Speaker 1: This Pet Life Radio, Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to aquarium Mania.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, doctor Royanong, speaking to you from the
University of Florida. Iphis Tropical Aquacultural Laboratory. Thanks for joining us.
Freshwater fish keepers have thousands of fish to choose from,
but for more experienced aquaris, Among the prize gems are
the discus, known by many as the king of the aquariums.
These denizens of the Amazon are calm, stately, and in
addition to a unique disc shape available in beautiful wild
types and aquaculture colors and patterns. My guest today, Papula
mandrakardf long with Clarence ichthyologists and conservationists currently working with
Project PIABA, has a special appreciation.
Speaker 2: For and expertise with discus.
Speaker 3: Join us as Copula shares his life story and explains
why discus are worthy of their regal title.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after these messages.
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Movement is on a mission to help give cats an
extra life. How with spay and neuter spain or neutering
your cat helps them live a longer, healthier life, and
it helps control free roaming cat populations too. Learn more
about the benefits of spee and neuter and meet Scooter,
the neutered cat at give them ten dot org. That's
give them ten dot org.
Speaker 2: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to aquarium Mania on pet Life Radio. My
guest today is Couple of maundercar a theologist, lifelong aquarist
and conservationists with Project PIAPA.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Couple.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: So I usually like to start kind of getting a
little personal with my guests. Let's talk a little bit
about some of your early years. I've heard some of
the stories, but I'd love to hear them or maybe more.
How did you first become interested in fish in aquariums?
Speaker 2: Will?
Speaker 5: When I was born, my father brought me home to
a house of aquariums. He actually rebuilt the stands of
the tank so they're closer to the floor, so I
actually was able to interact with them as a younger child.
And then when my parents moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, my
dad joined the Southwest Michigan Aquariums side. So I was
about three years old, at that time, and I used
to go each of those meetings with him, and I
just I learned a lot more about fish. I became
more fascinated about fish. I learned where they came from,
and it just became a passion of mine.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I was kind of curious some you your
dad had a bunch of aquariums that was really interested.
Do you know how he got interested when he was
in India?
Speaker 5: So my dad told me that when he was a
young child, he used to get the bowl the glass
parts for he'd like get a light bulb, like a
big one of those big street lamp light bulbs, and
he used to take the electrical part off of it,
and he used to go to the beach and catch
larval marine fish and he would put him in his
He would put him in his room and watch him
for the day that they would survive. And then back
in the day, you know those big water jugs that
you kind of put on the receptacle that give you water.
Back then there were glass and somebody gave him one
of those, and I think he graduated getting guppies in
one of those, but they got algified and eventually I
think a family friend or one of his uncles was
able to get him a fish tank, and that's that's
kind of where he started. And then when he was
a little bit older, he wanted a bigger tank, and
my grandfather told him if he wanted a bigger tank,
that he needed to build one, and he built tanks.
And those couple of those tanks I believe were holding
water till about like ten or fifteen years ago till
somebody broke them. So yeah, that's kind of how I
got into the That's how he got in the aquariums,
which sort of transferred over to me.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Can you describe the very first tank you can remember,
you know, size, what kind of fish you had, even
maybe filtration if you remember that.
Speaker 5: So I still have these tanks sort of the first
sort of two tanks that I remember my dad having
were these two acrylic fifty five gallon aquariums. One was
like a community tank with you know, tetras, barbs, Garami's angelfish.
The other one was actually a goldfish tank with you know,
various fancy goldfish. I believe there were a couple of
shabunkins in there. And then you know, my dad, I
think had a couple of smaller tanks, had a couple
of smaller tanks where he would, you know, breed some fish.
That was my I guess my earliest memory of that
when we that was back when we lived in apartments.
When we moved into a house, my father's dream was
to have a fish tank in the wall. So the
two fifty fives actually went into the wall and we
actually built a two hundred and forty gallon tank several
years later to fill that void in the wall. And
then we started a fish room on the other side
of the wall. And I think we originally had like
ten tanks, and maybe by the time that I graduated
high school there were about forty tanks. We had a
indoor pond, and we had several outdoor ponds. So we
got really into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's amazing, And obviously it helps that your dad
dad was really into it, was your mom into it,
or you know as well hopefully Well, it's actually.
Speaker 5: Really funny is when my parents, when they first came
to this country were living in Ohio, and when they
moved from Ohio to Michigan, my dad didn't actually want
to set up the fish tank, and my mom was
the one that actually wanted it so, but no, she wasn't.
