WTB: Red Melon Juvies

[jho51e]

How much would they be sold for? so i know how much to save.. :-)

[samir]

were you looking for ?

[jho51e]

just 1 or 2... i have a modest budget so thought juvies would be within my budget... i am just starting out and i just love the colour of red melons... :-)

[samir]

discus tend to do best in groups of 6 upwards. you should be looking at a bare minimum of 4.

[jho51e]

oh i see, i currently have 2 so i guess i will need to get 4 more...

i would like to get red melon/mandarin passion/red golden diamond/oriental dreams/rose red...

so i thought to get them one at a time and now all i need is to start saving! :-)

[goldenpigeon]

ATM you would probably want to steer away from the oriental dreams and the red gold diamonds. basically from a monetary perspective. RGD arent cheap and OD's arent either. if you had to choose between the 2 go for OD lol ;)


what sort of experience do you have with discus? please correct me if im wrong but i understand you are just starting out with them? if so i would advise you to go for the red melons and rose reds and mardarin passions. they are much cheaper and with red melons you can tell the sex of them from an early age. other good strains to start out with are turquoise, blue diamond, cobalt and pigeon blood discus.

HTH

[jho51e]

Hi goldenpigeon,

Yes I am an novice at keeping discus and reading through all the advice on keeping discus...
have 2 small ones at the moment (i think fr help of the forum 1 is a red turq and the other looks like a blue diamond cross)...

anthrax mentioned that they are better if in groups of 4/6 so thought to get some companions for them...

really love the bold colours of the strains i mentioned... so thought to get some of those... rather than all of the same...

and yes only on a modest budget so thanks so much for letting me know which ones are better for me to get first... I have no idea of which ones are the expensive ones... :-)

i will keep my eye open for any red melons or rose reds or madarin passions that may come up for sale, here and at LFS...

might need to print off colour pics of them so i have something to compare when visiting LFS, hehehehe...

[goldenpigeon]

hey,
no problem ;) happy to help. have you visited SLS? they have great discus and they are very healthy too. when you buy a discus make sure you choose by health above all things. the moment you buy the pritty little discus that was struggling in the LFS tank you are going to have problems! and they can be very expensive problems too!

spend the money on buying some quality discus and you will be very rewarded and dont have to go through lots of heart break!

[jho51e]

what are quick tell tale signs of a discus not well?

Coz sometimes there are tons in 1 tank and hard to find one that is a keeper...

I have visited SLS once before but at the wrong time, they are about to close... hehehehehe... so I think a trip there is warranted.. :-)

[samir]

avoid any that are dark and hiding, check for damage to fins etc, there will be a few runts eliminate those then pick half or the large, and half of the medium size ones, the largest will probably be males and the slightly smaller probably females. they should also be around the same size as the fish you already have. healthy fish will have a convex head, open fins, will come to you screaming for food etc. make sure you water quality is as good as it possibly can be because if you end up with one or two of them getting smashed by the tank bully('s) + bad water (high NH3 or NO) = greater chance of sick fish. I suggest you keep at least 6 fish but not more than your tank can handle. Do not indiscriminately add fish to you tank just because you feel the tank looks empty. SLS has very nice healthy fish, they are a bit on the expensive side but rarely will you ever see a sick fish so I would probably buy from them as opposed to cheaper stuff elsewhere. Dont bother with the colours for now if you can grow a batch to adulthood with little or no losses then invest in something more expensive. No matter what the colour you will still get very attached to them :D

[jho51e]

thanks for those tips anthrax!!!

i will keep everyone's advice in mind when getting new discus...