White Scorpion

Discus for SALE

2011-08-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

From time to time, I have discus that are put up for sale. If you are interested in purchasing my discus, you can email me at villa292@hotmail.com or you can contact me at my mobile number : 97826284. Best is if you could leave me an sms.

Currently, I have a few batches of my Reds, Blue Paradise and Red Calico discus. Also have a pair of Albino Blue diamond as of 27/08/2011.

A little red suprise!

2011-07-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

The first batch from the red pair , growing at a steady pace.

The red pair already on the second batch.

At one inch size, I noticed something other than reds in the batch. In fact ,Felix Low was the first to alert me when he saw the batch. He told me that there were some calico discus in the batch. I didn't think much of it hoping that the fries will just get redder as they grow.

As the fries were growing, it was evident that the Calico discus were there to be seen. This led me to figure out that the genetic make of the reds I had, had ghosts discus genes.

My primary goal of breeding full reds has indeed produced some interesting findings. The red offsprings looked good as the fins already started showing intense red even without much colour feeding.

At one and a half inch size, the full red juvenile showing good potential. Wonder how red they can get at 3 inches.

Yet, the little diversion of the calico discus was growing by the day. In fact, the red colouration was getting deeper as they grow. Further, it reminded me of the Singapore Flag. I really wish, one day to produce a discus just like the Singapore Flag with a tremendous amount of luck!.

My Red Calico Discus at 2 inch size.

Hope to update on them when they grow bigger. Do not have the space to house them all and have already been getting a few offers. Hope they can leave up to expectations.

The reds almost reaching 2 inch in size and the colour is getting intense.

The batch is now 3-4 inch in size. I have added a little red color enhancer (astaxanthine) to their food to see their potential. After 3 weeks of color feeding, the discus look great. Though most of them show strong coloring to 3 parts of their body, some pieces exhibit coloring up to forehead and gills. As for the calico's , I feel coloring them is not advisable as their body color turns a little pink thus not giving a good color contrast. 20/09/11

My first venture into Full Reds

2011-06-24T22:44:00.000-07:00

(The red likely colour enhanced with a different colour enhancer)

Red discus has always been a favourite of many hobbyist. Recently, the full reds have become a sight to behold. Also, they have been giving the LSS a run for their money in recent competitions, obviously led by my good friend Ricky Lim(Multiple Grandchampion/Malaysia). His reds are in a different league!

I too took a plunge into breeding reds, late last year. Two pcs were a gift from a friend while another was bought from a local breeder. The following are some pictures of them.

(Due to a different diet, you see the gradually change in the red tone)

The above pictures were taken when they were about 4 inches. When I took over the reds they were full red but because I don't really colour feed my discus, the redness ceased alot. Nevertheless, I was not worried as I knew the pedigree of the reds I had.

The female on the right of the picture was of a different linage which I chanced upon. Within weeks, I paired them up and soon they produced a batch. From the pictures, you can see that the red colour has changed yet again because tetra bits were included in their diet.

This pair just took off and are very caring parents. Hope to attain a good stock from this pair!

My spotted collection.

2011-05-13T22:16:00.000-07:00

Recently, accquired a LSS collection from my friend. They have good spottings till the gill plates, especially the males. A week after purchase saw a two pairs forming. Hope for the best!

Whitescorpion evolves

2011-05-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

From this to this in 6 months.

Some full coloured discus take a longer time to turn full colour. When young, they are often heavily patterened and as they mature, these patterns merge. They need proper care to speed up the process or lack of care may result in the patterns not merging. Sometimes it is good to avoid buying discus that show strong colouration at 2 inch size.

Albino Pattern

2010-06-05T04:17:00.000-07:00

The Unlikely Siblings all grown up

Would you believe that these beauties are actually the siblings of the Albino Blue series. They are a good representation of striated discus. I only kept 4 pcs of the patterned albinos. a shame considering how they turned out. There were also a few Albino snakeskins that were part of this batch. My friend bought all of them when they were about 3 inches. They too turned out well. In fact I suggested to my friend,Mr Lim, to take part in the National Discus Competition and it proved worthwhile as he bagged the 2nd & 3rd prizes in the Albino Pattern Class.

