以下圖文內容輯錄自TetraClub第10期 出版日期1995年1月

A male "Pigeon Blood" Discus

     Their rise to "stardom" was nothing short of meteoric and German breeders were  for a long time, considered and authoritative experts in keeping and raising discus.  Names like Dr.E. Scmidt-Focke and Manfred Gobel are legendary throughout the world of fish keeping.

     It is sad to say however that in many places the art of Discus breeding has degenerated to a mere commercial activity and the "quality" of the fish produced has gone to the wall.  Over the last few years more and more countries have become involved in breeding Discus, and as so often happened in the past, it is the Asian breeders who have succeeded in coming to the forefront.  Nowadays the "King of the Amazon" is more likely to  hail from a South East Asian source with estimates running at something like hundreds of thousands of fish produced each year.  However it is only rarely that these fish get to Europe as the greatest demand comes from the East of their `tank of origin', namely Japan and the U.S.A.

     Whereas the European fishkeeper tens to favour the "classical hybrid" forms, the breeders in Asia have their own ideas about what represents an acceptable or desirable Discus.  Names like "High Blue, Red Spotted, Red Diamond, Metallic Cobalt, Tiger Stripes, H-Fin Body and Blue Diamond Turquoise are colour morphs that sound particularly interesting but rarely appear over here.

It's the Colour that counts

Effort to follow new ideas in terms of colour and form are not exactly new.  For instance, a very limited amount of information has reached us over the last few months about new colour creations from Asia, with such beguiling names as "Ghost Discus" or "Golden Rainbows", as well as one exhibited for the first time at a trade fair in Singapore under the name of "Pigeon Blood Discus".  These are completely new colours but, by the same token there are many other families of fish, for instance, Guppies, Platies and Swordtails, where hybrid colour variants have gained total  acceptance after a period of initial reluctance.  So Why not the Discus too? It seems that Asiatic breeders are especially adept at this art.

     So how do they set about raising their Discus and under what conditions and systems do they operate? Do the climatic conditions in these tropical zones represent a clear advantage over us Europeans?

     These question seemed like good grounds for going out "on location" to the centres of Discus raising in Penang, Bangkok and Hong Kong to shoot a film entitled "Discus Farms in South East Asia".  Our aim was to visit a number of well known and successful breeders to investigate their practices and techniques used in breeding the Discus.  We were accompanied on the trip by Klaus Gerstner, the reowned aquarist and cichild breeder who alas runs his own retail store in plauen.

Winson Chan's very clean, modern installation with its automatic water supply and discharge.  Each aquarium has a separate device for extracting particles of waste.  It is a very "dry" installation with all the outlets carefully controlled.

What is so different about Asia

     Not all the important areas where Discus are bred in Asia can be strictly described as "tropical", and this in itself demands that methods and practices must change to meet the difference in climate.  The temperature at night during the winter months in Hong Kong can drop as low as 10 C and at times, to 15 C in Bangkok. Penang and Singapore however have constant tropical heat even at night.  In Hong Kong the breeding facilities tend to be housed in enclosed buildings which allows the tanks to the heated.

     This is usually made up of a covered area in a sort of Industrial Estate arrangement, usually shared with a number of other commercial firms or manufacturing companies.  Such breeding facilities can often be found on the 14th. or even the  18th floor of such buildings, despite the massive weight of this number of tanks.  An example of this is the World Wide Fish Farm, one of the major Hong Kong operators, who have 500 aquaria on the eighteenth floor of a building.  They constantly have up too pairs of fish used for breeding with up to 400 pairs in reserve.    A relatively recent installation owned by Winson Chan has around 350 aquaria on the fourteenth floor.

     There are also a small number of breeders who raise their fish in their own apartments with perhaps 20 or 30 aquaria of differing sizes scattered around their living rooms.

     Hong Kong suffers from a dire shortage of space and the only remedy of space and the only remedy for this has been their policy of "build `em high".

     For brddeing Discus they use the local tapwater which is very soft with a hardness between 3 and 6 dH and a pH value of  7 to 7.5.  The most widely used food is ox-heart, mixed with mussel meat and brine shrimp.  Red colours are enhanced with shrimp eggs and blue and green with shrimp meat.  Ox heart and red mosquito larvae are used as specific applications to enhance the appearance of the fish.  Electrical heaters are used to ensure adequate winter temperatures and air conditioning system help keep the summer temperatures at tolerable levels.

Some noteworthy breeding results and fish prices

     Producing around 20,000 Discus per year, the results achieved by Winson Chan are already very impressive.

     Although Blue Discus have always been the most popular variation for the Discus fancier, there has been a recent tendency for the Red colour morphs to be increasingly in demand.  An informed source in Hong Kong revealed that a much sought after rarity has been a special hybrid, traded under the name of "imperial Blue".  The yellow eyed variant of this fish has fetched sums as high as 10,000 Hong Kong Dollars (approx £840.00,  $1,470.00 US) and those with red eyes for as much as 15,000 HKD (approx £1,250.00, $2,190.00 US).  Particularly fine specimens of "Alenquer" can sell for prices between 40,000 and 1000,000 HKD (£3,300.00 - £8,400.00 approx $5,775.00 - $14,700.00 US).  If these are the current expected prices then the level of effort and investment put into Discus farms in Asia is understandable.  And the Market? Well what is certain is that Europe is practically insignificant.  The main demand for the fish comes from Taiwan, Japan, the USA and the waking giant of the People's Republic of China which apparently is a market of huge proportions, not just for aquariums but pet keeping in general.  Only a small segment of the market is accounted for by Hong Kong.