She wasn't as into the fish. She I think liked
the esthetics of the one in the wall. But my
mom's always been very supportive of my aquarium hobby, and
they've both my parents have just sort of let me
go literally wild with my love for fish and pets.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 3: Now, obviously you've got a lot of experience and education,
you know, with fisheries and fish. Can you share some
of your studies and experience during your college years and
what maybe influenced you the most.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think one important experiences that I had when
I was in college was as I did a lot
of undergraduate research, and I first started I worked with
a professor on sort of habitat selection in secondary cavinasting birds,
particularly like little house rens and tree swallows. And then
it wasn't till a few years later, a couple of
years later, that I had contacted some researchers and graduate
students at the University of Michigan and that sort of
evolved into a summer research experience, and that was my
first experience with fish. I worked in the Museum of
Zoology and I worked primarily on Amphelops historkey, which is
migas sickle, the pandemic to Lake. And I really looked
at their behavior and their aggression. You know, the the
these cichlids in the wild are not super aggressive, but
we brought them into captivity, they would they would become
more aggressive, especially the smaller the space, the more aggressive
they would become. And what I really looked at is
what are some aspects of their aggression. So I tried
to look in you know, territorial disputes, you know, was
it prior residence, you know, if if a fish was
there beforehand, if you cleared to claimed the territory. And
then the following summer I had a NSF funded ru
and I went to I went to Arkansas State University.
I worked with doctor RAMERI there and we worked on cafish.
I mean, I started doing some more you know, taxonomy
work with some of the North American cafish. And this
experience with the University of Michigan morphed into another research
experience after I graduated from college on a Mexican cyclid
called Corrictus Minkley, which is this polymorphic ciclid meaning actually
has three different feeding morphologies and it's found in this
small desert valley called Quatracienegus. That was my first sort
of field expedition to do research somewhere else. And so
those were the three primary you know, research experiences on
fish that I had before by entered graduate school.
Speaker 3: So I'm just curious with the midas, what were your
findings or what was the aggression trigger?
Speaker 5: So it seemed that, you know, if there was a
three dimensional structure in there, that the fish seemed to
have more prior residents in there to be more aggressive.
Speaker 3: Okay, and then with your field studies, those are definitely
like all genetically the same, I guess orf.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so there Originally they were going to be
you know, it was considered that there were sympatric speciation
going and further studies revealed that it's all one species
and there's these three feeding morphoags a piecivorus one, there's
a moleskovore and then there's a detritivore. And I live
in these spring fed pools that look like little oasis
in the desert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty significant variation. That's pretty cool. So now
obviously you decided to go a little further with your
studies and uh, and go to grad school. What kind
of was your decision to do that and where to
go and maybe tell us a little bit about, you know,
your work there, because I know it's it's I think
it's with one of my favorite fish.
Speaker 5: So so what I really wanted to do is I
really wanted to travel with grad school, and I think
that probably sort of dictated my my looking for places.
I guess if I were to give a young person advice,
I would say go after you know the question more
than this place. But so I was looking at, you know,
mostly faculty members at different schools that were working abroad,
and I was kind of going back and forth wanting
to study sort of more theoretical evolutionary biology of fishes
versus you know, more ecology and conservation biology of fishes.
I decided that I wanted to kind of go more
down the path of ecology, and I met my advisor
at a conference, and I think what really amazed me
and this sort of kind of helped lead me to
Project Piabo was I worked on this fish, one of
the largest fish, one of the largest freshwater fish with scales.
It's the giant airpima, and they are found in the
Amazon and eth the Keyboard River basins. They can attain
a length up to I think nine to ten feet
I think are some of the largest ones found. I
would say in the wild today most of the ones
you tend to find tend to be around that six
to eight feet range. But the fish was historically actirpated
throughout most of its range. It has a very tasty meat,
and you know, being such a large fish, half the
weight of the fishes. It's filet so and they command
let's just say, a price in their currency probably is
equivalent to what we would pay for wild caught Alaskan
salmon here. And so it's a very valuable fish and
it's really in demand. And in the I don't know,
sixty seventies, some community started realizing that a lot of
these you know, commercial fishermen were coming into these communities
and they were wreaking havoc, and so they the community
sort of made a stand, and this resulted in conflict
between these commercial fishermen and these artisanal fishermen, and the
government became involved in the courts ruled that you know,
the the resources the resources on these communal lands belonged
to the communities and not to the public. So this
sort of stemmed this community based management of different resources,
particularly aripima, and in these these areas that they these
communities lived and fish these fish, that's where aripima populations
are rising. They eventually started working with scientists and they
started setting size limits, seasons, and aerpima are an air
breathing fish, so they have to surface like a whale
to breathe every so often, and so every time they
come to breathe, they come up and they make a
giant splash and gulp air and sometimes it sounds like
a missile going off. It's and when you're in a
you're in the jungle with the lake full of these animals,
it's it's pretty incredible to see. They can sit on
shore on these lakes and count them. So how the
ecology have a lot of fish in the Amazon works,
particularly airpima, is you have a dry season and you
have a flooded season. In the dry season, you have
a river channel, and airpima do not live in the
main river channel, and then you have these peripheral of
these other aquatic habitats that are connected by channels, there's
floating floating meadows, there's oxbow lakes. These airpyma tend to
like deeper oxbo lakes. During the flooded season, water levels rise,
you know, in some areas it goes up ten fifteen
plus you know, feet into the into the jungle and
the forest flood and that that's a period of time
where fish like to reproduce and use the forest as nursery.
