Discus the advantage for the hobbyist is when he keep community tank of parasite free tropical fish he lower the chances that he will get his fish infected with parasites.
I will just say that what I wrote here is based on my opinion and experience and it is not an academic research (but the testing for parasites were taken by vets and biologists).
I hope it was not too long and boring and that I have answered some questions.
Happy New Year,
Shahar.