Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

[slicksta]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Al
I agree,good goin......Reason I asked is I have a convict in my cichlid tank that has a ragged tail after a filter failure when I went on vacation 5 years ago......he is a big ugly mofo....but one of my favorites.....he got fin rot bad and never recoverd.....thought about doing what you did, but never had the chestnuts......he may be to old now.....

[brewmaster15]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Thanks DW,
I agree with you ragged fins can be attributed to nutritional problems, but in this case Fin Rot was most likely the main issue. Though I am sure nutritional deficiencies probably impeded healing after the infection. Its Guess work really. What concerns me most here is how the fish responds to having the damaged areas removed.

This fish has gone thru various treatments for parasites by francisco. I'll let him go into the specifics of this.

A close look at the last photo posted... day 4 shows that there appears to be plenty of nutrients availible here for regrowth of both hard and soft tissues of the fins.


Those dorsal spines may or may not grow back as well. We'll see. There is one that was not trimmed because I felt it was too close to the body.Other than that just enough was trimmed to stimulate new growth.... I hope

take care,
al


ps.. John.. nothing ventured nothing gain?

[AndyL]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Has any tried this surgery technique on angelfish? I have been pondering it for a while now (not knowing others had done it). I've got a superveil hybrid black that has horrible cowlicks after a almost deadly fight with bacterial hemoraghic septicemia, after which he promptly got finrot. Any way, to make a long story short, his anal fin regrew with splits from tip to base, some of those split areas regrew in 'cowlicks' looks horrible...

Andy

[Ardan]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Nice article Al!

Very interesting.

Maybe a barber as a side job?? ;D j/k

Nice job on the discus, keep us posted.

[slicksta]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Al
how did you keep the fish from flapping.....

[Fisheyes]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

;D ;D ;D ;D
Can you do anything for an old guy with receding hairline. :-

Good work
Fisheyes

[Francisco_Borrero]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

All I can say is that the fish looks as if it is regenerating well and very quickly.
For those curious about prior conditions of this fish:

-I obtained 2 "red heckels" in very poor condition, having active HITH, and very little finnage left because of a nasty and active fin rot. I offered to paid very little for them, because I saw potential in the fish. Whether or not this is misguided, is a personal judgement. I tought them that they could be saved, and shortly after was convinced.
- I provided good clean water, varied diet, and "cleaned" them by using over time, Panacur (in gel food), Praziquantel (for flatworms and flukes), and metro (for intestinal flagellates). The fish were kept by themselves for nearly six months.
- Fin rot stopped relatively quickly and the fish began to recover. Fin regeneration proceeded well, but leaving serious irregularities in the fins. There was no active bacterial infection in the fins left at all, and regeneration continued over about 1 year, but very slowly. HITH also showed remarkable improvement, and I have accomplished this with a number of rescued fish. I believe fin regeneration had stopped and the indentations would not have healed without surgical intervention. Is as if scar tissue had developed at either side of a tearing, and it would not join again. Similar to ear-piercing in humans, I guess.

I would agree that spines (hard rays) would not regenerate, but I don't think they were cut either. I can not tell well in the picture, but as far as I can see in the pictures after surgery, at least the first 5 hard rays are seen intact, and probably more beyond the 5th, towards the back of the animal. Hard rays were never afected by fin-rot, which is not surprizing as they are basically bone/cartilague.

Thank you Al for performing this aggressive procedure, and for showing the post-surgical progression. I am very happy with the results already, and look forward to seeing further pictures in the future.

Cheers, Francisco.

[Carol_Roberts]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Very interesting indeed!

Did you start at the back and cut toward the eye or vise versa? Regular household scissors? How did you immobilize the discus?

[Jason]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Al

I'm not trying to pass moral judgement on you or start some crazy thread on ethics that'll need to be locked,

I just don't understand why you did that to the heckel? from my point of view it looks like you did it purely for your own eyes, I don't think it impacted the health of the fish have non-perfect fins.

I doubt in the amazon a female would reject a male because he had a piranha bite in his tail, or shredded fins from combat with a rival male. I could be wrong though

I know your into herps, if you had a lizard with a crooked tail would you snap it off hoping the cartilidge that grew back would be nicer looking?

like I said my intent is not too argue, I'm just asking you too help me understand why you felt it was needed.

I know you werent trying to harm the fish and you had Francisco's permission, but I must say that I find it kinda upseting.

