Nhamunda Blue Moon & Blue Face Heckels from Hudson

[illumnae]

Hi all, Hudson's 2nd shipment to Singapore has arrived about a month after the first. I couldn't resist when I saw the stocklist for this shipment, and ordered myself a batch of 8 Nhamunda Blue Heckels for my 240 gallon blackwater biotope tank (previously the Rio Orinocco biotope tank that some of you may have seen me post about previously).

In this order, I got 4 Nhamunda blue moon and 4 Nhamunda blue face. Unfortunately, I think the fish were stressed from the flight and are not showing their promised traits of 1/3 body fused blue coverage (for the blue moons) and full blue gill plates (for the blue face). However, I've been assured that they'll colour up more once they settle in...and I'm eagerly looking forward to that!

Heckels don't seem to travel as well as blues, so these guys are in worse shape than my Curuais...much skinnier too! I'm going to try feeding them beefheart and seafood mix when they start eating, hoping to bulk them up to be as thick as the blues.

Here's 2 videos of them being taken 1 day after they were put into the tank. They're out and about swimming and not hiding, so they're doing good! The first video was taken with the room light on, so it looks a little overexposed. The 2nd is a little better as the room lights were off.

[illumnae]

Some badly taken pictures from my lousy handphone. They're still not fully settled in as of last night:

[Silver]

Congrats with ur fish they still look real nice and big.. good luck with them...

[Pardal]

They look really good, I can figure how beautiful they will look once they settle in.

[Second Hand Pat]

Really nice illumnae

[illumnae]

Congrats with ur fish they still look real nice and big.. good luck with them...

They look really good, I can figure how beautiful they will look once they settle in.

Really nice illumnae

Thanks

The blue moons are developing well for sure, but the blue faces not so much yet - blue in the gill plates are not showing much coverage. However, given how much the blue moons have been colouring up, I have high hopes that the blue faces will as well given more time. Hudson has not let me (or anyone else I know) down so far, and I don't expect this to be an exception.

My wife took more pictures on her DSLR last night - I'll post more when I get a chance!

[Discus-n00b]

Nice fish! Nice and blue.

[disc-va-757]

very NICE 3 BARS !!! my Fav

[illumnae]

Some photos taken by my wife with her DSLR.

Blue Moons:







Blue Face:



Group Shots:





The blue face still don't show full gill plates, but the blue's definitely still developing, so I'm gonna sit back and relax and see how they go.

[jimg]

nice collection! good luck with them!

[damba]

Imho the nicest discus of all the strains. Keep us updated.
Tom

Sent from my GT-I5800 using Tapatalk

[illumnae]

Well it's a few hours off 2 weeks since these guys landed in Singapore.

The good news is that as of last night, I managed to observe all 8 discus eating the NLS Thera+A pellets I feed them. They're also swimming around more and not hiding so much despite the relatively bright lights (105W of LED lights over the 240 gallon tank - the old lightset was just 36W of LED lights).

The not so good news is that the blue face heckels still haven't developed their "blue face" fully yet, and 2 of the blue moons are definitely not the promised "1/3 body coverage". However, I've spoken to Hudson and he has personally assured me that the blue *will* show. Hopefully they will colour up soon

Now comes a call for some advice. I'm currently feeding the group with NLS Thera+A pellets (1mm). The discus seem to be holding their own against their tankmates (altum angels and large eartheaters), but I'm thinking of introducing beefheart to bulk them up and aid their growth a little. The blue face arrived as ML/L size and the blue moons arrived as L/XLG size. However, I would like to have them grow larger and thicker than they currently are. My worry is that with beefheart being the "crack" that it usually is amongst fish, would I need to do anything special to ensure that the discus do get to eat their fair share of beefheart? Or should I take the pellets as indication of them being able to hold their own and just throw the beefheart in?


P.S. I may replace beefheart with seafood mix

[AmirA]

Give them minimum of 6 months to recover and you will see their true colors

[NanDiscus]

Illumnae,

Lovely fish for a start. It's all been said by others before, but let me add my too!

It does indeed take quite some time and really good care for wilds to colour up nicely and good food definately plays a major role in it. I would however suggest something else other than beefheart. Not because I personally had really bad experiences with it (although some of my long-time Heckel keeper friends never use it for some reason), I did have the impression that my own fish didn't really appreciate it. The magic food for me was live earthworms or compostworms. They theoretically have a higher nutritional value than the rightfully foed live tubifex worms, but do not carry any pathogens that could harm the fish. Obviously, they have to come from a chemically clean source, but an average back-garden is good enough. Making and maintaining your own indoor culture is also easy, clean, has virtually zero smell and you can carefully control what gets inside the worms and therefore your fish. Just imagine all that great meat filled with brilliant stuff, such as carrots (for the colour of your fish), apples (for the vitamines), spirulina, whatever. What the worms eat is what your fish eat. And they are irresistible.

Sorry about the highjack!

Nandi

[mdlman99]

^ sounds great, i need to know how i can set one of those up!