And that's when airpima, which would use parental care similar
to cichlids, you know, build a nest, lay their eggs,
and then they they protect their young for a fairly
long period of time. And so with this the in
these what amazed me is in these areas where humans
were living was actually where the population of air pima
was growing. And in one part, in the central central
western Amazon, the you know, our reserve, the populations just
skyrocketed to a point at which that little reserve actually
had more more fishient than the rest of the Amazon.
So I think what really attracted me to the air
pima is this sort of this relationship humans had with nature.
Speaker 3: So what were your specific like kind of studies with
them or what were you looking at?
Speaker 5: So I'm still working on publishing some of these studies,
but I was looking at their diet. I was looking
at their sort of trophic ecology using isotopes, looking at
food webs and really looking at how you know, management
can affect the ecology of these fish, but really trying
to figure out within this region, what were the main
nutritional sources, what are they eating? And does it sort
of change through does it change through different management protocols.
Speaker 3: Okay, so before we start talking about discus, maybe a
little bit more on kind of like the your current status, actually,
what is your day job before we talk about more
of your kind of fishy parts.
Speaker 5: My day job, I'm a US spot now, I am
a consultant. I'm an independent consultant. I work with different
aspects of the pet industry as well as Project Piabo
where I work with the fisheries and the trade of
the cardinal tetras.
Speaker 2: And so I know you've you've done a lot of
different things.
Speaker 3: You mentioned working at as an aquarius kind of doing
aquaculture as well and research. What kind of things do
you think in those specific jobs kind of helped you
the most or do you have any specific take homes
or stories for all the experiences you've had.
Speaker 5: Oh man, I would like to say I'm a jack
of all trades, but a master of none. You know.
I think that working within aquaculture, the aquarium trade, the
thing they've all had sort of different aspects of you know,
the trade of fish and and the biology of fishes.
I wouldn't say any one thing really sticks out to me.
Working in the commercial aquaculture of fish I think was
pretty interesting. I worked with seahorses, and it really to
understand some of the reproduction and getting you know, it's
not in a sense like a hobbyist level where you're
you're trying to get some babies, but you have to
be able to get enough babies. You have to get survival.
And you start learning stuff about the biology of these fish,
and it sometimes becomes like second nature to you when
you look at them. You can you know, I don't
even know how to say it. I'm like, oh, I
need to tweak this a little bit, you know. It's
it's it's you know, I like to say that. You know,
I could explain to you how to raise raise, you know,
these seahorses in a biological terms, but there's there's a
little bit of finesse that you sort of have to
develop in an experience that you have to have before
you can actually be successful with that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I know definitely what you mean.
Speaker 3: A last question before the discuss, So you've joined Project Piaba.
Can you tell us a little bit about your role
with Project Piaba? And I think some of our listeners
should be familiar with it, but maybe just a real
brief intro.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 5: Project Piaba is an organization that started in the late
eighties early nineties. It was started by doctor Chow and
mister Scott Dowd and it sort of stemmed off of
a research project that there were a lot of aquarium fish,
particularly cardinal tetris coming out of the Rio Negro. Originally,
it was thought that this fishery would have a negative
effect on the ecosystem in fish populations. And after doctor Chow,
who was I believe a faculty at IMPA, then he
IMPA is the basically the Amazon Institute, you know, it's
a universe that focuses just on Amazonian science, conservation, culture,
that and so he did some of the first studies
in the Rio Negro base and sort of discovered that
actually these fisheries are not harming population that they're actually
not even touching the surface of how many fish can
be collected sustainably and the fishery actually protects the ecosystem.
You know, these aquarium fish collectors have developed a traditional
knowledge that they really understood that in order for their
fishery to be strong, that they need to protect the
forest and the fish depend on the forest, and so
these fish are sort of to become the guardian of
the forest. So Project Piabo is created to sort of
support that trade, help whether it be in Brazil or abroad,
and help encourage the purchase of these wild caught fish
from the Rio Negro and educate people on the benefits
that they have. I'm actually I think actually we're December
is my one year anniversar with Project Piaba, so I'm
pretty new to that. My main role at so everybody
at Project Piava wears many different hats. It's a smaller,
a small organization, so we're we're doing all sorts of
things with it. But i am working sort of as
a marketing specialist, So I'm working within the US of
sort of how to promote these fish, help educate the
public of the United States about this fishery, help aquarium shops,
wholesalers appropriately sell and educate people about these fish. Okay,
As a biologist, I'm also doing stuff, you know, in
the field with with the biology of these fish, and
and you know, work in all different aspects of the trade.
So it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds fascinating and the Amazon's you know, obviously amazing.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about discus and we'll have you do a
little bit of an intro before we take a break.
