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It's my distinct pleasure to present the Member Spotlight on Discus Hans.
Many thanks, Hans, for accepting this spotlight role !
Q - Please tell us all a little about yourself. Single, married, attached? What do you do for a living? Other hobbies? Any significant non-discus achievements you want to brag about?
A - My name is Hans Koops van 't Jagt. Now about only 10 people will know who that is, my wife Joanne, my 3 daughters, my son and a few friends. A few more people know me as Discus Hans (a name I got from a lady back in Holland because she couldn't remember my name). I play with Discus since approx. 1977, keeper, breeder and later Stendker reseller.
In 2004 I moved from Holland to the USA to start Discus Hans USA to sell the Stendker Discus in the USA. I'm married with Joanne, who is also my boss and together we run Discus Hans USA.
The Discus is our living. And hobby? My work is my hobby and my hobby is my work. I think I've the dream job for most here on the forum. I bet many would love to be me …... sorry job is taken lol.
Non Discus achievement: Yes, there is something. A few years back Joanne and I started here something in the USA we dreamed of to do for many years. The Kids tank decoration “contest”. The whole idea is based to get more children interested in the fish hobby in general. Set up an X amount of tanks, fill them with water and let the kids decorate the tank with gravel, plants (fake or real) ornaments and on top of that some general fish. Tanks would be judged and winner would win the tank. Because you don't let children lose all were winners and went home with the tank and you hope to get some kids interested in our hobby. We were having a hard time to get that started because nobody believed it could work. The Ohio Cichlid Association gave us the chance to do it at their show and with help from Les Wilson, now owner of Cobalt but at that time working for UPG, we got tanks 12 donated. The rest Joanne and I paid out of our own pocket. The whole thing was a BIG HIT and everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon, few months later we did it again on the ACA in Maryland with 20 tanks and EVERYTHING was sponsored. We didn't have the time anymore to do it and it's great to see that it's done now on almost every big shows all over the country, proud......... yes VERY.
Click on this link to see a slideshow of Hans work with the kids.
Q - How did you get into discus?
A - Gosh, it just happened, it was not planned. I had a friend who wanted some Discus in his tank, but had no time to grow them. We bought together a bunch of 3” Discus and put them in my tank to grow. Most of them I killed in no time. Second batch from a local breeder worked out better. I managed to grow out a few to 5”~6” and those started breeding in my show tank. About a 60 ~ 70 of the babies I grew to a 2.5”, put them up for sale and they all were sold in a few days......... a Discus business was born. 1 tank grew to 2 tanks to 7 breeding tanks + 2 grow outs. To 30 tanks in a back garden shed + about 30 tanks at an other location (hatchery). Those tanks later went to Nandi in Hungary when I stopped breeding, still don't understand how we got all those tanks, racks, filters, etc in the little truck. After I stopped breeding I started selling the Stendker Discus.
Q - What strains are you the most happy with? Which do you think need some work? Are you working on anything new and exciting now? What strain/s do you like best, personally?
A – Every strain that sells I'm happy with. It all depends a little who yours selling to, as most know we do 2 things. 1) Selling to stores. They are looking most for smaller Discus, the ones with the most color at young age are the best sellers for them, so also for us. Blue Diamonds, Marlboro's and Dark Angels. 2) Is an other story, selling over the online store direct to the public, as we all know (as being Discus people) the hardest part to do. Some how Discus people are very hard to please. If you've a tank with 60 young Discus, you've to pick what you think your customer will like, more or less being their eyes, so far I think we are doing pretty well with this. What they want most...... all over the place, in strain, size, etc etc.
Can't wait till Stendker come with their Leopards, last they came with are the Checkerboards that are very nice.
What do I like, hmmmm let's put it this way, if I set up a tank for myself, it would be light planted, Amazon Swords, Vallisneria, lot of branches hanging in the tank and a mix of Stendker Alenquers, Stendker Santarem and Stendker Tefe's. In other words, wild looking Discus.
Q - What do you feed your discus?
A – I feed here our own meat mix, I make it from lean ground beef, cod, shrimp, peas, high quality flake (Cobalt/Discus Hans flake) and some other stuff lol
Q - What is your most exhilarating moment with discus?
