The end all - be all to determine if Discus are healthy?

[ESXiGuy]

From my limited and newbie observation: When it sees food. Some Discus:

1 - Annihilate the food to the point of their stomach exploding if you allow it to.
2 - Aggressively attack food but will stop at some point, perhaps swimming to another part of the tank after eating.
3 - Might grab a few bites here and there in the face of competition from other fish.
4 - Does not compete for food at all. Might graze on food on the ground if no other fish takes it.
5 - Shows very little interest in food. Mouth can be an 1/8th of an inch from a squirming live blackworm and not take a bite.

Seems like 100% correlation on how healthy a particular Discus is and a predictor on how healthy and large it will get?

This is assuming water and tank conditions are exactly the same for Discus types 1-5. Some Discus are also more partial to food than others but if this is the case - it does not get more tempting than live food?

[rickztahone]

Younger discus will attack food with much more vigor than older discus. Older discus also do not need as much food, so it is a little more difficult to oversimplify these things. Your general lay out works to an extent though.

[Rudustin]

Healthy discus in my opinion need clean, very clean water. Their appetites often increase with clean water and so do their metabolisms. I agree with Ricardo that you have oversimplified. There are so many parameters that determine healthy discus that it cannot be put into five or fifty reasons. I have had discus not eat for a month and yet they were perfectly healthy. A varied diet and clean water seem to be the solution to keeping discus in top form. Rufus

[ESXiGuy]

Assuming your water was perfect, it still seems you could have all five types mentioned above within the same tank?

[Rudustin]

Assuming your water was perfect, it still seems you could have all five types mentioned above within the same tank?
Yes, I agree.

[Kyla]

i find that a single discus can rotate through all of these behaviours, and this often coincides with their growth spurts.