[Guest]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Jason

Arent ALOT of things we do to discus...changing the shape of the body, the fins, the color...done in our own eyes?

Or is it that you think the fish may have been harmed, or it may have been painful?

Just curious.

Tony

[Francisco_Borrero]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Jason:
I respect your position. I just want to understand it better. Thus, I would like to know what part is it that you find unethical, or unacceptable. Is it because of cruelty ? If so, how much pain and suffering do you think the trimming may have caused ? Further, how do you base your assessment of pain/suffering ? How is this different from grafting with fruit trees ?, or surgical repair of damaged tissue in animals and humans ?. Surely there is some pain involved in the procedures, but, do we not agree they are worthwhile ? Notice this is not about attempting to caprichously modify an animal via plastic surgery, but an attempt at repairing damage tissue following disease....

If it is not about cruelty, then what is the nature of your position, which btw, may be very well grounded.
I just want to understand it, because as it stands, I don't get it.
Thanks, Francisco.

[flogger426]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

based on all the "expert" responses i can just sense that alot of poor fish are going to be mutilated in the coming days - ought to be a law against this type of ****!

[brewmaster15]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Hi Jason,
I wouldn't want an ethical debate either. When I posted this I knew it would not sit right with everyone, just as declawing cats, pinning dogs ears, trimming tails, tatoo IDs on ears, how to euthanize animals, and a whole host of other activities elicit the same response when brought up.


Certainly for mating purposes there is probably no relevance, though in some animals, The mates are chosen based on visual display... I too doubt discus are one.

I have many reasons for why I did this.


Some of them are as follows.

1) aesthetic beauty. How many would cull a fish with imperfect finnage? How many would avoid buying one because of this kind of damage? How many would avoid showing a picture of one that they had because they would get criticized by many for it? How many board posts have been heated over the topics of how a fish appeared? Aesthetic beauty Drives this hobby.

How many times have we seen ""sell the best...cull the rest"?

2) Knowledge... The knowledge of how Discus finnage regenerates has the potential to help many people that do want Discus specimens with really nice fins that may have been badly damaged by multiple causes. Pursuit of Knowledge about this fish is one of the reasons I got involved with this board.

3)I'm a scientist.. understanding the hows and whys of things is what drives me, and in turn allows me to help others.

4) Technical evaluation... The fish in question was not one of the most severely affected fish.... Its actually a control for other fish that have far more extensive damage.

5) to attempt to undue the damage a careless owner did to a member of a species of fish that I admire more so than any other.


Though I realize that superficially the trimming of the fins may be stressful to the fish, and could be construed as cruel. I think it was probably far more stressful an act to catch these fish in the wild, transport them for days in buckets to airports, then to intermediates, then to wholesalers, and sellers. Finally to an owners tank, where they ,may be mistreated. The procedure used here took literally 1-2 minutes and the fish acted as if nothing had happened moments after returned to the tank.

This will hopefully allow a beautiful fish to become what it would have been had it not been treated poorly at the hands of people in the first place.


Thats pretty much my reasons in a nutshell. I don't see it as an ethical question really...though my own ethics of responsibility to the care of these fish,, probably do play a role here. Hopefully the procedure is not looked on too critically but there are always those with opposing views on these kinds of things.


take care,
al

ps... Carol, from the tail to head, with sharp scissors --hold hold work fine.

Generallly a hand placed on the top of the fish is enough to restrain it long enough to trim. The fish did not respond to the act of trimming.

[brewmaster15]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

Flogger,

based on all the "expert" responses i can just sense that alot of poor fish are going to be mutilated in the coming days - ought to be a law against this type of ****!

You are welcome to your opinion, You are not welcome to express it in an uncivil manner on this board. Contrary to you opinion of many things since you joined this board

... Your eyes are not the only ones that see the world.

-al

[jeep]

Re:Heckel Hair Cut!!!!

How many people would have tried to rescue this fish in the condition it was in? Because of its aesthetics, not many, which means it would have died a slow and miserable death in the back of a LFS tank.

Is it possible that the scar tissue actually made this fish uncomfortable? ??? More drag, less efficiency? Could be that this is the final step to restoring the fish's overall health as well as its aesthecs.

Based upon the success of this "experiment", maybe others won't be afraid to rescue a worn-out, raggedy fish and at least make an attempt to restore its natural beauty...

Looks to me like he's breathing a sigh of relief...

Oh, I think if someone were going to mutilate a fish, they certainly wouldn't come here to look for ways to do it... JMO