Speaker 3: So, putting your ichthyologists hat on, can you maybe just
give us some maybe a general overview of discus from
your viewpoint.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, discus are a type of cyclad. It's a
round fish white has the name discus. They are found
in sort of lowland regions of the Amazon, and currently
there's three described species of discus. There is Symphisidon peraldi,
which is you know, considered to be the blue or
brown discus. There's Synfidon I'm sorry, Symphysidon discus, which is
the heckel discus, which is primarily found in the Rio
Neegar region and the region the Project PIABA supports the
fishery in. And then there's a couple of other disjunct
populations of that. And then there is the green discus,
which is a Symphysidon tarzu, which is found in the
central and western Amazon. There are some areas between the
blue discus the hackle discus where there are hybrid zones
of those where the two species do hybridize. And there
was a paper another paper that come out. So there's
been three current sort of papers that really focus in
recent years. When I say recent, it's been it's been
a while now it's but I think it's coming on
like close to twenty years when these papers were published.
But there was another paper that sort of looked at
just the genetics of these fish and they identified five
evolutionary significant units in the populations of discus. So they
looked at, you know, the you know, the the green
discus were their own thing, the hackle discus were their
own thing and related to the other disjunct populations. And
then with the blue discus, which is the Symphysidon heraldi.
Those fish they sort of categorized in two different units
of population. They're sort of the blue unit, then there's
the brown unit. Before we kind of go too much
into this further, but just to just make it a
thing on color discus fish. These are just like kind
of like a general thing. Discus fish are highly variable
in the wild, and you know, within a population can
range in colors. And then they discovered a fifth unit,
which is the Rio Shingu. The discus of rioshin Gu
are sort of their own own things. So it seems
that the heraldy could potentially be split up into two
species genetically, and the Shingou discus could be also a
new species. But in order to describe a fish, one
has to do a morphological comparison as sort of the
primary So you can't just describe a fish on genetics.
The morphology, the mouristics, you know, that's those are all
the scale counts, you know, looking at shape, size, looking
at you know, the fin ray counts. Those are all
really important aspects to actually just bribing you fish.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Great, and I'm going to definitely have some follow ups
to that, and we'll talk more about discussing this is keeping.
But let's take a short break and we'll continue our
discussion with a theologist at Pueris and conservationist couple of
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Speaker 3: We're back and continuing our conversation with my guest Capula
mondracar a theologists Aquarius and conservationists with Project Piaba.
Speaker 2: So you gave us a really good.
Speaker 3: Intro and it started getting into some of the genetics
and variation in the wild. I mean, it sounds obviously
kind of complicated but interesting as well. I'm just curious
about the Shinghu population. So is that not really closely
related to the other three you had mentioned.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's sort of its own unit, you know, it
looks very similar to like a brown discus. They're not
they're they're not necessarily the most colorful population in discus,
but they're also just a very unique one. And I
have seen them, and I've never seen them in the wild,
but I have seen them in aquaria before.
Speaker 3: Okay, this may be a question before your age and time.
Do you know when discus first kind of got into
the hobby or are you familar with any of that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I believe discus, the heckle discus, was I
think discovered in the eighteen hundreds and then in the
early nineteen hundreds as when a second species was discovered,
which was described as I believe since Fisidon aquafasiadis, which
that name is no longer considered valid, but that sort
of lumped you know, the basically those hackle discus and
everything else. Was this other discus Discus I believe were
first imported in I don't know if it was Europe
or the US, but it first imported in the Western
world in the nineteen twenties, and I don't think it
was till maybe the nineteen thirties when some actually might
have survived.
Speaker 2: I was wondering, Yeah, that was my next question.
Speaker 5: And then I don't think it was until the fifties
that we started seeing people breeding them in captivity. And
I don't think it was till the sixties or seventies
till we started getting more commercial breeding of those discus.
And in the eighties and nineties is when you know,
real commercial discus took off and there's multiple millions of
discus born and traded a year throughout the world.
Speaker 3: So before we talk a little bit more about aquaculture,
discus and you know, and kind of discus keeping on,
what are the processes by which discus are kind of
collected in the wild.
Speaker 2: I know you've you've kind of been out there. How
does that happen?
Speaker 5: So when I was doing my work on Arapaima, I
was in the Lower Amazon, and there was the Lower
Amazon is also sort of like the focal point of
where the blue and brown discus occur, particularly the blue discus.
While I was there, I really wanted to My goal
was to swim with discus in the wild. And there
was one exporter there called sat In Discus run by
Victor Charisma, and you know, I got in contact with
him and I became friends with him and I started
going out to these places. One thing I can tell
you is that the variety of habitats is pretty incredible
that discus come from. But really, you know, like the Airpima,
there's various communities that focus on collecting the discus. Some
of these communities not everybody that that you know collect discus,
but there's a there's a group of people that you know,
focus on discus collection, and they collect the discus, you know,
in two ways. They either they sort of put nets
out by falling branches trees, you know, at night, they
seem to come up into those and it's usually I believe,
in the evening where they go and they they sort
of you know, use between saints and a specialized dip net.
