Breeder of Discus, Rams, and Flowerhorns

[Bilbo]

Hello all. For a few years now i have been hearing about this group of people in our area interested in fish. For many years now i thought i was one of the only fish geeks in North West Arkansas. I guess i was badly mistaken. It's a pleasant surprise actually. Since im new here i will tell you a little about myself.
My name is Rashidi Jones. I am 36 years old and i have lived in the Rogers, Arkansas area for about 15 years now. I came from south east MO. and i moved here when i met my wife Michelle. I have been keeping and breeding animals and fish litterally all my life. I have kept and housed and bred, various types of dogs (mostly German Shepards, and Beagles), cats, racoons, and an owl, parrokeets, love birds, canaries, finches, hamsters, guinea pigs, batams, pheasants, large chickens, turkeys, peafowl and more. My fish i have kept are to many to list. The fish i have actively and readily bred are Rams (long and short fin of gold and blue as well as some wilds), Kribs, Africans, discus, angels, guppies, flowerhorns and many others. My 3 favorite fish still remains the mighty discus, ram and flowerhorn. I love color. I suppose thats why i ended up keeping the 3 most diverse colored/colorful fresh water fish in the hobby. Discus are calm and peace loving and colorful. Rams are like a little dog on a chain begging to get off to get at the bigger dog but really doesnt want to, and colorful. Flowerhorns are the big dog on the chain that wants to get off to kill the big or little dog, and colorful. I love them all. Rams are my favorite with discus right behind and flowerhorns a little behind that.
12 years ago i became the main breeder of Microgeophagus Ramirezi for James Tucker at Exotic Tropicals (now Noah's Ark). I had been hearing about a mighty little dwarf cichlid that was bursting with color and attitude. I finally got my chance to see one in real life at Exotic Tropicals. It wasn't much to look at as it was of medium quality but i saw its potential. I bought a few and took them home. My first ram spawn was by these first little guys and they spawned in my 37 gallon cubed planted tank. The male ended up raising the fry as i had transported the female to another tank do to the rumors i had heard of female rams eating spawns. I was a begginer of rams at that point so i did not know any better. The rams grew and turned into carbon copies of their parents. I was hooked. I decided to start a project to increase the quality of my rams so i took it upon myself to look for better stock. I found a person that had been to South and Central America as a collector who had aquired several wild species of dwarfs (was not Jeff Rapps). I ended up buying a few wild rams he had collected which i then crossed into my strain. The result was fascinating as the F1s had such amazing hybrid vigor. The vigor carried on for a few more generations but then began to slowly fade. The wild genes that were crossed in created a more robust fish with a thicker body and more red than i already had in my strain. I decided then that i wanted to try for more blue and a higher dorsal fin so i brought in some Florida German blues that i had located. They were very beautiful rams and had excellent color but they lacked the sheer zeal that my fish had. When i crossed them into my strain i finally hit the jack pot. I got several rams that were robust, thick, colorful with high dorsal spikes. But the main thing that happened was i got a good shape out of them. I finally had rams now shaped like a torpedo with a very round and uniform head structure. Up until this point most of my rams had an arrow head shape. After breeding german blues into my strain the head shape changed dramatically. To make a long story short i bred many more generations and sold many rams to James as well as people across the USA. Michelle and i ended up moving from Rogers to Bella Vista where i buit a small hatchery under the guidance of Gary Maybury. Who, by the way in part, has mentored me off and on for several years. Later on we ended up moving in a small apartment in Bentonville where i then continued to breed my ram line. We lived in Bentonville for another 3 years until we bought us a home in Garfield, Arkansas. I was excited as we finally had our own well and i had big plans to build another hatchery. Well before we moved in i had found out that the well waters of Garfield, Arkansas were loaded with Sulphur. I was not worried at the time since i had heard sulphur could be bubbled out of the water. I immediately started bubbling and cycling my tanks accordingly but ultimately to no avail. The day we moved in my tanks had already been up and running. I put my rams and flowerhorns in the tanks and watched them slowly die over the next few days. I was shattered and hurt and did'nt know waht to do. My ammonia and nitrite was at 0 and there was no smell of sulphur to the water. I tried again and again but eventually gave up to to the inevitable death of any fish i put in my tanks. Five years went by until about 5 months ago when i decided to give it another try. I set my tanks back up and cycled the water accordingly. I was confident this time as the water was testing good. I ordered in an expensive batch of flowerhorns and put them in the tank. They died within 3 days. I was devasted. I told myself then that i would not try and keep fish again until i got our home a filtration system. As a few more months went by i realized that it was going to be a long time before we could afford the $3500 system i had priced that took out hardness as well as sulphur and possible chemicals. Uppon this realization i decided to set up some holding tanks to condition the water before adding it to my aquariums. I built some peat filters to take out the hardness and i used peroxide 30% to kill any unwanted organisms. When the peroxide was bubbled out and my tanks cycled, my confidence grew. After about a month of cycling my friend Gary Maybury at Ozark Angels gave me some tester angels to see how my water would do. They died within 30 min of me putting them into my tanks. At this point my confusion was running rampant. My hardness had dropped considerably, my ph had dropped to about 7, my temp was fine, my ammonia and nitrite was non existant. Everything was supposed to be fine! And then a thought ran through my head. What if there was a chemical or poison in my well that the fish were sensitive to? So i ordered 15 pounds of activated carbon from bulkreefsupply.com. I then filtered one of my tanks with carbon and left the other two untouched. BAM! the carbon filtered tank was the winner! The fish thrived and ate imediately while the fish in the other two tanks died within a half hour. Something was in our well water.
I have since then called private testing facilities and they told me they could test our water for anything we wanted for a $20 charge for each thing we wanted tested in our water. This is where im at right now. In the mean time i have began cycling my tanks and the fish i tested with this last time are still alive and doing great. I have set up two 150 gallon holding tanks to condition my water and i am proceeding with my discus and ram breeding. It will take me a while to get back where i was before, but with God's help i will get there. I have already located me a good source for electric blue rams and i already have a proven pair of Blue Scorpion Discus being shipped to me on Monday along with 20 dime sized Ring Leopard Discus i plan on growing out to breed ( I only want 3 pair.. selling the rest). Im very excited to be back in the hobby i love and i have spilled my guts to you fine people because i know that some of you share the same passion i do for the extrodinary hobby we are a part of. I look forward to meeting you guys and hope that we will develope some long term friendships!

