DISCUS LIFESPAN

[KIWI13]

i know this has been done time and time before but this is to help study the average lifespan of discus and also to see what the maximum age a discus has reached on this forum. Hopefully we should be able to establish a bell curve effect that could determine the average lifespand of these fish and this can only work if alot of people vote.

So.........

Please take the time to vote on the poll

Yours Sincerely

Jason :D

[Spices]

Hi Jas,

If it weren't for my errs, I think those first set of discus I had would have still been alive today. This time around I got much better. :)

--ang--

[KIWI13]

WOW!!!! Its great to see people vote, come on keep voting so we can get some real numbers goin to really study the average age....

JAS :D

[raglanroad]

maybe singing is not part of this animal's nature either. : )

[KIWI13]

:p

[KIWI13]

Well we have 18 votes and we can almost already establish a curve, I guess 50 votes would be ideal to call it almost concrete and 100 votes would really give us some solid info. But this is awesome......

Thanks soo much for participating and i thank those of you who will continue to vote in advance.

Jas ;)

[Don_Lee]

Great topic!

[RedScorpion21]

Maybe you can add the votes from here when i did the same poll a couple months back


http://forum.simplydiscus.com//showthread.php?p=242850#post242850

[KIWI13]

EXCELLENT STUFF !!!!!!!!!!!!!! RED SCORPION.

This just gives us more figures and a different time frame to work with.

Thanks for the link

Jason

[CARY_GLdiscus]

: )

[Condor]

Maybe you can add the votes from here when i did the same poll a couple months back


http://forum.simplydiscus.com//showthread.php?p=242850#post242850

What if the same people voted in both polls?

[raglanroad]

There is some similarity to the two graphs. Although one question relates to currently living fish while the other relates to oldest fish ever owned.
Kiwi, any points you can draw from these numbers?

[KIWI13]

Well the second poll had alot more voters and people continue to vote which is amazing cause when we have 100 votes we will have good grounds to debate.
They both show identical figures though. Which goes to show that the higher years ( 7 + years) is not your average fish; I would tend to cut the average at aroud 5years

I base that on the fact that 36 fish lived to 5 years and 23 lived past it. which gives us 59 total. Hense the 5years seems to fall almost in the middle of the graph. Hense 5 would be an average lifespan....

but thats just my humble opinion.

Jason

[raglanroad]

Jas.
Looks that way as an average for grown up discus. Once you figured in all the losses from day 1 fry and onwards, the average lifespan would be very low of course. That's why your question was well phrased- checking out the oldest, not the average .
The thing that interests me is the group of owners having discus 10 yrs and over. Up to what age the oldest? Anyone?
Anyway,this indicates that a lifespan of over 10 years is not rare.
And so there is room to suggest that shortened lifespans are the "norm" now.
Would we have found that shortened lifespans happened 30 years ago too? Yes, but in the meantime, we have had such improvements in technology and communications and water chemistry knowledge, that getting these results of 5 years lifespan is not too great.
In addition, in those old days the number of fish kept was way fewer, indicating that the long life some of those fish had was not rare.
Dave

[Cosmo]

Intersting points Dave. Too bad we don't have data from 10+ years ago to compare to the current polls, can't help but wondering what the comparison would tell us. Would the technology and changes in breeding techniques / technology mean our fish live longer lives, or would we find that despite the technologies and chemistry knowledge our Discus still lived more, less, or fewer years on average?

I remember reading quite a few years ago (10 - 20 give or take) that the lifespan was 8 years.. the longest I've had one with me was about 7 so I thought I was doing good, awesome to know that some live 10+ !!

Great poll idea Jason.. now, how do we preserve this data so 10 years from now someone can compare charts??

Jim

[KIWI13]

Well Jim your right, ( as usual) it would be amazing to compare this with data from 10 years ago, better still we can keep this under sticky and if we are still around in ten years, I'll re-do the poll . LOL

I think we can go back and look up some old breeders, they all kept logs and if we emailed them then we could get some info out of them. There are some experienced breeders on here who can already contribute.

JAS

[JMArtist]

I just started keeping Discus, so ask me in about 10 yrs:D

[Kindredspirit]

Does 4month old Discus count??


http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/36/36_7_2.gif



Marie~

[JMArtist]

Does 4month old Discus count??


http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/36/36_7_2.gif



Marie~

Yeah, why not!!!

PS: have you measured your discus yet???

[Kindredspirit]

I have not measured yet,http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/23/23_4_108.gif






Marie!:D

[JMArtist]

I have not measured yet,http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/23/23_4_108.gif






Marie!:D

Gee, I've been behaving myself :angel: and your still calling me a Brat...Mmmm...who the Brat now??? LOL :p

[Kindredspirit]

dont you check your pm??

