Heckels

[samir]

its been two days now and they are eating frozen bloodworm and a little bit of beefheart mix. Hopefully within the week they should start eating normally. they are now coming up to the front and begging for food, but still wont let me touch them :x :x :x notice how skinny they are in the last picture.

[samir]

skinny ???

[scott bowler]

they look good mate good they are eating nice good work mate .

[fish_r]

nice looking heckles Samir, keep us updated with pics when u fatten them up and they settle properly

[samir]

thanks guys, will keep posting updates (if they live). wouldn't recommend getting them at this size and condition, to anyone. Quality is not too hot either. Hopefully they'll grown out fine.
can anyone shed some light on how dominant the vertical stripes are ?? say X blue diamond or X rsg .

[ILLUSN]

you will sell me very good looking heckels! (doing jedi hand movements at samirs avatar)

great looking fish mate! love the body color att the way to the tail!

[samir]

love the body color att the way to the tail!

didn't want the stripes, would have preferred something like fish_r's heckels, its only the bar that I need.

[Dee]

Hi Samir,

Cool heckles mate, best of luck with conditioning them back to good health ... if they are starting to eat I think you should be fine with them.

In regards to breeding them with other strains, from all accounts of what I have read in the past ... the heckle bar tends to fade/disapate with each generation ... again that's only what I have read in the past. I'm also led to believe that breeding heckle to heckle is hard and is best to keep them at a low PH with super soft water if that's your intention with them.

I'm sure you would get some pretty nice spawns if you cross breed them, I guess it would just come down to how many fry in each spawn would carry a nice strong heckle bar. Good luck and keep us posted on how they condition up !

Cheers,

Dee.

[the german]

the stripes are very dominant,when you bred intermediate heckels with say RT's you will still have the bar :? i think schmidt-focke tryed to breed them out.... without succses,the colours the F3 F4 show are stunning but this big black bar in the middle was a bit odd.IMO heckel schouldnt be mixed with other colour strains,but thats just my opinion.

[the german]

nice fish by the way :D

[samir]

sorry guys :oops: i meant the horizontal stripes :oops: :oops: :oops:

[the german]

nice avatar :D and this one is a real pic i guess :wink:

i saw greenxheckel and royal bluexheckel but on both the fine stripes sem to disapear.
i guess it is a question of selecting,means have the space to grow lots of fish to a good age.... like alexander pirowski does.

[jbickel]

Hi samir was wandering where did you get the heckels from.

[Gajowa]

Hi samir
Nice looking fish, but you have to fatten them up. They are skinny.

The Heckels prefer the vegetable diet, therefore give them a lot of spirulina flake food and frozen spinach as well as foods with garlic. Control their poos under microscope. We found such worms in our fish. Good luck with them

Barbara

[samir]

Hi samir was wandering where did you get the heckels from.
you can order them from Xtreme, they can get some in for you. Thanks for the info Barbara / The German.

[samir]

they have slightly more colour and are absolutely demolishing my beefheart mix and yes they let me touch them now :lol: :lol:

[scott bowler]

looking good mate good work

[Ben]

A big pat on the back mate! you have done an excellent job!

[fish_r]

u definitely have the touch Samir, well done :)

[Erk]

Simply amazing! I hope everything continues to go well for you with them! They look great! When you say they let you "touch" them....exactly what are you doing to them?? hahaha...that sounded odd :lol: Im gonna see what mine do this weekend during feeding and my water change

I have had mine since the end of march...dunno how old they were when I got them, but they were prolly about 2.5-3" when I got them, and they are all much bigger now, but ive only had them for about 4 months now

Thanks, and again....very nice work, as usual :D

[Jeroen]

Very nice

[dwarfciclid]

nice fish.
are they from bay fish? if you want to sell some, tell me price please.

TAO

[samir]

yup they are from Bayfish. Xtreme could probably get you some if you asked. atm Bayfish have 10cm heckel williscwartzi .

[Squid]

I noticed a comment before about Heckels liking a diet rich in veges - too true. Hey - in their natural environment, the pH is too low for even mozzie wrigglers to live. Up in Townsville, I met a guy who used to import wild discus in Europe for over 20 years before he moved to Aus. He told me the same thing and what he suggested was to put some broccoli floretts in the tank. I gave it a shot being a sceptic. I attached a small broccoli peice to a lead plant weight. next day, only a stem left with the heckels. No cat fish in my tanks either. give it a go and see what happens. If nothing gets eaten, then just take it out and ignore all my further replies/advice - I think you'll be surprised though!