A – Ohhh my, there are so many over the last 40 years. From the first fry, my own Discus show in 1997, the move to USA, being “famous” and people think you know it all, etc etc.
Q - What are your most frustrating moments with discus?
A – Being “famous” and people think you know it all. Some think if they send you a picture and you know what's going on inside the Discus.
Or very frustrating if people ask your help and they know what they did wrong, tell you half the story and keep you busy for hours and than say....... oh yeah what I forgot.
For example, had a customer with a big tank full of adult Stendkers, doing very well. Every time asking for a kind of yellow Discus to add to his tank, sorry, we don't do yellow. One evening he called me, big problem in his tank, all Discus at the surface and slime coat start to break down. First question: did you add something to your tank the last week. NO nothing!!! Okay send me a movie, let me take look. Movie took a while, batteries empty, blah, blah, blah. Okay in the mean time hours on the phone, water changes, maybe main water pipe break in the area? (Pipes get flushed with chemicals, what of course can give problems) etc etc I was at my wit end.
Finally I got the movie, showed the sick Discus at the top, camera moves to the other side but while going to the other side you see the camera go up, quick down, to the right up again, sudden move down, to the left again, after playing the movie 5 times, you see he tried to keep one Discus, happy swimming around in the tank, out of the movie. 6th time watching I saw a yellow nose and a part of a yellow tail.
I was fuming, called the guy and asked the guy flat out, that yellow Discus that you try to keep out of the movie is not mine, where did you get it and how long is it in your tank............ silence at the other end....... ohhhh yeah, man I forgot about that, I got it last week from XXXXXX (not a dealer on this forum).
Okay, thanks for wasting my time.
Yeah what do I do now????
Call the guy you got that Discus from and ask him what to do about it.
Click, end of story.
Most frustrating time in my life with Discus, March 13th 2011. What should have been one of the most happy parts of our lives (my grand daughter was just born) turned in the most horrible time with Discus. We had to euthanize our complete stock of more as 5,000 Discus. Don't want to go into details, but if you want to read about it, you can read about it on my part of the forum around that date, think the threat is called: What's going on over here.
Q - Do you have any future discus plans that you would like to share with us?
A - Future plans, yeah sell more Discus, make more people happy with good Stendker Discus. We are working on some game changers for us, have to see how that all works out.
Q - How do those in your life feel about discus?
A – hay it's our living, we don't have to work, I play every day with Discus and my family knows that. Days off are hard, vacations impossible but it's our life.
Let's put it this way, it's a job, somebody has to do it and I'm glad it's me.
Q - What do you see as the future of discus keeping? More/less people? Any cool ideas for strains?
A – I think there is a great future in people keeping Discus. More people start to understand that if you start with a good quality Discus, it isn't too hard to keep them alive. I'm sure more and more people will start to keep Discus.
Cool ideas, it's not up to me, Stendker breeds them, I just sell what they breed.
Q - Do you have any thanks or credit to give for your success with discus? Any mentors or colleagues who you think deserve some applause? Any one member of the forum that has helped you the most?
A – Of course the Stendker family, without them, I wouldn't be here in the USA. For the forum, hmmmm I think I came on Simply around 2002, just before I came to the USA, I was playing with Discus approx. a 25 years and understand me well, I don't know everything, but their were not many things I hadn't seen before.
There are a few friends that helped me lot, special in times you need them the most and are were there for me when I was in need of help. To name a few Jim H, John N. and Al S.
Q - If you were to give an aspiring discus keeper one piece of advice, what would it be?
A – Don't do it. It's an addiction, you always want more. If you still think you have to do it, do it right. Start with good quality Discus and read about them before you start. A lot of people dive into it and at the moment things go wrong they start to reading, most to find out they started wrong from the beginning.
A lot of info can be find here on the forum. An other good source of information is Stendker's free online book: http://diskuszucht-stendker.de/en/Wissenswertes/ don't be afraid, it's in English lol lol
Other thing, if you want to buy your Discus online (online store) do your research, to give you an example, the online store somethingstinkyfishy has a perfect grading on their store, if do some research here on Simply or Better Business Bureau you will find out the story isn't that nice.
Okay, I know my feedback is also 100% on the online store, I guarantee you this is real and we don't delete bad ones, heck, don't even know how to do it.
