Buying adult discus fish from different sources and disease plague

[ganesan]

I have read that if one buys quality discus fish it should ideally be from the one single source of supplier. No matter how healthy the discus fish may be in different supplier stores if one combines discus fish bought from different sources and add them into one aquarium this will more often or definetly cause out brake of disease in the aquarium..I wanted to know how can this be avoided...say suppose you quarantine discus fish from 2 or 3 different sources by keeping them seperately in different quarantine aquariums at your home for say 4 weeks and then begin adding them to your main aquarium slowly one by one will this still result in disease out breaks..is disease plague is caused by keeping discus from different source in the same aquarium..
I am asking this query because recently I have seen 2 to 3 discus fish farms in my home town all having multiple discus fish strains in a fish room..all of them look very healthy and swimming together in shoals and feeding well..I am tempted to buy some discus from some stores and some from other store..
Can some one advise please

[Phillydubs]

If you properly QT your fish, and that goes beyond 4 weeks, some say 6 some say 8 some say 12 it depends... If they are qt'd and then you use a hero fish from the others to intro and see how they do, you can get an idea if it is safe to mix...

Thankfully, I have mixed fish before, some using proper qt other times not without an issue. I may just have lucked out...

Then there are cases even with proper qt, you still have issues. I believe Don from Virgina had an issue mixing stendkers w asian bred discus and wiped out tanks. He followed a long proper Qt and still had issues, so it is hard to tell, what works for some doesn't for others and vice versa, every fish is different, every breeder and farm and all of that...

Ideally, I try to and have begun tanks with my full group from the jump and if you can do that, it really id the best way....

[ganesan]

Thanks for the info...I think its better to get discus from one great source unless there are some great strains from another source..I thought that 4 weeks of quarantine will be enough..as you say i understand now that there is no clear single answer...

[Akili]

Thanks for the info...I think its better to get discus from one great source unless there are some great strains from another source..I thought that 4 weeks of quarantine will be enough..as you say i understand now that there is no clear single answer...Six weeks works for me following this guide http://www.simplydiscus.com/library/disease_medications/general_info/quarantine_procedures.shtml