Back In Business

2010-05-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

From the earlier post you may have guessed why I have not blogged for a long time on Discus. what has happened to my collection? Frankly it has shrunk to a manageable size of 10 tanks. Beside concentrating on keeping songbirds, the current water source is becoming even more challenging then keeping discus itself. The chlorine and chloramine levels have increased. the trace elements are lesser. the PH has gone up to 7.8.

In the past, say 5 years back, I did not have to you use anti-chlorine to condition the water after water change. But now, the discus parish within 3 hours if I forget to add the water conditioner which I have guilt fully done on several occasions and lost quite a sizable number of young and adult discus. It really gives you an heartache when you see the floating bodies of dead discus. In the past, discus can grow to 2 inch size in 2 months but now takes 3 months. Everything else being constant, you have to put your finger on the 'New Water'. Although, it has become a little more tough keeping discus here, I am sure our fellow hobbyist all around the world would still envy our good fortunes.

Another of my disappointment was the breeding or non of it. My pairs were breeding occasionally but most of the time the eggs turned white or the pair ate the eggs up. Further, my F1 Blue Albinos were not breeding though they had reached breeding age. Slowly I started selling of my collection keeping the minimum number of adults to kick start my breeding once I solve the teething problems

After going back to basics, adding (MB)methylene Blue, I managed to get out two small batches of fries from two pairs. One being the white scorpion x blue pigeon and the other the F1 Blue Paradise. I had stopped using MB for more than 7 years as I opt to keep the breeding tanks clean. But now the MB has helped to prevent all eggs turning white. However, the hatching rate is poor as there is still a large number of eggs that turned white despite adding MB. It can only mean that the males are not up to the mark. I would need to look into the diet so as to improve the hatching percentage but on the other hand , a smaller batch is easier to care .

I hope to get some nice white butterflies from the whitescorpion x blue pigeon crossing. For the blue paradise, hope to see some goldens and off course nicer blue paradise.

Blue Paradise F1 xF1 crossing

Back to the good old days of keeping Songbirds.

2010-05-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

It has been along time since I made the last post. Recently have gone back to keeping songbirds, a hobby that I was heavily involved before my National Service days. My wife was the unfortunate person who unknowingly re-ignited by old passion. Though she regrets alittle for getting herself into this episode, she has truly been as supportive and understanding as ever to my crazy activities. "143"

After a frenzy of buying and trading a dozen songbirds for the last year, have settle down to two shamas and two mata puteh and a grey finch. Must also thank Dr Sun for getting me into shamas, a songbird that I always wanted to keep. Together we hope to master this songbird and be as successful in it as we have been in discus keeping. We regularly bring out the birds to 'Chai'. it is a true spectacle and we never always get astonished by the shama's wide variety of tunes and melodies. We also plan to take part in competitions and eventually breed them.

This is Gary

This is Rocky (under going a molt)

My Mata Puteh/white eyes

My Grey Finch

Judgement Day

2009-12-31T20:51:00.000-08:00

Aquarama 2009 was successfully held from the 28th to 31st May 2009 at Suntec Exhibition Hall. Fear of an H1N1 outbreak was a constant threat to the show being cancelled or postponed. I was fortunate to have been named as one of the judges to judge the Discus Competition.This was my second judging assignment, having judged the 10th National Discus Competition.
Together with Steward Dougall from the UK and Wayne Ng from Hong Kong, the preliminary judging started at around 9 am. The judges selected an average of 5-6 entries for the final rounds. Basically, Discus that had a good overall impression, zero or minor faults and those that met the requirements were chosen. Then, the grueling and thorough assessment of the finalists began. It almost took the judges a good 4 hours to complete the judging.
Many awesome discus were on show. The overall standard was equivalent to past years. This years Grand champion was from the Albino Solid Color. The proud owner was one of our member, Raymond Lee from Singapore. Raymond has been competing for many years and is a great supporter of DCS. He has a wonderful collection of stunning discus. His hard work has paid off, infact to my recollection, the first albino to be crowned a Grand Champion. The winning Discus stood out among the rest with its unique, even tone of yellow colouration. The other factor which tipped the scale to its favour was its showmanship.