Q - How has Simply Discus helped you in your business?
A – Simply has helped me for a big part to brand the Stendker name in the USA, it's the place were you find the most Discus keepers, special before the era of Facebook.
Some Discus Gangsters at my house
Q - How have you been a mentor to other discus hobbyists?
A – Oh no, I don't tell anybody anything, everything is one big secret lol lol just kidding. No, I think I've always been pretty open to what we do, how we do it etc etc I think we are one of the most open companies in this business. If all info we gave was any help to hobbyist, I don't know but I think so.
I know for example that an other dealer in Discus has almost a copy of our setup/systems.
Q - Can you think of anything I left out you would like to bring up - either personally or discus related?
A – Yeah, you didn't tell me yet were to send the invoice for all the typing I'm doing here lol lol
No, let's do it this way, let's ask the people, who have to read this ….. crap? Lol
what they think I left out and come with questions what more they want to know, only risk they have I will say: Not of your business lol.
Q - How did you decide to take the plunge into breeding as a significant part of your fishkeeping?
A – MONEY!!!! (lol No, I think I answered that more or less in an earlier question)
Q - What were the major obstacles involved in setting up as a breeder? Any advice for
aspiring breeders?
A – If your married, make sure your wife/husband is with you on this, if not..... don't do it. It will kill your marriage.
Most important is your pairs, now there are at the moment many “breeding pairs” for sale. I think we were the first here in the USA who started selling breeding pairs, what more and more dealers start to copy. Now if I would order pairs direct from Stendker you understand you've to pay an arm and a leg. The tank space in Stendker's hatchery is very valuable, to use tanks for testing/forming pairs to let them go cheap is out of the question. So what we do here is buy a group of young adults, try to select males + females and let them spawn here in my facility, the adult Discus are for sale as single Discus, the moment they prove as pair, we sell them as pair. This way you get a young pair. I've seen other sellers sell “pairs” that, by my knowledge, look like older, probably worked out pairs, it's not were you want to start with.
From there it's patient, patient and patient. And if you want to go in this business for the money, take a real job, this is not for you.
Q - Who's the best breeder you have ever met; and why?
A - That's an easy one, Heinz Stendker, he started the biggest hatchery in the World, now owned/run by his 2 sons Jorg and Volker. While all the big names started writing books, Heinz Stendker stayed in the shadow, just doing his thing, breeding Discus. What once started with 4 wild Discus, is now world biggest Discus hatchery. Father Stendker had the luck that his 2 son Jorg and Volker took it over and grew the hatchery even bigger and breeding now 10's of thousand Discus a month. I bet a lot of breeders in the old and these days got their starting stock from the Stendker hatchery.
Name me one old time Discus breeder that we know only from their Discus and not mostly from their books??
Q - Any tips on breeding or raising discus? Tricks or methods you use to encourage pairs to breed?
A – Okay, this is work, we let Stendker do this because I hate work.
No special tricks or methods beside clean water and good food. For the rest it's up to mother nature, we don't force that.
Q - Hans, you are known as the discus pimp. How exactly did you came by that title?
A. That came more or less from a conversation with a customer who thought we were a breeder, explained we were not, Stendker is the breeder, I'm just the pimp.
Next visit the lady brought me my Discus Hans Pimp glass (see picture) and a title was born.
Q - Hans, you have been in America about ten years or so, how do you like living here?
A. yes I'm here now 10+ years in 2015 Discus Hans USA is official 10 years. How I like it, let's say it's different from the life I lived in Holland for 46 years. Holland is way more ….... relaxed. My kids (2) and grandsons (2) I can't see as many times I want to see. Some types of food I miss dearly. But here you win some, there you loose some.
Q - If I remember right you recently became a grandparent again. How do you like being a grandparent except for the getting older part of course?
A. Yes beside the 2 children + 2 grandsons I've in Holland, I gained here 2 daughters who are married by now. One has 2 little girls (3 year and 9 months), the other daughter has a little boy (8) months. Grandkids are great, you spoil them, worn them out (and they you) and when you're tired you give them back to their mothers.
Can wait till the little boy starts walking, so I can bring him to the fish house to start teaching him to clean tanks, from the day he's born he's Discus Hans USA CEO
That's all folks
Many thanks, Hans, for accepting this spotlight role !