Squid

[samir]

I wouldn't be :lol: they have been eating my cichlid mix which has a lot of veggies in it.

[scuba123cliff]

Hi Squid you didnt say if the broccili was cooked or raw .
Cliff

[Squid]

raw or blanched (2-5secs in boling water just to soften it). They didn't seem to care either way.

[samir]

they are now 11.5 cm so they've grown 1.5cm in seven weeks and are pretty healthy now. Will be moving them out of the 2 footer tonight, to a 240litre, as they are starting to mark territories :shock: and things are heating up.
got three more 12cm coming tomorrow so they should all be the same size.will post pics soon.

[scott bowler]

sounds good mate good work hehe pics are a must too

[Merrilyn]

Wow Samir.

I'm impressed mate.

Where's the piccies :D

[samir]

they are now 11.5 cm so they've grown 1.5cm in seven weeks

:shock: 1.5cm in 27 days actually, wonder how I came up with 7 weeks :?

[Gajowa]

That is great they are growing so fast. Keep up a good work Samir

Barbara

[samir]

new ones came in today in pretty bad shape, black, fin rot etc . here's pics of the old batch and one of the new ones. pics are blurry as I have very low light.

[scott bowler]

hey mate we need better pics then that .hehe i think those fish are rubbish and you need to bring them over here on the weekend lol

[samir]

atm they don't look like they'll live till the weekend

[scott bowler]

your other ones look good mate we need a better pic hehe but im sorry to hear that mate

[samir]

bayfish got them a couple of days ago, so maybe one move too many. They look like they have discus plague.

[scott bowler]

well do your best mate .how many did you end up getting?
hope it works out for you

[samir]

got 3 more so now I have 7. they should be all good by next week.

[scott bowler]

ok cool you are getting a good colection now mate . you are goingto set up a display tank for them hehe ( yeah right ) lol

[Merrilyn]

Good luck with them Samir.

Unfortunately that's what most wild caught fish look like when they first arrive in Aus.

If you can get them to eat, they're over the first battle, then it's a matter of lots of good food, water changes and worming to get them back into shape.

[samir]

two are already eating, one is not, i will post pics next week hopefully they should be better by then.

maybe a bare 6X2X2 with a piece of driftwood Scotty. with the amount i overfeed, display tanks are a bad idea.

[fish_r]

the old ones are looking great Samir, well donehttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v402/KharmaKazi/thumb.gif
and the new one looks pretty much the same as one of mine, be good to see some pics when uv'e got it healthy again...

[samir]

here's pics of new and old, the new ones have a duller colour. all fish are eating everything and yes the water is filthy, I'll be changing it tonight :P

[samir]

more. they are just like any other discus , greedy pigs ...

[scott bowler]

good work mate they are starting to look better . good stuff .keep the pics comeing mate .

[Merrilyn]

They're looking better already Samir.


Errrrrrrr are you saying that you put your new discus in with the old discus without putting them in quarantine first ????

:banghead

[samir]

I'm out of space :ug

[Merrilyn]

I'm going to start a new thread for you Barbara. I think everyone should see those photos, so they know what to expect from newly captured wild fish.

:P

[samir]

this will be their new home till i rustle up a 6X2X2. they are happily swiiming about and getting hand fed. pretty tame

[Merrilyn]

Looking good samir.

The new fish have improved a lot.

Great to see them all eating so happily.

[scott bowler]

they look good in there mate good to see

[samir]

the turf wars have begun :x
its like someone has cloned my albino, seven times :shock: Well at least they have settled down well enough to start beating the cr@p out of each other :roll:
Is that a good sign breeding wise ?

[samir]

there's one always staring at the filter pipe, tilted upwards. Cant be too sure. Looks female. Ph is now in the mid 5's , moving them to a bigger tank next week. no problems so far.

[Merrilyn]

More photos samir.

How fabulous it would be if they decide to spawn for you. :P

[samir]

only one seems interested, nobody's joining in.definitely spawning behaviour.

I'll put up pics when I move them to a slightly larger tank. Thissetup is very dark, one can hardly see the fish with the naked eye, my camera just comes up black.