They collect the discus and then the discus are kept
in a floating cage which could either be made out
of just wood planks or some of them are you know,
more like a cage really made out of a plastic
netting material and they are held in those those environments
for a period of time before the exporter comes and
takes them. Now, there is like I said before, discus
are highly variable. I would say the Hackle discus are
probably the least variable, but within the blue discus populations,
the populations are highly variable. And I say this because
you know, I would see these collections of wild discus.
You know, I would say, like gudy Bana is one
place that I went to. Gudy Banta is really well
known because the discus are very red from that region
as probably one of the most highly sought after populations
of wild discus. But you would see these discus that
would say quitdy Bana royal, which means, you know, is
a fish that's fully striated and has you know, the
blue or iridescing turquoise coloration on it. Then they would
have you know, kudy ban semi royals, which would be
there'd be patches of this blue striation, but it wouldn't
cover the full body. And then you would have you know,
solid quidy bit as you know, they're called coudypit on reds,
which is a solid red fish. And those guys would
may have some striations on the fin or the head area,
but you know, it would be a solid, you know,
reddish brown, rich color. And you know, at first I thought,
you know, these fish, there must be one lake that
they're all solid one lake that their semis one lake
that they're royals, And when I got there, I realized
they all lived together. And there's some fish in those
populations that are not the prettiest fish, you know, that
don't have that solid red coloration so within the fish,
so the fishermen try to do their best job, you know,
weeding out what is what is desirable by the aquarium trade.
And then when the exporter goes there, he goes and
he picks out the fish and you know, see if
it's except well, they literally like we literally bag the
fish and put them in a styrofoam box and take
them on a boat or a train back to the
city where they're acclimated and conditioned for export.
Speaker 3: So you kind of answered one of my next questions,
which was, so you think it's probably genetic and not
so much just diet that's that leads to the coloration.
Speaker 5: I think there's a variety of different things that lead
to sort of the coloration. So there, yes, there is
a genetic component. I do also see that there's a
sexual selection component in some of the areas. You know,
like you'll find discus. Usually discus are in black or
clear water, but you know, there are areas where discus
are found in murky waters. You find discus found in
pH of like four point five eight, you know, to
neutral water. Usually they tend to be in various areas
a little bit softer than some, but that that does occur.
So there's some of that, and then there's also some
stuff with just habitat in color. So I think there's
a lot of things selecting the coloration of these fish.
But I think in some of these areas it's a
combination of mate selection and at least in the clear
areas of a combination of mate selection and you know,
camouflage and the habitat which I think a couple of
different colorations probably work really well. And in Guidypeta, the
water is just murky. It's more closer to the neutral range.
The temperatures where discussed range It can be in the
upper eighties to you know, the mid seventies. Guidy Beta
is probably in that seventy to eighty eighty degree range.
You know, it's very turbid water. Gudy Beta. You know,
it's still connected to the Amazon River. You know, it's
what they call like a terrafirm lake which terraform means.
So you have two different sort of land type of
habitats on the rivers. You have what we call the varzia,
which is the Amazonian floodplain, and then you have what
we call terra firm which is you know, sort of
solid land that occurs next to the river. So the
floodplain habitat is what floods as well as is highly variable.
It's very silty, muddy sort of habitat that you know,
can change every year with with the with the change season.
With a terra firm is actually like a solid land.
It's not a sill, it's not a mud. There's you know,
there's a more ancient geological component to that land. So
that's kind of where those fish were occur. Okay, I
don't want to go too far into this, but like
you know, one area, which where's the Thopa Jos River,
that was actually the first place that I collected discus
and that actually I didn't go out with Victor. There
was there was an undergraduate Stude that was working in
the Aerpaima project with us, and he told me about
this friend he had that collected fish for the local
aquarium trade and he was going to go out collecting
discus with him, and I go, oh, I want to go,
and so, you know, we meet at the shopping mall
and local city. He picks us up in his car
and he takes us, you know, to the poor area.
And in Santa Dam there's this giant fish market. You
can look up Santaina Fish Market and the wet season,
dolphins come up there. And it's this this place in
the city. And it's not necessary since it is in
an urban area. It's not like the cleanest place. A
lot of trash there. There's sewage outflow into this area.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: We get we get in the beach and I was
just like, where where where's the boat that we're going on?
And the fisherman goes, oh, there's no boat. We're gonna
collect him here and I go to him, I'm not
getting in the water here, and he's like, oh, no, no, no,
I just need you to grab the fish for me
when I bring him in. And you know, in this
I would say polluted area, very heavily urban. We were
collecting discus, you know, of all different sizes there, as
well as a variety of other fish. And I think
at this point I had spent you know, a couple
of years in going back and forth from Brazil and
always wondering where the discus lived. And I walked by
this fish market almost on a daily and I was like, man,
that they're They're kind of everywhere. So and then the
third area I went to is a place called the
Lago Grange, which is sort of this spring fed sort
of river system that flows into these lakes and the
water there is a lot cooler, it's very acidic, the
water is crystal clear. That's the site that I got
to swim with the discus and you know, come to
find out too, the discus seemed to like a lot
of flow, which is very very unique to what we
think that they need in captivity. But they seem to
be found in deeper water with lots of flow near
some sort of woody mature, whether it be driftwood or
tree branches. And it was incredible to see them, you know,
swim very very swiftly in the current.
