Wild discus from the Lago Grande do Curuai (Alenquer region)

[illumnae]

This has been a long long journey.

I have wanted to order wild discus from Hudson since more than 3 years ago. I have long admired the quality discus he collected, and it was always a dream to have some swimming in my tank. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, this dream wasn't realised.

Come September last year, with much support from my wife, I finally decided to bite the bullet and go ahead to fulfil this dream. This was when I started talking seriously with Hudson to bring in a batch of his discus. Initially, I was in talks with his Hong Kong distributors to ship them in via Hong Kong, since no importer I knew of dared to bring in high quality discus into Singapore ("no market" they say..."cannot sell!"). Michael Chu and Stephen Yu in Hong Kong were excellent to deal with, and I almost confirmed the shipment there and then.

However, as luck would have it, on the day that I was about to confirm the shipment, I had a chat with Jia Yong at JZX, whom I never discussed this with before. I mentioned that I was going to be bringing my discus in, and he decided that he wanted to explore the quality discus market in Singapore by bringing in Hudson fish to sell. Finally someone interested to be a pioneer in Singapore by bringing in discus at a quality level that far outshines anything we've ever seen before! Michael and Stephen were very understanding (shipping in direct would always cost more after all) and thus I introduced Jia Yong to Hudson, and our journey began!

What happened since then was nothing short of a drama serial. We had fish being unloaded at a refuel stop in a direct flight, the airline refusing to take the shipment at the last minute, even Court drama in Brazil! I never knew importing fish would be such a long drawn and stressful process... though I do think there was a huge dose of bad luck thrown in as well haha. But finally, the stars aligned...and my dream is finally fulfilled. I now have top quality wild discus in my living room tank!

I must thank Hudson especially for being a great supplier. He has gone absolutely out of the way to make this shipment happen, and went beyond what any ordinary exporter would do to ensure that the fish finally reached us - even going to the extent of waiting in the Brazil Courts for 5 hours to obtain an injunction against the shipping airline to ensure that our fish were loaded safely. If not for him, I may still be waiting for my fish at this moment!

Here are some snapshots of the end of the road of waiting for me, and the start of the road as a new owner of these discus.

I really must say that these discus are top quality, and I am extremely satisfied with the fish that Hudson sent to me. I think all new owners of Hudson's fish can agree with me (and post your photos too!)

Ok enough talk...here's the pictures of today:


After hours of waiting...the forwarder finally arrives with the fish on board!



Sending the boxes to the importer!


My box! Box #10


One of the importers unboxing for me


1 of the bags leaked during shipment and the fish was in 1 inch of water. It's being rebagged, and the rest are sitting safely in the box

[illumnae]

So, after almost 40 hours of flying and travel to Singapore (30+ hours flight, 5 hours to clear customs and deliver to JZX, 1+ hour to settle logistics etc, travel home and release them into the tank), you would expect the fish to be black and stressed and totally not picture worthy, right?

Well not really. The fish that had the bag leaked was understandably stressed at the start, but the rest of the fish took on excellent colouration already within literally seconds of entering my tank.


This picture was taken literally 30 seconds after these 2 fish were released into the tank. Note the red colouration already showing


Less than a minute into the tank



Poor thing had to endure long travel lying flat in just 1 inch of water. No wonder he's stressed (he's ok by now, I'll post pictures of him a few hours later)



Group huddle! A few minutes into the tank. Very touchingly, these guys are huddled around the stressed fish, trying to get him upright and comfortable again. They all gathered around him to support him in his time of distress!




Some shots of the royals


All in all, I'm more than satisfied. Imagine, if they look like this just a few minutes into the tank, how would they look in a week....or a month? I can't wait to see them develop further

[illumnae]

4 hours later, fish are still stressed. However, I just wanted to show that the initial "leaked bag" guy is now ok! The fish like to head over to the far corner (as you can see from the photos) when people walk near the tank, but they swim all over when people aren't around.


Here he is, swimming upright and no longer hugging a corner


Bottom right fish is the same stressed one. You can make out his "large center bar"


Group shot


Semi-Royal with stress bars showing (can't tell at the moment if it's the Semi Royal or the Semi Royal with Center bar)


Royal with stress bars showing


What you looking at huh?