[Alan]

A relevant question is "How long did you take care of discus before you found something else to spend your time on?" :)

[KIWI13]

Great Question Alan . LMAO


We should make a poll on that one someday.

Marie 4 month discus only count if thats how long they lived for.

however the poll is an attempt to see if we can get some kind of readings to WORK OUT the average age of discus. hence I didnt ask the question" HWats the average age of your fish ?" I didnt want peoples average age I wanted their oldest fish and that way when we build up numbers, we can work out an average. I would say 100 votes would be a great base to work out an average on.

Jason
:)

[Kindredspirit]

you are so mean to me....:(


Ja.....they HAVE lived for four months, babe....ohhhhhhhhh you mean they have to be dead.....LOL


i get it i get it~http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/new/8_22/15_9_14.gif

[ronrca]

Hmmm! This is a tough poll as it also depends on how long you have had discus. I only started around 3 years ago so it would not be correct info from me to say my discus lived 3 years so far as that would not be the lifespan yet. The poll would be more accurate if only those who have had discus over 10 years vote as an example.

Just my thoughts and opinions. Certainly I hope to vote and be able to claim a 10 year discus. :-)

[raglanroad]

True, Ron, but the poll started in response to the question about reduced lifespan...therefore the interesting thing that is coming out is that 4-6 years is not the potential life expectancy, it merely reflects that for many, 4-6 years is all they're getting. On the other hand, it also shows the potential for much more than that.
I would regard the 1-3 yr group as having had problems, and that is also to be expected.
the poll has already answered my question though. Discus can live much longer than 6 yrs, and should. How old were the ones over 10?
I've read up to 16 or so, and I've already found out about a couple years over 10.

[Mughal]

http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/beginnerinfo/a/lifespan.htm

says that the average lifespan of discus is between 10-18 years...try that out for longevity

[KIWI13]

Well thats precisely what we are trying to prove here, we are trying to get figures to back up this statement and for the moment the Average fish does not live that long and RAGLANROAD ( Dave) has bought up some great pointers before on the age issue and if it is related to water, genetics etc etc.

I think there are far too many generalised statements out there, like discus can live up to 10-18 years and all this based on a very small minority of fish. I guess what people need to know is how long should they expect an average discus to live.

This ofcourse is just my opiinion and looking at the numbers in the poll today, I see only 5 out of 74 that have passed the 10 year bracket, that is a rather smalll figure and not representative of the species.

Sincerely

Jason :)

[raglanroad]

J,
I do not think the poll represents anything in particular about the species, apart from the fact that they can live much longer than the average. Similarly, the 1 year discus does not represent anything much about the species, it reflects on something else. Rather , both high and low figures, and the medium, reflects more on the forum' s fish , and in general, the lesser lifespan that many hobbyists are getting for their discus than is possible.
One thing that stands out to me is that when people say something is working fantastic for them, great growth, colour, whatever, and the fish are only living a 1/2 or 1/3 their possible lifespan, makes me wonder how great any of the recommended things are: like beefheart as one example. Don't know if beefheart contributes good anything other than fast growth - or maybe it even extends life-but I really doubt it !

Hard water= fast growth? Doubt that too, and is this part of the problem?

Poisons dyes and hormones in dry foods?

Stocking according to filtration ability, rather than o2 or co2 content ?

D.

[ronrca]

Well, I still am unconvinced that this poll is accurate in representing any info on nutrition or whatever. If Ive only been keeping discus for 5 years, none of my discus will be 5+ years old. Plus, given that Ive only been keeping discus for 5 years, a number of years Id a beginner therefore the discus lifespan would be limited to my inexperience as well. What is needed is a 2 part poll! The first asking how long you've had discus and the second the oldest discus.

Really what this poll indicates that beginners can not keep their discus alive for more than their experience. There are too many varibles to be able to conclude anything. As I mentioned before, asking long term breeders that question would be more accurate.

[raglanroad]

Ron, no poll is going to be scientifically meaningfull, I don't think.
But what this does, to my way of thinking, is prove that 4-6 years is too short an expectation for an experienced keeper to be satisfied with. Don't forget, Al's estimation of good age to reeach is 4-6 years-and he also had the right extimate for what most people get- experienced forum members, not complete novices as the terrible appearance of the poll might suggest.

As to what the reasons could be for what I perceive as shortened lifespan, I would take forst guesses at things which would seem " un-natural" in the keeping of the fish.

Just first guesses as to why this is happening - and I also believe it to be happening to other fish such as angels and many others.

Perhaps this points even more strongly to the poisoned dry foods than to the water parameters or other diets.

[Timbo]

more than 35% is 1-3 years?

[Dissident]

I think people are answering based on how long they have 'kept' discus for not how old the oldest one was when it died (that is how I read the Q)

I could answer 1-3yrs but thats not accurate because that is NOT lifespan, thats how old the oldest one is at the moment.