I feel this is an important factor in selecting the winners. There were many beautiful discus on display but unfortunately some did not show and chose to hide in corners, especially at the moment of judging. The judges tried their best to coax the discus out but some did not budge. Believe me we tried all methods possible.We hammered the tanks to get them out of hiding.
I heard many visitors remarking , “ How can this discus win a prize, Kelong!” To that, as mentioned above, some of these discus simply never gave the judges a chance to fully observe them. I guess you have to train your discus in advance , in competition conditions. Housing them in mock competition set up is good and also getting the water conditioning right is essential. They have to be ready to perform 12 hours from benching in,at the time of judging and not on the 2nd or 3rd day. Worst is when poor water conditioning leads to them turning dark or falling sick. Always ask the organizer for the water parameters and what have they added into condition the water. Finally, the discus has to meet all the criteria in its class and have an above average score for each criteria to stand a chance to win. Good shape, good size, good red iris, good contrast and striking color, no defects and a healthy and active entry will stand a good chance of winning. If you discus only has size and lacks all other aspects, he will not have a good average score and thus lose to a smaller discus that has a better average score.

Albino Blue Series Version.1- Fated!

2009-03-02T18:20:00.000-08:00

The above are the latest pictures(03/06/09) of the F1's I kept. They are a year old and hope to breed them in the near future.

An off spring AB Ver.1

Do you believe in fate? I do. At the end of 2006, Kelvin of Rainbow Discus, was selling a batch of Albino Blue Diamonds(ABD). Being a close friend, he offered me a good bargain. The first piece that caught my eye was a unique albino blue snake(ABS) as it was the only piece to be out of the 30 over pcs of ABD. However, I did not choose that pcs as the rest were far superior in shape and form. Not sure how that ABS came to be in a batch of ABD!

Albino Blue snake Female

I bought a pair home to extend my breeding of albino discus. 3 months passed but no results from the pair. Sold it away and went back to Kelvin again to try my luck a second time. The albino blue snake was still there and Kelvin had already sold most of the ABD. Bought another pair from the remaining 10 pcs.

Same story after another 3 months, the pair was not willing to breed. A decent offer came and I sold them off. At about this time I managed to get hold of a male Albino Cobalt. My good friend, Mr Lim of Pasir Ris, reluctantly sold the male to me. I was back at Kelvin's farm and surprisingly he still had 3 ABD left of which was the ABS female. Finally, I took her home.
The loving pair

Got her to pair off with the Albino Cobalt and 2 weeks later, the 1st batch arrived. I felt elated. As usual with most albino breeding, the batch did not make it. However, I had gotten my hands on a ABS female that was willing to breed every week! 2nd batch was successful and I did not even need foster parents. This pair has not stopped breeding since. They know how to space themselves and will carry a successful batch after at least 2 unsuccessful batch.

The broods are not big but the range of off springs in the batch is quite interesting. They range from ABD, Albino cobalts. ABS, Golden Albinos, Albino Snakes, Albino turquoise and some I have no descriptions . I kept the more solid color off springs which turned out to be good prospects.

The first batch has already reached adult size and show exceptional body shape. Work is still under way for my "Albino Blue series Ver.1"

Blue Paradise and accidental crossing

2009-03-02T05:03:00.000-08:00

Latest photographs(03/06/09) of the blue paradise F1's which are an year old now. They have exceptional red eye rings which is not so consistent in Blue diamond strains.

The accidental Pair.

Here we go again, another fancy full name. Not that I pro fancy names but sometimes it helps to differentiate strains with some noticeable difference and makes your breeding projects a little more interesting.

It has been almost 20 years since I was seriously into Blue Diamonds, that was in fact at the beginning stages of the strain. The Blue Diamond strain has come along way and has reached perfection.