Q - Please tell us all a little about yourself. Single, married, attached? What do you do for a living? Other hobbies? Any significant non-discus achievements you want to brag about?
A - My name is Hans Koops van 't Jagt. Now about only 10 people will know who that is, my wife Joanne, my 3 daughters, my son and a few friends. A few more people know me as Discus Hans (a name I got from a lady back in Holland because she couldn't remember my name). I play with Discus since approx. 1977, keeper, breeder and later Stendker reseller.
In 2004 I moved from Holland to the USA to start Discus Hans USA to sell the Stendker Discus in the USA. I'm married with Joanne, who is also my boss and together we run Discus Hans USA.
The Discus is our living. And hobby? My work is my hobby and my hobby is my work. I think I've the dream job for most here on the forum. I bet many would love to be me …... sorry job is taken lol.
Non Discus achievement: Yes, there is something. A few years back Joanne and I started here something in the USA we dreamed of to do for many years. The Kids tank decoration “contest”. The whole idea is based to get more children interested in the fish hobby in general. Set up an X amount of tanks, fill them with water and let the kids decorate the tank with gravel, plants (fake or real) ornaments and on top of that some general fish. Tanks would be judged and winner would win the tank. Because you don't let children lose all were winners and went home with the tank and you hope to get some kids interested in our hobby. We were having a hard time to get that started because nobody believed it could work. The Ohio Cichlid Association gave us the chance to do it at their show and with help from Les Wilson, now owner of Cobalt but at that time working for UPG, we got tanks 12 donated. The rest Joanne and I paid out of our own pocket. The whole thing was a BIG HIT and everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon, few months later we did it again on the ACA in Maryland with 20 tanks and EVERYTHING was sponsored. We didn't have the time anymore to do it and it's great to see that it's done now on almost every big shows all over the country, proud......... yes VERY.
Click on this link to see a slideshow of Hans work with the kids.
Q - How did you get into discus?
A - Gosh, it just happened, it was not planned. I had a friend who wanted some Discus in his tank, but had no time to grow them. We bought together a bunch of 3” Discus and put them in my tank to grow. Most of them I killed in no time. Second batch from a local breeder worked out better. I managed to grow out a few to 5”~6” and those started breeding in my show tank. About a 60 ~ 70 of the babies I grew to a 2.5”, put them up for sale and they all were sold in a few days......... a Discus business was born. 1 tank grew to 2 tanks to 7 breeding tanks + 2 grow outs. To 30 tanks in a back garden shed + about 30 tanks at an other location (hatchery). Those tanks later went to Nandi in Hungary when I stopped breeding, still don't understand how we got all those tanks, racks, filters, etc in the little truck. After I stopped breeding I started selling the Stendker Discus.
Q - What strains are you the most happy with? Which do you think need some work? Are you working on anything new and exciting now? What strain/s do you like best, personally?
A – Every strain that sells I'm happy with. It all depends a little who yours selling to, as most know we do 2 things. 1) Selling to stores. They are looking most for smaller Discus, the ones with the most color at young age are the best sellers for them, so also for us. Blue Diamonds, Marlboro's and Dark Angels. 2) Is an other story, selling over the online store direct to the public, as we all know (as being Discus people) the hardest part to do. Some how Discus people are very hard to please. If you've a tank with 60 young Discus, you've to pick what you think your customer will like, more or less being their eyes, so far I think we are doing pretty well with this. What they want most...... all over the place, in strain, size, etc etc.
Can't wait till Stendker come with their Leopards, last they came with are the Checkerboards that are very nice.
What do I like, hmmmm let's put it this way, if I set up a tank for myself, it would be light planted, Amazon Swords, Vallisneria, lot of branches hanging in the tank and a mix of Stendker Alenquers, Stendker Santarem and Stendker Tefe's. In other words, wild looking Discus.
Q - What do you feed your discus?
A – I feed here our own meat mix, I make it from lean ground beef, cod, shrimp, peas, high quality flake (Cobalt/Discus Hans flake) and some other stuff lol
Q - What is your most exhilarating moment with discus?