Speaker 2: So when you say heavy flow, do you mean just
for that area or do you mean in general just.
Speaker 5: In that area of the river. You know, the you
have these these areas, but yeah, the one area that
I was talking with them in Lago Grange. The flow
was so heavy that I actually had to grab onto
the driftwood that was sort of stuck into the ground
there in order to stay or else I would have
just flowed away.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. It's yeah, that's definitely a lot more variety
than I realized. So I guess maybe we can combine
some of my next questions. Obviously, as you mentioned, there's
been a lot more aquaculture, and I've seen a lot
of the I remember when pigeon Bloods first came out,
and there's a lot of kind of variety. Can you
maybe talk a little bit about the variety in colors
of the cultured species, and then maybe talk a little
bit about how like keeping wild type versus the aquacultured
species like may differ, Like what would you know hobbyists
have to think about.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I remember, you know, in the nineties when
we were starting to see discus come in from Asia
culture in Asia that were very colorful, and then you
would see wild discus were still pretty strongly coming into
the United States. That you know, the wild discus used
to just be these ugly brown ones and they weren't
that nice looking. Part of part of that is the
supply chain. I think that on both captive as well
as as well discus, the supply chains changed on those.
But part of those the supply chain, and part of
it is the American market wasn't buying the pretty discus
because they cost more money. The American market went in
the cheapest discus. And so the really unique and really
the prettier population in the discus, We're going to Asia
and then Europe, and we were hardly getting any of these,
really these populations. So when I show pictures of wild discus,
you know, you see a full royal discus which you know,
you can say looks somewhere like a red turquoise, you know,
blue turquoise or you know, brilliant turquoise in that realm
like that. That's something that it does occur frequently in
the wild. And the reason we don't really see that
is is because we never got them in the United
States and they went to very collectors and breeders in
other parts of the world. The solid redfish is probably
where the Marlborough discus might have come in from. You
see that, you do see with the snake skin pattern
of discus, you know which which are very characteristic of
a lot of very little bands, just very very tightly
tightly spun striations. But those guys that that color pattern
is something that is sort of like a mutation that
does occur in some wild population discan but it's not
a frequent one. But that's that's I believe where that
mutation sort of possibly came from. With blue diamonds, which
is a solid, you know, baby blue discus, those I
think stem from, Uh, there are blue diamond discus that
do occur in the wild. Again, like the snake skin,
it's you know, this this mutation that's that's not very common,
that occurs every so often. And I believe the blue
diamonds were line bread out of those the most difficult
discus to breed, or the Heckel discus. Part of that
reason is they they are from more acidic regions. In
my opinion, they're one of the prettiest of the wild discus.
They're probably the most common wild discus that came into
the hobby, But I don't think when when they were
first being exported, I don't think we knew the best
about the supply chain of those. But those are probably
the most difficult wild discus to breed. They do hybridize
in the wild with the blue or brown discus, and
they do hybridize with the captor strains of discus. So
you know, you can find what we have our heckle crosses.
Also with some of the solid red discus, we've sort
of created a couple of different strains of those, like
red covers and red rows which sort of stem from
some of these you know, brown discus and some of them.
Sometimes you are you are seeing wild crosses in some
of the captor strains of discus. That's that's pretty unique.
Speaker 2: A quick follow up.
Speaker 3: So I'm guessing obviously all the hybrids are fertile, right,
I think.
Speaker 5: There's question of whether the hybrids between heckles and blue
are fertile. Okay, are not, but the between you know,
right now they're considered the same species, which is the
blue brown discus. But I believe between those populations they
they are able to breed. I am not one hundred
percent certain on I assume that the green discus might
have been hybridized in with with some of that. That's
where you kind of I'm unclear in which if some
of the spotted discus that we see in captivity have
some of those green discus in there, because the green
discus tend to have a lot more spotting in them.
So I'm unclear if that's if that's that case or not,
but you know, but generally there's some level of fertility
between the populations, and I don't know of anybody that's
bred the Shingu discus in captivity. I just don't think
there are as heavily traded as other population in discus.
I think in the Shinghu they mainly focus on lower
Koreans or your pleaco type fish, as well as they're
not the most colorful discus.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, so let's talk a little bit about discus
keeping in Are they really more advanced obvious and what
do you recommend wildcott versus aquaculture. Obviously there's going to
be pluses and minuses and as well as like sort
of just general kind of requirements for keeping them.
Speaker 5: I will say the ease of the discus really I
think depends whether it's wild or aquaculture is sort of
has it gone through a good supply chain in the past.
