Falling off the wagon

[jklnbrg]

Hello, my name is John and I'm a no longer recovering Discus-holic. In the past few months I've turned more and more to the 2 dozen or so Discus books on the bookshelf (both in English and German) and find I can't stay clean any longer.

I learned to keep Discus in the mid-80's while working in Germany. I had the great opportunity to live in the Taunus area of Frankfurt and found myself in Discus heaven. Within a 45 minute drive from my house were probably 20 discus breeders. Soon all the African Cichlid tanks I'd shipped from Dallas when I moved became Discus homes.. from breeder to fry sizes.

The highlight of my time in Germany was the time a good friend took me to a visit a friend of his... a 'very good Discus expert 'he told me. I was in Discus heaven when 30 minutes later I walked into what turned out to be the home of Dr. Eduard Schmidt-Focke. A very good Discus breeder indeed!!!!!

I have purchased a new 150 gallon tank to replace my lone 75 gallon planted tank. This tank too will be a planted aquarium but with Discus as the center point. I am looking forward to learning from this forum all the new things there are about Discus; particularly as they are kept in planted aquaria.

I would appreciate any words of advice, encouragment and enlightenment from any and all here.

If there are any breeders within an 8 hour or so drive from Dallas please pipe up!

Thanks for letting me introduce myself, I'm off the wagon and back in the Discus world!

John

[EthanCote.com]

Hi John,

I'm glad you have finally see the light again. Welcome back ;D and don't forget to bring your cheque book, it will be one bumpy fun ride ;D


Cheers,

Chi.

[Carol_Roberts]

Hi John:
Welcome to SimplyDiscus :wave:
There are lots of friendly people here and we all love talking about discus. I know there are several breeders in Texas, John Nicholson is the first one that comes to mind. He'll probably stop by later tonight or you can always reach him at DAAH (scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page you'll see the link on the right)

Has the hobby changed a lot in the time you've been away?

Carol :heart1:

[April]

welcome. and im sure you can enlighten us also...we;d love to hear about going to meet schmidt focke!!
keep us up to date on what you get .etc. we all love to hear what fish others get to buy. helps us feel like we just got to go discus shopping. LOL.

[dm]

Welcome john. It is good to see you found your way here.

[DarkDiscus]

John,

Welcome to the board! And welcome back to discus land! How did you even think you could escape??

;D

It sounds like you have a lot of neat stories to tell, so start telling or you might end up the subject of one of our monthly spotlights!

In any event, good luck on your return! I believe you will find that there are more wonderful discus out there than ever!

John

[Don_Lee]

John

Great to have you here! Cannot wait to hear of your adventures, especially Schmidt-Focke. Don't feel too bad, we are thinking of starting a 12 step meeting on the chat line, lol, just kidding.

Don ;D

[BLUEKNIGHT]

HI John welcome. I hope i can learn some great stuff from you.

Hi John
Welcome back

I lived in the Taunus area quite a while.
Bad Homburg, Seulberg, Eschbach and later in Frankfurt.
Just curios did you at one point get your water from a spring locacted at Koenigstein ?
I have used that for a beeding pair.

Hope your water in Dallas is not as bad as mine here in FL.
The change from the german (Taunus area) water to the water here was a nightmare for me.

Ronald

[jklnbrg]

I lived in the Taunus area quite a while.
Bad Homburg, Seulberg, Eschbach and later in Frankfurt.
Just curios did you at one point get your water from a spring locacted at Koenigstein ?
I have used that for a beeding pair.

Hope your water in Dallas is not as bad as mine here in FL.
The change from the german (Taunus area) water to the water here was a nightmare for me.

Ronald



Hi Ronald,

I lived in Schlossborn, jsut over the hill from Koenigstein. Yes, I did collect water from that spring for the Discus! I carried many gallons from there until I did some testing of my tap water and found it was nearly identical. Turns out our tap water and that spring basically came from teh same source.

Dallas water is not great but not so bad either I don't think. Before I got too busy for Discus (or any other fishy things) back in '96 I would mix 1/3 tap water with 2/3 RO water for the breeding pairs I had. The eggs and hatchlings never seemed to be hurt by that mix. For growouts I actually used jsut tap water and never had problems.