A – Ohhh my, there are so many over the last 40 years. From the first fry, my own Discus show in 1997, the move to USA, being “famous” and people think you know it all, etc etc.
Q - What are your most frustrating moments with discus?
A – Being “famous” and people think you know it all. Some think if they send you a picture and you know what's going on inside the Discus.
Or very frustrating if people ask your help and they know what they did wrong, tell you half the story and keep you busy for hours and than say....... oh yeah what I forgot.
For example, had a customer with a big tank full of adult Stendkers, doing very well. Every time asking for a kind of yellow Discus to add to his tank, sorry, we don't do yellow. One evening he called me, big problem in his tank, all Discus at the surface and slime coat start to break down. First question: did you add something to your tank the last week. NO nothing!!! Okay send me a movie, let me take look. Movie took a while, batteries empty, blah, blah, blah. Okay in the mean time hours on the phone, water changes, maybe main water pipe break in the area? (Pipes get flushed with chemicals, what of course can give problems) etc etc I was at my wit end.
Finally I got the movie, showed the sick Discus at the top, camera moves to the other side but while going to the other side you see the camera go up, quick down, to the right up again, sudden move down, to the left again, after playing the movie 5 times, you see he tried to keep one Discus, happy swimming around in the tank, out of the movie. 6th time watching I saw a yellow nose and a part of a yellow tail.
I was fuming, called the guy and asked the guy flat out, that yellow Discus that you try to keep out of the movie is not mine, where did you get it and how long is it in your tank............ silence at the other end....... ohhhh yeah, man I forgot about that, I got it last week from XXXXXX (not a dealer on this forum).
Okay, thanks for wasting my time.
Yeah what do I do now????
Call the guy you got that Discus from and ask him what to do about it.
Click, end of story.
Most frustrating time in my life with Discus, March 13th 2011. What should have been one of the most happy parts of our lives (my grand daughter was just born) turned in the most horrible time with Discus. We had to euthanize our complete stock of more as 5,000 Discus. Don't want to go into details, but if you want to read about it, you can read about it on my part of the forum around that date, think the threat is called: What's going on over here.
Q - Do you have any future discus plans that you would like to share with us?
A - Future plans, yeah sell more Discus, make more people happy with good Stendker Discus. We are working on some game changers for us, have to see how that all works out.
Q - How do those in your life feel about discus?
A – hay it's our living, we don't have to work, I play every day with Discus and my family knows that. Days off are hard, vacations impossible but it's our life.
Let's put it this way, it's a job, somebody has to do it and I'm glad it's me.
Q - What do you see as the future of discus keeping? More/less people? Any cool ideas for strains?
A – I think there is a great future in people keeping Discus. More people start to understand that if you start with a good quality Discus, it isn't too hard to keep them alive. I'm sure more and more people will start to keep Discus.
Cool ideas, it's not up to me, Stendker breeds them, I just sell what they breed.
Q - Do you have any thanks or credit to give for your success with discus? Any mentors or colleagues who you think deserve some applause? Any one member of the forum that has helped you the most?
A – Of course the Stendker family, without them, I wouldn't be here in the USA. For the forum, hmmmm I think I came on Simply around 2002, just before I came to the USA, I was playing with Discus approx. a 25 years and understand me well, I don't know everything, but their were not many things I hadn't seen before.
There are a few friends that helped me lot, special in times you need them the most and are were there for me when I was in need of help. To name a few Jim H, John N. and Al S.
Q - If you were to give an aspiring discus keeper one piece of advice, what would it be?
A – Don't do it. It's an addiction, you always want more. If you still think you have to do it, do it right. Start with good quality Discus and read about them before you start. A lot of people dive into it and at the moment things go wrong they start to reading, most to find out they started wrong from the beginning.
A lot of info can be find here on the forum. An other good source of information is Stendker's free online book: http://diskuszucht-stendker.de/en/Wissenswertes/ don't be afraid, it's in English lol lol
Other thing, if you want to buy your Discus online (online store) do your research, to give you an example, the online store somethingstinkyfishy has a perfect grading on their store, if do some research here on Simply or Better Business Bureau you will find out the story isn't that nice.
Okay, I know my feedback is also 100% on the online store, I guarantee you this is real and we don't delete bad ones, heck, don't even know how to do it.