I think discus we're considered these, you know, expert level
fish difficult to keep and I think part of that
was to the fact that we weren't properly shipping these
fish across the country. You know, they were putting several
in you know, a big bag and shipping them across.
You know, we didn't really know as much about these fish,
and that's that's definitely have changed. What I think a
lot of these exporters in Brazil in particular have discovered
is that the fish need to rest between each stop
before they can be shipped out. And and you know,
they they work on doing various treatments there, and primarily
what they actually condition these fish with is uh salt.
You know, they they bring these discus in and they
salt salt them and that's that's usually the biggest medication
that they use. It's kind of difficult to get most
fish medications in Brazil, so that's usually that's usually the
big thing with those guys. And with the same thing
with with captive farm discus is you know, they just
weren't sending them very well in along for a long
period of time, so those have changed. I think there's
been sort of with the onset of these aquaculture discus
wild discus trade sort of dropped, and I think in
the past ten years it's been climbing back up with
with a lot more popularity and social media of wild discus,
and you're starting to see wild discus crosses, and I'm
starting to see more wild discus sort of being imported
around the world. But in general, that's I think that's
the big thing with them. Discus are susceptible to disease.
Many populations of discus, you know, are found in the
wild in not always but tend to be in more
acidic conditions, and they sort of are not exposed to
a lot of different types of bacteria in those in
those sort of systems, and so they can be susceptible
to thing. But once a discus is acclimated into your
your current water, you know, they can be very hearty.
So when I say are they for beginners, you know,
I would say, if you're getting them from a really
reputable source, whether it be wild or captive bread, I
think that they can be very very rewarding fish and
fairly easy to take care of. I think the biggest
thing I can give you is that they can be
susceptible to these So I think quarantine of tank mates
and new discus are really important.
Speaker 3: With regard to I guess temperatures and yeah, and you
mentioned tank mates, like what should they be ideally kept
by themselves or what type of you know fish would
you keep them with? And then and then the temperature
has always been kind of a tricky question. What are
your thoughts on that?
Speaker 5: You know, I've seen discus, you know, in the lago
grounds at Discus was you know, in the low seventies
there and a lot of the places, you know, the
waters probably in the eighties, and some places it might
be in the upper eighties, you know, So it ranges
in the wild of what discus now I know, the
one ex border that you know, I spent a lot
of time with. His fish tend to be warm, and
all his fish when they when they whether they're found
in a cooler water or not, seem to do really
well in high temperatures. Water. High temperatures can also be
sort of a wall to a vector for various diseases.
You know, discus can take it pretty high. They can
take it up to like eighty eight degrees. I believe
a lot of the aquaculture discus tend to be raised
in a lot more warmer water environments. But in general,
you know, I would say I keep my discus. If
I'm keeping them with other fish, I'm keeping them or
in planetings, I'm keeping them around eighty to eighty two.
If I'm keeping them by themselves, I tend to keep
them around eighty four to eighty five if they seem
to if they're new discus that I'm getting in I'm
quarantining them, I'll tend to keep the temperature a little
bit above eighty. But I think in general it can.
It can definitely, you know, they can be highly variable,
you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, and then on nutrition wise, wild costs pretty easy
to acclimate to kind of prepare diets or what's your
thoughts on that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I asked, you know, when I first
met Victor at Stadem discus go I asked, what are
what are you feeding your discus? And he goes, oh,
and the Amazon It's hard to get good food. But
you know, I'm using this this brand of flake food
and all at that at the time I visited him,
all he was feeding his fish was flake.
Speaker 3: Food, okay, and they were and they were going for it.
At least, you know, if it's not necessarily ideal. They're
still eating it.
Speaker 5: Oh they were devouring it. And these fish were looking
amazing on flakefood. That was what I was like, Wow,
this is this is pretty amazing, you know, I mean
it was just there. He used to have I think
at Geo Vegas in the tank because he would feed
him heavily. Discus, you know, they need to eat, so
you want to make sure you feed your discus three
plus times a day ideally, especially if they're younger discus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense. And if it's warmer, I'm assuming
the metabolism is going up as well.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, But I mean in captivity, I feel
that pet foods in general, including fish foods, have really
made great strides and in the past twenty years, and
I think there's a lot of really good fish foods
available on the market. When I was younger, I was
I used to do blackworms. Now the trade in black
worms just seems supply seems to go in and out
and the prices of skyrocketed. But I do you know,
give my discuss and I guess i'd ask you the
question is is how nutrition is are freeze dried foods
or dehydrated foods?
Speaker 3: I mean I would think the freeze, the dehydrated freeze,
driede I mean it they can be nutritional. You know,
we usually talk about as you you know, just kind
of a mix just to try to not put all
your eggs in one basket to nutrition. But yeah, I
mean it definitely probably as a supplement, you know, it
probably could be pretty good.
Speaker 2: The fresh stuff is always good, and if the yeah, like.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that, I agree, there's a lot better high
quality kind of a nutritional you know, commercial diets now,
so that does help.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean I think what I've been seeing
a lot with my discuses. I give them, you know,
mainly pellets and flakes, and then I give them frozen
and the dehydrated foods as sort of a supplement. You know,
I really like giving discus miso shrimp. Discus seem to
like bloodworms. I'm not certain how nutritional bloodworms are. That's
another question for you.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe I think they have some value.
Speaker 3: Again, I'm definitely not an nutritionness but yeah, I always
kind of go with the fresh is good, really good quality,
commercial is great, and then you know, just everything in
moderation and you know, a good mix. But that Yeah,
definitely good questions.
Speaker 5: I think with a high quality pellet and flake food,
I think I think, you know, even if you just
do the pellets, there's just there's some great there's just
great foods out there, a lot of different brands that
are doing a great job. And you know, with the discus,
a higher protein food is what I think is really
important for them. And you know, multiple feedings a days.
They just need to eat, you know. I see a
lot of discus and captivity that whether they're wilder captive
that are just not being fed at the level that
they need and they're just skinny.
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense. Well, we're getting close to the end.
I did have one more quick question before we close up,
and what's your thoughts on I guess kind of numbers
and sex ratios in a tank.
Speaker 2: I really like to you know, for.
Speaker 5: An average home aquarium, I like to say, you know,
one adult discus, you know, that's four to six inches
per every eight to ten gallons of water. Yes, do
people keep them in higher concentrations than that, yes, but
remember when you are keeping discus in such high concentrations,
you have to feed them, you have to do consistent
water changes, water quality, is very important with discus. You know,
big water changes frequently are are really important to have
happy healthy discus.
Speaker 3: Any issues with like males or females or have to
worry about that.
Speaker 5: They will pair off and they can create a territory. Now,
I did visit a discus breeder this year and he
had like in one hundred and twenty five gallon tank.
I think he had like six. He had multiple breeding
pairs and multiple of them were spawning in their little section.
But you know, discus can be a little bit difficult
to sex, but you know, keeping them in pairs or
probably you know, of the best, probably similar to what
you would do with the angel fish.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Okay, sounds good. Well, unfortunately we're out of time. I
definitely want to thank our guests, a couple of undercar
and our producer, Mark Winner for making the show possible.
So as I always kind of like to ask, do
you have any final words of wisdom or thoughts for
our listeners?
Speaker 5: Well, with wild Discus, I will say that they definitely
have a personality. That's what really got me back into Discus.
I'd kind of gotten out of Discus for a while.
It was a quariumc importer in the US that sent
me a video of one of her wild discus beating
up a hike cycling and that got my attention. I've
sort of dug into just the variety and where these
fish live, and there's just some exciting, exciting wild discus. Also, again,
when you buy wild discus, you also are supporting you know,
local communities, you know, and if you choose to get
aquaculture discus, that's perfectly fine. There's a lot of great
aquaculture farms that support the demand for you know, for
discus fish in the country. But don't buy aquaculture discus
if you think that's you know, the more environmental aspect
of it. You know, if you think wild collecting discus
is bad for the environment, it's it's not the case.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: One last story I I guess I'll leave you with
is in the ton Equity Beta where these really red
discus came from. A storm came through and basically totaled
their school and it was the Santa Discus. He actually
built them a new school, you know, because they're is
this partnership between them that they depend on each other.
And so if if their communities is hurt, so that
that means that exporters are also hurt, so you see
the money going back to these communities as well as
you know, he sort of acts as like the guy
that handles conflict, and it was it was pretty awesome
to see him wear his many hats with these communities.
But you know, there's a strong relationship between these exporters
and these communities and they take care of each other.
So that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3: That's great, definitely, definitely a great ending and kind of
reminder for folks that there is a lot of good
sustainable collection out there. And I kind of did appreciate
your which makes a lot of sense the fact in
the early days where we were not getting maybe the
nicest discus because we didn't want to pay that much.
Speaker 5: Back back in the days, they weren't being shipped properly.
So when they would come, yeah, beating the child, there
just be black or brown whatever, you know. And that's
the other thing with wild discus is they take a
little bit longer to color up putting your tank, but
when they do color up, it's pretty amazing and you
get just a variety of colors that you do in
capture strains.
Speaker 2: You know, very cool.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks again, and I really appreciate your taking your time.
Speaker 2: Copy and we'll talk to you a lot more, I'm
sure in the future.
Speaker 3: Please be sure to check out Copyo's web links found
on his Aquarium Media episode page. If you have any questions, comments,
or ideas for a show, email me at doctor Roy
at petlife radio dot com.
Speaker 2: That's d R. R O y at petlife radio dot com.
Speaker 3: Until next time, please visit your local aquarium stores and
keep your tanks clean and.
Speaker 2: Your fish healthy, and definitely think about discus for your
next tank.
Speaker 1: Let's Talk Pats every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: Five