End of last year, I purchased a golden male from Ricky in JB, that had a lot of white on its body and outstanding red iris. I felt it would be a great piece to cross with my white scorpion. To test the capacity of the golden male, notoriously known for being poor breeders, I threw in a female ocean green that I purchased from Brandon which was also purchased to cross my white scorpions. Amazingly the pair immediately clicked and 2 weeks later raised a batch of 100 odd fries.

The batch threw 60% blue diamonds and 40% goldens. It surprised me as I thought that all the offspring would be 12 bar turquoise or patterned discus. I opted to raise the blue diamond fries which unlike normal blue diamonds, showed alot of golden sheen as they grow to 2 inch size. Another noticeable characteristic was the red iris which did not fade unlike normal blue diamonds. The 1st batch has already reached 4 inches and slowly they exhibit more blue than gold sheen. The blue coloration is not dark, a soothing ocean blue/green. Work is under progress and I feel more is expected in the F2's. Maybe a true Blue Paradise in the making exhibiting more than just blue coloration.

Blue paradise at the juvenile stages.

Blue paradise! Not Yet.

My Albino Discus Experience

2008-12-26T03:08:00.000-08:00

Albino Blue Snake & Albino Cobalt Pair

Albino Golden with fries

Albino Red Melon

Albino Red Melon Pair

Albino Turquoise Pair

Albino Snake female tending eggs.

Own breed albino Redwhite & Albino Redwhite snake

Albino Discus provides the next big thing in discus keeping. I got into keeping them in 2003. Started of with a pair of golden Albinos, unfortunately both turned out to be males. The picture on the right shows my male Golden Albino guarding a batch of eggs. It was extremely difficult to breed albinos. I first crossed the golden albino with a female redwhite. After a year, I successfully bred the redwhite albinos by inbreeding the F1's. This batch also gave me snow white albinos. The yield was not great, about 30% albinos and the rest were normal striped browns and redwhites. Soon , I also managed to produce white leopard albinos by crossing albinos with white leopards.

Collecting the 30% of albinos from the batch was tedious and I was soon running out of place, especially to house the intermediates. Started selling of the fries to cover my expenses, keeping a few selected redwhite albinos to breed. Unfortunately, luck was not on my side as I had 1 male from the ten I kept and it too was not breedable. Though being one of the first to breed Redwhite albinos here, I was unable to progress in the strain and soon opted to breed other types of albinos.

Bought a pair of albino snakes from Colin Heng which turned out to be a good pair that produced ten over successful batches for me. By now, I was able to breed albino to albino successfully and decided that that was the way to go so that I have no headaches with housing the intermediates. First, I used foster pairs (any brown based discus) to raise the fries. You need a few pairs for this so that you can raise the albino fries. Later, I discovered that reducing the tank water helped the albino pairs to self raise their spawn. However, this was not always successful and usually I would get a batch after about 3 spawning. Nonetheless, it was a far better option than using foster parents or using albino intermediates.

More challenges and surprises lay ahead!

White Beauties

2008-12-20T07:57:00.000-08:00

My Passion for Discus

2008-10-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

“White Scorpion”. What is that? Many may wonder. In the discus world, it is just one of the fanciful names that identifies a certain strain of discus developed
Or improved upon by a breeder or a hobbyist. Ever since taking on the King of aquarium fish in the late 80’s, I have always wanted to develop or improve on a
strain that I had dreamt of .Having acquired the skills to breed and compete in competitions; the next step would be to work on a strain

The pigeon stain was what I had set my mind on to achieve a pure white discus with solid red eyes. I was sure many other breeders had that in their minds too.
White Butterfly and White Dragon are some of the names given to the strains that were developed later. In the early 90’s, I started working on the strain crossing
the near white pigeons with blue diamonds and hoped to achieve full colored white discus. However, the offspring usually ended up carrying more blue to
black pigmentation and black specks which tarnished the appearance of the fish but the percentage of full colored white offspring increased. Among them, a
few offspring did turn out to be full colored and showed more white pigmentation .Through selective inbreeding, I managed to keep a small stock of the white
pigeons which showed fewer black specks. The eye color was only an orangey red. There were also a few good specimens that were being developed in
Thailand and Malaysia at that time. I wanted mine to be different from the rest.

