# Discus Have Personality



## Rod4Rodger (Jan 2, 2012)

What kinds of personalities do your Discus have? I am watching the changing of the guard. My shoal leader for the last two years is getting old. He is still “the man” but he is showing the weakness of age. The new young buck is the same size and respects the “old man.” He doesn’t fight or push to lead, but very often he is on one side of the tank with half the shoal and the old fish is on the other side of the tank with the other half of the shoal. They are not the smartest critters so the half with each one is composed of different fish every time I look. I have a few others that are just as big but they are laid back and hang with which ever shoal leader is closest or strikes their fancy at the moment. Right now I have no mating pairs in my display tank so that behavior is not present at all.

Most of my fish are not named, but the “Old Man” is Plato and the “young buck” is Zorro. Plato used to hang out with my previous shoal leader that was named Socrates. We pronounced that as “So Crates” like in the Bill and Ted movies. Zorro has a black stripe across his eyes and my wife named him the day I got him, long before he showed shoal leader qualities.

My wife has something in common with Discus; even in Houston, Texas, she can’t get hot enough. I am in gym shorts sweating my butt off and she has a blanket. I have been trying to catch the behavior on camera because she says, “When they get cold they go grab a blanket like their mommie.” I can handle the blanket, but when they start going to the shoe store or Marshalls, or ask for an American Express Card, I am going to draw a line!

They all, except for the crazy shy ones, expect to eat out of my hand. I put my hand in the tank for any reason and they start trying to open my palm for food. I only think this is my Man Cave. They know it is a Discus cave. Zorro and Plato often remind me, “We are Discus and you are not!” They are kind of full of themselves, even the lesser shoalmates.

Science fiction: Imagine a “Fish Ball.” It is a clear crystal ball about the size of a basketball that has all the life support they need. No matter which way they swim it stays the same distance away from their body. It is propelled by an anti-gravity system so it can literally float in the air. Plato is now Sally Ride, floating in space. Can you imagine what trouble a Discus could not only get into, but create? OMG don’t give them a camera! It is bad enough swatting mosquitos but let Plato float into the hot tub… sigh… He would probably chase Longhorns and buzzards. He wouldn’t have enough sense to know he couldn’t eat a dragonfly if he caught it, but with the hundreds here in the summer, he would melt down the reactor powering the “Fish Ball” trying to catch them.

What irreverent Discus fun do you have? You can’t keep these fish and not enjoy their personalities. I want to hear your stories and silly fantasies like my “Fish Ball.”

I posted this on the Discus Forum because I now have Discus, but personality is not limited to Discus. I had an Orbiculous Bat Fish from 1992 to 2004! It grew from quarter sized to seven pounds when it died. I could write a book about her, but she would only tolerate me, my wife, my daughter, and my German shepherd in the room. Anybody else came in, as soon as she saw them she went ballastic and crashed into everything. I had to take everything out of the tank. When she died it was because she broke the top glass and pushed a heavy wooden cover off and landed on the floor in the middle of the night. My German Shepard woke me up, would not settle down, dragged me by the hand to the fish, but it was too late. I put her back in but by in the morning she was dead. BTW, it is not possible to flush a fish that is 14 inches from the highest point to the lowest point. She was buried in the back yard like a dog would have been. Her name was Nancy. Her original tank mate was Tonya. Nancy killed Tonya… Do any of you remember the 1992 Winter Olympics?


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## susankat (Nov 15, 2008)

Great story, loved every minute of it.


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## SuckMyCichlids (Nov 5, 2011)

Very interesting lol


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## WhiteGloveAquatics (Sep 3, 2009)

as you can tell from this pic









mine do not really do that, they break into about 3 large groups, sometimes 4 smaller groups. Ive got em from 7" to 3" now and I always add more when I come across a damn good deal or very high quality specimens. I even have an f2 blue in that mess.
Mine do ALOT of hand eating and they do recognize their main feeder the most and at more times then not they scurry off when a stranger enters the room but slowly come out once one of them sacks up and swims out of the dense plants in the rear center lol.


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## Rod4Rodger (Jan 2, 2012)

Beautiful tank! Right now mine are all gathered together around Plato and Zorro in the middle of the tank and I am pretty sure they are saying, "we are starving, you never feed us." Most of mine are around 5" give or take. I have heard of people having them much bigger but I don't think I have ever personally seen any bigger than your 7" fishies, and that is pretty rare. Maybe it is just perception because mine look about the same size as yours. In fact in the picture your tank looks quite large. Mine is 240 gallons, six feet by 30 inches on the front and two feet wide. I have noticed they are a lot bigger up close than they look from across the room in that big tank.


