Judgement Day

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.