[dennysfishroom]

Welcome to the Forum. Hope you find the fellow hobbyists you're looking for. We do meet the second Saturday of each month at the Rogers Police Department meeting room. The meeting room is open at 6:30pm with the program starting at 7pm. It's a good time, and we hope you can join us. Denny

[worldf]

That's one <someplace hot> of a water issue, wow, I'm glad to see that you were able to partially solve your problem. I think until you get your water tested I would drink bottled water . You should also be able to just put some in line carbon blocks to your storage containers and use a low flow rate for maximum contact time. Lowes and homedepot have them pretty cheap. I'm in Independence (by KC) MO and we have a lot of chloramines to deal with and the carbon block filters work well.

[Bilbo]

Actually i am going the extra mile and doing a 3 step process to assure the best water to breed discus and rams in. Just carbon wont get me the results i want. I do however drink lots of bottled water and i still plan on eventually getting a home system put in to make things easier all the way around!

[TerriM]

What we go through for our hobby! Welcome, this is a great forum with some wonderful, helpful people. I probably will never make it to one of the meetings though I so wish I could. I live in Springfield. I'm going to keep you in mind. I want some discus. I honestly don't have much of an interest in breeding them but just would like a tank with a couple in it. I don't have the tank space right now but plan to in the future. When I do I'll look you up and see if you have some extras to sell. Good luck with them.

I have done a lot of reading and I'm not sure I want to grow out the babies, they seem to require so many water changes (daily) that at this point in time I am just not able to do. I started to research the requirements of the older, already grown ones but the price ~~ well let's say it's a good thing I was sitting already. So I've pretty much given up on having discus at this point in time, that's for the future.

I'm with worldf on this one, hope you're drinking bottled water!

[Bilbo]

Thanks for the welcome! Let me just clarify this right now. DISCUS ARE NOT HARD TO KEEP! They are challenging to breed but NOT to keep!! They are EASY to keep if you follow the rules. The rules are 1 (yes only 1) water change a week (about 30%). The biological filter MUST be established and you have to maintain 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites. Thats it!! Thats all!! This is easy to achieve by simply have a good filter. This can be done in many ways. A sump is the best but a good wet dry or the humble sponge filter works good as well. A hanging power filter will work but its best to add another filter like a sponge (go ahead and hide it if you must) since a power filter has very little bacteria colonization capacity.

I want people in North West Arkansas to start keeping discus! I dont want people to be scared of them. I used to be scared of them too because of all the false information out there on them. Sure they do a little better in soft water but that doesnt mean they cant live and thrive in hard water. My first discus i spawned were a pair of F2 Royal Blues who i got from Jack Wattley. I lived at Turtle Creek Apartments there in Rogers and i spawned them in a tiny, TINY little bedroom in Rogers city tap water. To date that was the largest spawn i have ever had (about 500 babies on the sides of the parents). That was about 12 years ago!

The point is you should dive in if you admire and would like to keep discus. I will likely be selling 14 of the Ring Leopards i will be growing out starting Tuesday. They are coming in at a little under a dime size but i plan on raising them to about 3 inch size before i sell them. I will keep 6 myself so i can get at least 2 pairs. In the future i will likely be bringing in 2-3 inch discus on a regular basis. I have access to phenomenal discus from famous discus breeders in Asia. Im talking about stuff you just dont see in the fish shops over here. Please stay in touch!

[Bilbo]

I forgot to mention also... do you guys remember a Gentleman by the name of Larry Nutt? He lived around Castville, MO. He had alof of full sized discus back in those days and he couldn't breed them but wanted to. He asked me to take a pair of his Alenquers and breed them. He gave them to me for free with the promise to give him some of the fry. I ended up spawning them and having alot of babies which in turn Larry took half of, lol. Years passed since i had seen Larry. Later on i did a follow up and found out that he had died. Before he had passed on he had sold most (if not all) of his discus to that guy who used to own Cichlids and Salt. I think his name was John? Anyway, i just thought it would be neat to share that bit of history for anyone that may have known Larry!

[TerriM]

Now see, that's exactly some of the information I've been trying to get. I don't (at this time) have a particular interest in breeding them. I just think they're a beautiful fish and would like to have some. I currently have three aquariums running. ALL within the parameters you mentioned. I feel those are a must for any fish. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and weekly water changes. A good biological filtration method.

I have a planted 55 gallon, actually it's my work in progress, with African cichlids. A 29 gallon with Gold Ocellatus shell dwellers. And another 29 with Ornatipinnis shell dwellers and Tanzania Comps.

I promise to not totally inundate you with a gazillion questions. First and foremost question however, for future planning, is if I just want to KEEP a couple discus how big of a tank do I really need? That is also one of those conflicting information subjects. Thank you!!

[Jackielee]

Nice to have another Flowerhorn enthusiast in the boat. I am in KC and have been messing wit them and a lot of other fish for some time now. Welcome.h

[Bilbo]

Now see, that's exactly some of the information I've been trying to get. I don't (at this time) have a particular interest in breeding them. I just think they're a beautiful fish and would like to have some. I currently have three aquariums running. ALL within the parameters you mentioned. I feel those are a must for any fish. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and weekly water changes. A good biological filtration method.

I have a planted 55 gallon, actually it's my work in progress, with African cichlids. A 29 gallon with Gold Ocellatus shell dwellers. And another 29 with Ornatipinnis shell dwellers and Tanzania Comps.

I promise to not totally inundate you with a gazillion questions. First and foremost question however, for future planning, is if I just want to KEEP a couple discus how big of a tank do I really need? That is also one of those conflicting information subjects. Thank you!!

Im not about to sit here on my droid and finger type to you about what size tank a discus should be in and call it gospel. What you get into when a person trys to go that route is a bunch of varying opinions. I will just tell you what I have kept them in and what some of my other breeder friends have kept them in. No smaller than a 20 gallon tank per pair seemed plenty. So if your asking me how many gallons per fish I would tell you I wouldn't feel comfortable keeping discus together in no less than 10 gallons a fish. This also depends on the shape of the tank.

[TerriM]

Thank you, that is a tremendous help!

[Bilbo]

I have had these Blue Scorpions for about 2 weeks now. They spawned for me about 2 hours ago. It's a very large spawn which is a great sign that they can have gargantuate spawns in the future since this is a very young pair.

[Bilbo]

Well i have tried to post pictures but it keeps saying that the file is to big? Can someone tell me how to resize them so i can share them with you guys? I tried altering them on the phone itself but this site still wont take them.

[mewickham]

Bilbo, it looks like 256K file size is the maximum the forum will allow for attachments. So you need to make sure your file is smaller than that, if you want to attach it to a message. If it is already smaller, it's possible the board has reached its limit and will require me to adjust settings. So let me know if that is the case.

If you want to post larger files, click the Gallery link in the top navbar, create an album for yourself, and post the photos in there. The Gallery (and I don't mean the Gallery message section) allows much larger photos. But consider this: it is generally wise to upload photos no bigger than 100K or so because some people are still on dial-up connections where it can take an hour to download a 10 MB file.

There are also only certain file types acceptable for images. GIF, JPG, and PNG are typical, universally viewable examples. Raw files, such as NEF and CRF are not allowed because they are camera specific and not viewable by those without appropriate software.

I can't give specific instructions for adjusting file size on your phone. Perhaps you have to move the photo to a computer first, to do it. I don't know. But if you're taking 10-megapixel photos, you might first have to "resample" them to smaller dimensions and then save as .JPG to compress them before uploading almost anywhere. Good Web photos are usually 640x480 pixels or smaller. The photos on our home page, for example, are 480 pixels wide.

[fishbit]

I had the same problem with sulphur water years ago.I used ion exchange resins to get water down to 80 micromhos to breed my Discus & Angels.Before the water was treated the fish would live in it but were stressed.