Q - How has Simply Discus helped you in your business?
A – Simply has helped me for a big part to brand the Stendker name in the USA, it's the place were you find the most Discus keepers, special before the era of Facebook.
Some Discus Gangsters at my house
Q - How have you been a mentor to other discus hobbyists?
A – Oh no, I don't tell anybody anything, everything is one big secret lol lol just kidding. No, I think I've always been pretty open to what we do, how we do it etc etc I think we are one of the most open companies in this business. If all info we gave was any help to hobbyist, I don't know but I think so.
I know for example that an other dealer in Discus has almost a copy of our setup/systems.
Q - Can you think of anything I left out you would like to bring up - either personally or discus related?
A – Yeah, you didn't tell me yet were to send the invoice for all the typing I'm doing here lol lol
No, let's do it this way, let's ask the people, who have to read this ….. crap? Lol
what they think I left out and come with questions what more they want to know, only risk they have I will say: Not of your business lol.
Q - How did you decide to take the plunge into breeding as a significant part of your fishkeeping?
A – MONEY!!!! (lol No, I think I answered that more or less in an earlier question)
Q - What were the major obstacles involved in setting up as a breeder? Any advice for
aspiring breeders?
A – If your married, make sure your wife/husband is with you on this, if not..... don't do it. It will kill your marriage.
Most important is your pairs, now there are at the moment many “breeding pairs” for sale. I think we were the first here in the USA who started selling breeding pairs, what more and more dealers start to copy. Now if I would order pairs direct from Stendker you understand you've to pay an arm and a leg. The tank space in Stendker's hatchery is very valuable, to use tanks for testing/forming pairs to let them go cheap is out of the question. So what we do here is buy a group of young adults, try to select males + females and let them spawn here in my facility, the adult Discus are for sale as single Discus, the moment they prove as pair, we sell them as pair. This way you get a young pair. I've seen other sellers sell “pairs” that, by my knowledge, look like older, probably worked out pairs, it's not were you want to start with.
From there it's patient, patient and patient. And if you want to go in this business for the money, take a real job, this is not for you.
Q - Who's the best breeder you have ever met; and why?
A - That's an easy one, Heinz Stendker, he started the biggest hatchery in the World, now owned/run by his 2 sons Jorg and Volker. While all the big names started writing books, Heinz Stendker stayed in the shadow, just doing his thing, breeding Discus. What once started with 4 wild Discus, is now world biggest Discus hatchery. Father Stendker had the luck that his 2 son Jorg and Volker took it over and grew the hatchery even bigger and breeding now 10's of thousand Discus a month. I bet a lot of breeders in the old and these days got their starting stock from the Stendker hatchery.
Name me one old time Discus breeder that we know only from their Discus and not mostly from their books??
Q - Any tips on breeding or raising discus? Tricks or methods you use to encourage pairs to breed?
A – Okay, this is work, we let Stendker do this because I hate work.
No special tricks or methods beside clean water and good food. For the rest it's up to mother nature, we don't force that.
Q - Hans, you are known as the discus pimp. How exactly did you came by that title?
A. That came more or less from a conversation with a customer who thought we were a breeder, explained we were not, Stendker is the breeder, I'm just the pimp.
Next visit the lady brought me my Discus Hans Pimp glass (see picture) and a title was born.
Q - Hans, you have been in America about ten years or so, how do you like living here?
A. yes I'm here now 10+ years in 2015 Discus Hans USA is official 10 years. How I like it, let's say it's different from the life I lived in Holland for 46 years. Holland is way more ….... relaxed. My kids (2) and grandsons (2) I can't see as many times I want to see. Some types of food I miss dearly. But here you win some, there you loose some.
Q - If I remember right you recently became a grandparent again. How do you like being a grandparent except for the getting older part of course?
A. Yes beside the 2 children + 2 grandsons I've in Holland, I gained here 2 daughters who are married by now. One has 2 little girls (3 year and 9 months), the other daughter has a little boy (8) months. Grandkids are great, you spoil them, worn them out (and they you) and when you're tired you give them back to their mothers.
Can wait till the little boy starts walking, so I can bring him to the fish house to start teaching him to clean tanks, from the day he's born he's Discus Hans USA CEO
That's all folks
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