I've pieced together some idea's from comments by Bleher and the Spanish post. will try that in the new tank. the 3X2 is a bit small so I'm moving them to a 4x2. They have become very territorial and aggressive.

[samir]

bit of a fin rot problem with one :x the rest don't have the slightest spot on them. strange.

[samir]

three months on they are much bigger than before, still have finrot problem with one, that wont go away.

after a water change they all stare at the driftwood, there is a bit of bowing. I'm cautiously optimistic about them spawning soon.

[Merrilyn]

They're looking stunning samir.

More pics please :P

Do you find that sometimes the dark heckel bar almost vanishes and at other times it is very strong?

Mine seem to be able to turn it on and off at will.

[Tommo]

They Look Sensational samir I Hope You Have Some Luck :D

Cheers Tommo

[samir]

Thanks Tommo.

Merrilyn, they do seem to have an on/off switch somewhere, unfortunately this is one of the rare times that they are showing their bars. Most of the time all I see is an outline where the bar should be. Dunno if thats good or bad.

[ILLUSN]

Mate they look awesome!!!!! they've come a long way from the skinny fish you started with.

[samir]

Mate they look awesome!!!!! they've come a long way from the skinny fish you started with.

all the beefheart they missed out on in the Amazon. :lol: :lol: does look like a big change from the pics.

[samir]

more pics, they just had a bout of mild "discus plague" so thats knocked back my breeding attempts a bit. So far its been very frustrating.

[Merrilyn]

Still magnificent looking fish Samir.

Bet you don't want to know about a female heckel that has laid eggs (twice now) with a RSG in a community tank :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yep, absolutely true. Now to get her to pair off with a male heckel and then I'll have some photos to send you 8-)

[samir]

Bet you don't want to know about a female heckel that has laid eggs (twice now) with a RSG in a community tank :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


Its you so I'm not that surprised, on the other hand if Rytis had said that I might have fallen off my chair in shock. The males seem very keen to breed so I guess you're almost there. grrrrr LOL good luck :thumb

I'm witnessing the strangest breeding behavior I have ever seen, I'm thoroughly confused and totally lost.

Pairs, trios, quartets and quintets, you name it, I've had it.

[fishgeek]

i really like the look of the wild fish here
knowing as little as i do about discus is it stupid to begin keeping them with wild fish?
are they differentiated by the more obvious vertical barring ?

i am happy with keeping water of a soft acidic nature but the regular feeding may be new to me, i feed quite sporadically, will discus and there suppossed small/short gut cpe with this?

i just dont want to start with an easy fish and have it do well, then have something i didnt want

what would be the best size tank for a group of adults.. 5-6 fish?

[Merrilyn]

Wild caught fish are stunning, aren't they Andrew.

With your experience, you'd have no problems at all. Wilds are no harder to keep than domestic strains of discus. The main thing to look for is buying healthy fish.

A lot of the wild caughts are in such poor condition by the time they arrive in the shop tanks, that they refuse to eat. Once that happens, there's not much you can do, and they starve themselves.

Before you commit to buying a fish, ask the shopkeeper to feed them. A healthy discus should always be ready to eat.

Speaking of eating, how often can you manage to feed your fish? Once or twice a day is fine. They will cope quite well with missing a day or two at a time, so long as you feed well on the other days.

The larger the tank, the better. Ideally 100 litres per fish, but even 60 litres per fish would do if you have excellent filtration and can manage water changes twice a week.

[ILLUSN]

Stunning fish Samir, you would'nt know they just pulled through plague.

Mez, can i pre order some F1 heckels now please :D

[samir]

Stunning fish Samir, you would'nt know they just pulled through plague.


nothing lives long at that a ph of 3.8 mate :shock: they had the mildest case of plague ever recorded. :lol:

Andrew you might be able to source some nice wilds through one of the discus tragics at DPH.

[fishgeek]

600 litres of water ..
i guess i need that 6 ft tank, at present i am in a 2 bed flat 4th story.. 6ft doesnt go round the stairs! i already tried

your fish look fabulous
i would really like the opportunity to try them , at present i think it is just planning an dlearning till i move and have the space, or at least less stairs

andrew

[ozarowana]

They're looking great mate. Keep up the good work :D

[BCORBIN]

600 litres of water ..
i guess i need that 6 ft tank, at present i am in a 2 bed flat 4th story.. 6ft doesnt go round the stairs! i already tried


It will if you stand it end on end, Andrew. Get yourself a dolly, some moving blankets so as not to scratch anything, and tie the tank to the dolly to keep it from falling off. More important, trick a friend into helping you. :)

[TW]

Any new pictures to share with us. I'd love to see them again.