     Healthy Breeding conditions often involve a sizeable and expensive commitment to water conditioning, sometimes acheived by efficient filtration and sometimes through the constant additions of fresh water. Usually 30 to 50 percent of the aquarium contents are changed daily.

A Wild caught specimen of S.aequifasciata haraldi

But in Bangkok...

     In Bangkok 100 precent of the water is changed every day. The main items on the menu here are black mosquito larvae. Tubifex and shrimp eggs.  Moina, a species of tropical water flea, is used together with shrimp eggs as the first dietary supplement for young fish.  For the most part Bangkok has hard alkaline water hardly suitable for breeding the Discus.  Only the district of Thonburi, West of the Menam Loop has tapwater suitable for such purposes, which is soft and with a pH in the neutral zone.  The water used here is not river water as in other areas but ground water.  Most breeders in Bangkok carry out their trade in covered areas to provide shade from the summer heat and some degree of protection against cool winter nights.  Generally speaking they are "small operators"  who produce something in the region of a mere 10,000 to 15,000 young fish per year.  For instance one farmer Mr. Somsak has 50 to 100 breeding pairs and another Mr. Kitti Phanaitthi has as many as 200.  Whilst the former specialises in producing Thai-Royals and Turquoise Discus as well as the new and very appealing orange-red morph, the Red King Discus, Mr Kitti has now succeeded after many years of hybridisation work, in producing a stable colour variant known as "Pigeons Blood".  It was this colour morph that was displayed for the first time at Aquarama in Singapore in 1991 where it received much admiration.

One of the numerous "living" room breeding set ups in Hong Kong

"Pigeons Blood" Discus in Bangkok

No Water Conditioning Required for Breeding

     Several thousand specimens of varying size inhabit the 300 or so aquaria in the Bangkok installation though not all the fish are bred there.  Many small breeders are used as "feeder stations" which means that the actual breeding of the fish takes place elsewhere and the process 'of rearing the fry to commercial size is done in the main centre.  Breeding pairs are selected from larger groups with the emphasis placed on the need for 'self selection' by the potential breeding partners.  To bring them to prime breeding condition the selected partners are then given a duet if the pupae of the black mosquito larvae.  The water used is normal mains water and no special conditioning is required.  As the water chemistry values only permit a limited degree of egg development, with up to 70 percent of eggs succumbing to fungal infections and being eaten by the parents, the batch of eggs is usually protected by a large meshed screen until the developing embryos show signs of "wriggling".  As a spawning substrate the well known clay cones or bricks are used.  In Hong Kong upturned flower ports of fired red clay are used.  The method of screening - protecting the eggs with a mesh whilst they develop is also practised by the breeders of Penang.

Penang Discus

     Penang, the 'Betel Nut Palm' Island in the Indian Ocean is another centre of Discus production. It is from here that the "Ghost Discus", an unstriped, blue-green colour morph, comes.  Although the fish is not unattractive, it is one of those forms where it may be said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Perhaps the most beautiful colour variant is Ronnie Chew's "Golden Rainbow".  As a small breeder and very mch a specialist, his output is limited to around 4000 Discus per year.  With only 60 aquaria and just 10 breeding pairs his aim is to produce Discus with special colouring not ish in great quantities.  His success with the "Golden Rainbow" is testament to his efforts.

     Being a tropical island, the climate Penang allows these fish to be kept and br5ed without the need for enclosed rooms.  This water used for breeding purposes comes straight from the tap at 25 to 26 C and daily water changes of up to 50% are the norm.

     The comparatively hard water has a pH of between 6.5 and 6.8 and is not always ideal for breeding.  Here too they also use the screening method to protect the eggs from the parents until they develop to the larval stage.  Individual numbers of offspring are smaller but the number of breeding  pairs kept, helps increase the overall yield.  As the young fry are separated from their parents after the fifth of sixth day of tree swimming, the pair the proceed to repeat the spawning activity, thus increasing productivity levels.

     The larger Discus are given a diet of ox-heart, beef and mussel meat and the young are fed on shrimp supplementary cocktail of ox-heart and brine shrimp of live brine shrimp on their own.  Even though these very attractive "Golden Rainbow" Discus still cost around 100 US Dollars (approx. £75.00).  As 5 to 7 cm (2.5 - 3") specimens they can still be classed as being well, worth the effort of almost four years intensive hybridisation work and though the rewards may not be enormous "recognition" rather than riches is the name of the game.

     To sum up, the status of Discus breeding in South East Asia is thriving.  In the course of our location shooting we saw a remarkably high number of good fish, both quantitavely and qualitatively.  As well as the new colour morphs described there were also some very fine, well known "normal" colours.  We are grateful to the numerous breeders that we met, both for their hospitality and their willingness to impart some very important information on their work in such an open and unreserved fashion.  One often has the impression that this kind of cooperative spirit is now a thing of the past amongst European breeders.