[illumnae]

24 hours on, they still like to huddle in the corner, but every now and then will go around and explore the tank. Explorations are getting more and more frequent. Here's a video showing one such expedition. Beautiful fish in an ugly tank:



On a separate note, I haven't seen them eat yet, though they're still thick and nice. You can see in the video the other tankmates eating frozen bloodworms, but they ignored it.

[tiintinn]

Amazing fishes kudos to your efforts in bringing them to our shores!

[darter]

Saw the remaining discus when i went down to JZX to buy some cories at about 930pm. Stunning. Pity i cant have a tank right now to house them.

[stormhawk]

One or two of the discus is suffering from ammonia burns. I would isolate the stressed one illumnae, just in case.

The quality of the rest is amazing. I like the royal.

[Emokidz]

Very beautiful fish. Haha. Quite happy to have been able to see it all at amk that day first hand!

[illumnae]

One or two of the discus is suffering from ammonia burns. I would isolate the stressed one illumnae, just in case.

The quality of the rest is amazing. I like the royal.

Thanks for the heads up. The stressed one is now ok and swimming normally with the rest of the group. Starting to colour up a little too. Do you think the couple with ammonia burns would be fine, or do they need to be treated separately?

[stormhawk]

Better to be treated separately away from the rest. Bright lights might not be a good idea since they spent a fair bit of time in darkness. Too sudden and they might go berserk. I think you'll have to wean them to FBW. Maybe feed with live adult brine shrimp? So they associate red color with food.

Ammonia burns can heal with time but the fins may be a little shorter than they originally were. The fins should grow back soon enough. I worry more that they might pick up fin rot. The next time you get Hudson to ship them, you might want to ask him to put some activated carbon or zeolite in the fish bags, to absorb any ammonia in transit.

[the_oracle]

AWESOME............AWESOME.............
No better word to describe....
Let this shipment be the path to more quality good discus arriving to our country...........


Sanie.

[illumnae]

Here's a long overdue update. Pictures were taken some time back.

Royal #1 - This guy is undoubtedly the big boss of the tank. He's the first to investigate anything dropped into the tank (usually food) and is also the first to approach when I walk towards the tank and gesture at them.





Royal #2 - This is the sub-dominant royal. He was being bullied by Royal #1 and constantly stressed, so I ended up trading him away for a semi-royal from the same batch.





Spotted Semi Royal - If you look closely behind the first picture, he's swimming with another Semi Royal discus, but it looks like that Semi Royal is developing almost Royal standard striations. From the earlier pictures, neither of the 2 other Semi Royals showed this kind of potential...yet here it is developing into a full royal!






New Guy - This is the new semi-royal discus that I traded the stressed royal for. He's fully able to hold his own against Royal #1!







Finally, some group shots. The fish in focus in the 1st group shot picture is the Semi Royal I mentioned above that has almost Royal standard striations.

[Aquanoob]

Amazing colour with the gentle giants. It will be so fulfilling in looking at them after a hard day at work. I think I can have my eyes on them for hours. I saw the remaining discus last week at JZX and I can only hope for a bigger tank to keep them the next time.

[barmby]

giving my thumbs up to my friend illumnae

[sen_jie]

Mind blowing pictures!

look at how well the discus thrieve under your care!

Cheers mate!

[illumnae]

Thanks guys It's really a joy coming home to this tank (and my other one with Nhamunda blue heckels) every day after a tiring time at work

I've changed the sand from SUDO bottom sand (brown-tan in colour) to Gex pure sand (off-white with some red highlights) and it has made a difference to the colour of the fish. They're now less dark and less prone to showing their black bars in comparison with the darker SUDO sand.

I'll try and get some pictures up soon

[sen_jie]

Nice!

shall await the photos of the new gex sand which you are using (need reference to set up my 3ft tank)

[illumnae]

Will ask my wife to take pictures tonight I've got shaky hands, so most pictures are taken by her.

You're setting up a 3ft tank for discus too? Planted or biotope?

[sen_jie]

Hi bro, yea i am looking at either discus or some peruvian angels. Wanted to set up a very natural amazon setup. So it will be more of woodscape rather than planted (i do not have green fingers, so having a planted is a big nono)

anyway i got my tank already. Here it is
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...k-for-cichlids!
Please advise me if i need to take note on anything.

[stormhawk]

illumnae, just a side comment. The GEX Pure Sand seems to contain bits of coral in it. I was looking at the bag over at C328 with Navanod on Saturday and we noticed that it did have coral bits.