In 1997, I managed to get my hands on a couple of Blue Scorpions, primarily a cross between a Snake Skin and Blue Diamond. In fact one of the specimens
bagged me the 1st place in the blue category in our 1st National Discus Competition. I crossed the Blue Scorpion and my white pigeon and infused the
Fourteen-bar characteristics to my stock. Surprisingly some of the offspring maintained their white pigmentation. I used the desired F1s to produce cleaner stock
which were full colored whites with snake skin markings on the head and had fourteen bars. They also had strong red eyes. Since this was a white version of
the Blue Scorpion, I named them White scorpion. That was how the name came about. Though further inbreeding, I managed to improve the strain and some
even came out bar less. These were then called Ivory White. This strain clinched third place in Aquarama 1999, third place in the 1st International Discus
Competition 2000, second place in the 4th National Discus Competition 2001 and second place in the 6th National Discus Competition 2003.

Though the strain was reaching its potential, it was still a pigeon strain and the black specks were still evident. The pigeon strain is such that when the fish falls sick or when it gets older, the black specks become more visible. My friendly advice to those who have purchased the pigeon strain is that you have to learnt to live with the black specks. Take it as an indicator that your discus is not feeling all that well and that age might be catching up if much black peppering develops quickly. However, on the bright side, nowadays the pigeon strain has been cleaned up a whole lot by selective breeding and people are selling discus that does not have 100% pigeon genes. Maybe a new name ought to be given to the new improved pigeons. In my case, on the 5th year into the white scorpion strain, many hobbyist and friends still remarked on this flaw. They looked at the few black specks on the fish rather than the overall improvement. Though it disheartened me, the white scorpion was beginning to win prizes at competitions.

In 2001, I participated in the Japan International Discus Competition. On my return, one of the competition discus fell sick and my whole discus collection suffered one of the worst disease outbreaks. I lost most of my stock. To be exact, 4 adults and 2 juveniles were left out of the hundreds. At about this time the snow-white strain appeared and my desire to pursue my strain slacked as a more complete white discus was available on the market. Competition wise, it was also difficult to break the dominance of the LSS and other red based discus. Soon I turned my focus on red based discus and started a collection of white leopard snakes and albinos. I had cleared all my white scorpions except for the 6th national prize winning male fish. I used this piece to cross with a rose red once, hoping to produce a red snakeskin but soon lost interest. In the early part of 2004, I was on the verge of parting with this piece to a buyer but the price wasn’t right. I decided to keep it for sentimental reasons. At the end of the year, I chanced upon a female white pigeon. The owner said that it had golden genes and there were hardly any black specks. I decided to do something which I should have done years ago-out cross the strain. I was too stubborn and ignorant about out crossing in the past as I wanted only my own line.
By inbreeding 3 generations, I found that the fish were becoming weaker, taking longer time to grow and mature. They were also reaching the end of the line as many barless snakes were appearing. By out crossing, the size, color and other key desired characteristics can be improved but correct match is of prime importance.
The promising results of my latest crossing have given me new energy to continue my work on this strain. The fry are very healthy and strong. Approximately 50% have 14 bars and 50% with 9 bars. I consider this generation to be the best so far. It give me special feeling as though I had brought the strain from the dead. I guess you need a bit of luck in everything you do.
There is no doubt that what I am doing cannot be compared to producing true strains like the snake skin, pigeon, snow whites or albinos but I feel that I am able to improve on an existing strain with my own trademarks. Where do I go from here? Firstly, I aim to line breed the strain till there is a higher if not total percentage of a white scorpion that are full colored white with snake skin markings on the gills and have solid red eyes. I could also do well with a white scorpion with 100% no pigeon characteristics. It will be the ultimate if I can achieve an albino white scorpion. This will of course will take a few years. Well, aren’t we married to discus and it’s a lifelong committment, isn’t it? Take heart heartlanders. You too can have a love affair with the discus like me-with the least of facilities, no big farms, just me and my discus in urban Singapore. Live

your dreams.