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## WhiteGloveAquatics (Sep 3, 2009)

Yeah I was ATLEAST 10' away from the tank at the time of the pic, and yes the refraction of light and water gives them a smaller look but reach in and grab one and you cant get your hands on it, I have to use a 5g bucket lid to corral the larger ones to get them out and either moved or just looked over for stuff you cant see in the water.

Mine is a reef ready AGA 210g, same size as yours measures. with the filter system and close to a quarter mile of plumbing Id say total volume is around 225-230 gallons.
The one infront of the right side overflow is a true solid 7" male wild blue(thats the F2) my apricots are much smaller those are the noobs in the tank, they are around 3-3.5" We got them at about 2" a few months ago. If you order yours online consult me first Ive already done enough trial and error with these breeders that I have a select few that will ever get a dime out of me again.


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## Rod4Rodger (Jan 2, 2012)

I have a great local supplier but I have ordered some from time to time. Who do you use and why? I rarely ever buy anything bigger than about 2 or 3” and raise them myself. I have an isolation tank on ready standby and do 100% change outs with water I am cycling out of my main tank on it weekly when it is in use. I usually hit new fish with Formalin for 24 hours, flush the tank with a near 100% change, then keep them on antibiotics, Amoxicillin, for two weeks. I once lost a bunch because of one that I mail ordered that looked healthy for a few days so I took a chance and tossed him in with the others’ huge mistake. Hundreds of dollars later and with a lot of help from Dr. Flannigan at the Houston Zoo I managed to save most of them but they were never as healthy or pretty again. Yea, the head veterinarian at the Houston Zoo is a Discus keeper.
My tank is drilled and sumped too. I have an older 110 on the other side of the wall that is my sump. I ran a 3” PVC drain line out and brought back a 1” PVC return line. I built my own filter system not to save cost but because I wanted something better than I can buy. There is nothing in my tank but the bottom re-fill tube and the overflows. The 110 has the heaters, two stacks of combination trickle down and submerged bio filters, fine particulate bag pre and final filters, an old power head for movement and bubbles in the sump, and a return through a fine particulate bag I can use as a vacuum cleaner with a 1” line from the main tank if I want to clean up mess and am past my 100 gallon change out volume. I just take the bag off when I am finished and wash it out for next time. I use a hanging downblast fan to force air circulation in the sump, but mainly to force evaporative cooling because it is hot in Houston, Texas and I don’t want to cook them and can’t afford to keep my Man Cave cold enough (below 70) to not need it. It is probably overkill but I have 108 watts of spiral UV filters on the return to the tank. I have an old Fluval FX5 full of Purigen that I have set up for ready backup and it cycles on for a few minutes every few hours just to polish the water and keep the bacteria alive in case I need to put it into full time service. The whole thing is controlled by a Programmable Logic Controller and even maintains temperature to within .2 degrees. (I am an automation engineer.) 
I think somebody read them the story about the “fish ball” because I would swear they are pissed I haven’t equipped them yet, or maybe they already forgot they just ate and are telling me they are hungry.


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## WhiteGloveAquatics (Sep 3, 2009)

Ill start at the tank itself and work back and around to the beginning.

210 aga reef ready, 35w UV sterilizer run via mag drive 9.5 pump(wiper equipped unit) that is on its own circuit independant of the tank itself. 4x300w ebo jagers, aquapro 400 wet/dry(sealife systems) fed to a little giant 2700gph pump.
lights are sun systems tek light 8x80w t5HO, 5# pressurized Co2 system from aquariumplants.com, susbtrate is the 3-5mm grain size river gravel and a 300gpd RO unit.
water changes are ever third day @50% or 110 gallons.

My stunning discus came from hawaii discus. the wild blue was from an outfit in ohio that went under, have a couple from discus madness left but the latest batch of apricots came from RFI, First order from RFI(yes they are a mear few 100 miles away) were all dead on arrival, 2nd batch wasnt much better, It took over 800 bucks and 4 shipments to get them to fulfill my order then there was a no refund credit only issue where I picked out some plants, well the plants were out of stock so he literally gave me the bottom of his tubs in a back, smelled like my turtle tank when I opened it but yeah hawaii discus is my spot now.

Oh its all controlled via reefkeeper lite.


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