[samir]

they are pretty much the same except that they have a ring, I'm down to four, lost two to the spinning around in circles phenomenon, thankfully that has been sorted out.
Unfortunately I lost the female that laid eggs. Other than that they are very tough fish.

[TW]

they are pretty much the same except that they have a ringSorry, dumb question. What does that mean? Do you mean that the dark band that sometimes outlines the body just where the fins join the body & is that new for them. Mine don't have that dark band, but is it something that comes as they mature?

[samir]

yes its the band around the fins, it came when they got older. They are now around 15cm or so.

[scott bowler]

they look awesome mate so healthy now

[Gajowa]

I'm down to four, lost two to the spinning around in circles phenomenon, thankfully that has been sorted out.
Unfortunately I lost the female that laid eggs. Other than that they are very tough fish.

Hi
This is the crazy speeding what I called it. Not much that can be done about that, except lovering the pH, temperature and turning of the lights.
Sorry to hear that Samir, specialy with the female. I have been reading on many forums, that for heckels it takes about 18 m-ths to climatise in to an aquarium conditions.
How did that female spawn, what were the water conditions etc? I am asking, because according to Heiko Bleher heckels have to be around 2,5 yo and fully mature before they are ready for breading. Did you take some photos of that female laing eggs? Heiko is collecting all the info about heckels spawning in captivity.

Barbara

[TW]

yes its the band around the fins, it came when they got older. They are now around 15cm or so. Thanks for that info Samir. I really like that band, so I'll live in hope mine develop it too with maturity. Your pic with them a few posts above does show the band & they are looking really beautiful. Mine are still small & no sign of it. Not good at estimating discus length (darn things won't hold still for measurement lol) but guess my biggest is no more than 6-7cm. If you've been to Xtreme lately, you'll know the size of mine.
heckels it takes about 18 m-ths to climatise in to an aquarium conditions That's interesting Barbara. Is this only for their initial move from the wild into their 1st tank in captivity, or is it also when moving from one tank to another tank? Mine will move to another tank after they have grown up (they are in QT right now).

[samir]

TW, two batches came in @ 6cm and 8cm so yours would be one of those.

Barbara, I don't have a pic with eggs, I took a couple with wrigglers, If I can find them I'll post them here for a bit.
I don't agree with Heiko on the breeding age because my fish couldn't have been more than 14 months old,and most definitely not more than 18 months. I have read his posts and have found a lot of very useful information.
My fish were eating out of my hands from day one and have been doing so ever since. I moved them around about 10 times in a week of salt dips and they were eating almost instantly in each tank I put them, so I'm not sure about the 18 month acclimatisation either. btw no more spinning since the salt dips.
Frankly I'm a bit bored with them , now I like the one in Merrilyn's avtar. :roll:

[TW]

TW, two batches came in @ 6cm and 8cm so yours would be one of those.
Mine are from this batch. http://www.discusforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15903&start=0 Xtreme got them in store around 13 March 08. So around 6-7cm. They still had 2 left last weekend.

How long have you had yours?

One of mine is starting to look a little dark - I don't know whether or not to worry.


now I like the one in Merrilyn's avatar Who wouldn't like that one. Simply beautiful. I wish I knew how to get hold of wilds like that.

[samir]

now I like the one in Merrilyn's avatar Who wouldn't like that one. Simply beautiful. I wish I knew how to get hold of wilds like that.

I think its more about how she keeps them. I could give them to Rytis and they'd look like rare black discus within a week :lol:

I've had mine for around 9 months or so, can't remember when I got them.

[TW]

I think its more about how she keeps them. Yes, that would definitely be too true. But still, if only I could find them, I could try, couldn't I?

I do still love my domestic discus, but don't think I'll buy any more. Any more tank space will be saved for wilds - if I ever find them :cry:

[TW]

How are your heckels doing samir? How do they look now? Any more recent pictures to share?

[samir]

they are mixed up with all my fish in one tank, otherwise they are all doing well. I'll put up pics once i get rid of some of my domestics.

[TW]

Thanks, I'm really looking forward to seeing them