An introduction to the discus fish

Welcome to the website which mission is to help you keeping the discus fish. I think this colorful fish is deserved to be called King of our aquariums. Probably you are one of those people who can spend hours sitting in front of the aquarium and watching the discus fish living its calm life.

I hope You will find here everything you want to know about the discus. If you don't, please come back later to find more articles about this wonderful fish.

discus fish

The Discus fish (Symphysodon) belongs to cichlidae fish family and it is one of the most beautiful freshwater aquarium fish. Discus is calm and impressive fish which is very popular mostly between advanced fish keepers. Discuses are separated into three main species:

The common discus (Symphysodon aequifasciatus)
The Heckel discus (Symphysodon discus)
A new discus species which are called Symphysodon tarzoo

Also we can separate discus into wild and aquarium-bred. It doesn't mean that wild discus is only the one who is caught in wild. We also call wild discus if it is pure offspring of wild discus fish. This is one of the factors which helps to determine discus fish price.

The Discus fish habitat is Amazon River basin – calm blackwater rivers with very clean, unpolluted water. There it was founded on 1840 by Austrian Dr. Johann Natterer and latter described by Johann Jakob Heckel. First specimens were brought to Germany by airship in approximately 55 gallons (208 liters) drums. There were heavy losses. Only about 1930-1940 years dealers began to import the discus fish to Europe and United States. Nowadays they are found in several countries - Peru, Columbia, Venezuela, Brazil.

As it can be seen from the name the fish has disc-shaped body with dorsal and anal fins reaching to the tail. Because of the environmental diversity of Amazon River basin, there are huge variety of the discus fish which has color and markings differences. Of course aquarium fish breeders also have done their job making beautiful markings and colors of this wonderful fish. The most common are red, blue, green and pigeon discuses.

The discus doesn’t move a lot during its life, so it’s very calm fish which doesn’t like much of exploring. Usually discus moves only about a few yards from their home. That’s the reason why it adapted to live in captivity so easy.

It is not very easy to keep discuses but not as hard as many people think. Of course you should firstly have some experience keeping simple freshwater fishes as guppy (Poecilia reticulata), barbus (Cyprinidae family) or something like these. Also you can't just keep it in typical community aquarium because it needs a little better condition.

The Discus fish should be kept in the aquarium that holds at least 53 gallons (200 liters) of water. One discus should have about 13 gallons (50 liters) of water because the discus fish usually grows about 6-8 inches (15-20 centimeters). The high of aquarium should be at least 20 inches (50 centimeters) You should know that more water there is in your aquarium more easier to keep it’s condition stable and this factor is very important.

So if you think you are ready to start keeping the discus fish or you are already doing it and have some questions please read my articles which I hope will help you.

So far I have written these articles: