Snakeskin discus

Hi Guys,

In recent weeks there have been some comments and questions about snakeskin discus so I thought I would start a thread on this mutation that occurs in a number of strains. The snakeskin mutation causes the number of dark vertical bars, which are also know as stress bars, to increase from the normal 9 to 14 or more. At the same time the vertical blue lines become much finer. The original snakeskin varieties were rather dull but now they have been bred into the solid blue strains, the cobalts and blue diamonds, and also into red-spotted green discus and red turqouise discus leading to an array of different fine patterns. Some find these attractive, other don't, this is a matter of taste. I have got a small group of blue diamond snakeskins which are completely solid blue on their bodies but show the fine lines on their head and fins and I find them quite attractive. I have a young pair that has recently spawned for the first time and thought I would show you a pic before showing you more of other strains as well.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof Dirk

Those discus are beauties.
I love the facial patterns.
Congratulations on the spawning.

 

Hi Prof.
They are stunning.
Thanks for sharing.

 

Awesome looking fish those!!

Congrats on the spawn...

 

1st pic doesn't show for me?

Trying to get spawn out of my Tiger Snakeskins

 

Awesome look discus congrats on the spawn

 

Defiantely on the list of to get for December

 

Gilbert, I think so to. If I get my tank up and running in Dec / Jan I also might have to visit Prof...

 

These fishes have spawned once before and as with all young discus are still very stupid. They actually have to learn how to look after their eggs and a spawn by making one mistake after the next until they get it right. In this case they have made a flop of it, but I was actually expecting this as they were in a tank together with many other discus. I must now get them into a tank of their own.

These fishes were bred by a friend of mine you breeds them regularly so I can supply these to those of you who might be interested.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

very nice looking fish, wow, they'd make a great display topic i guess

 

As I explained at the beginning of this thread, snakeskin discus have been bred from a mutation of normal striped discus types. In Belgium, there is a company that import very high quality wild caught discus from the Amazon. It was very interesting that in amongst a group of red-spotted green discus from the river Japura, that Hustinx imported in 2005, there was one fish that had the snakeskin mutation. I downloaded these images from Hustinx and they illustrate very nicely what I mean about the additional number of vertical stress bars as well as the finer blue striping pattern. After this I want to show you what happens if you cross such fishes into other strains and which strains have been developed that possess the snakeskin mutation.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Right, so the first of these snakeskins were crossed into turquoise discus and after that into red turquoise discus. Turquoise discus were originally bred from Green and blue discus and red turqoise were bred by crossing turquoise discus with red brown base color discus. The pictures below show some of my red turquoise discus and then I have downloaded images from the web of red snake skins. These fishes are now sold sometimes as red snakeskins but also very often with hideous names, such as "Super Ring Eruptions". For those that are starting in the hobby this is completely bewildering and there are no books that really explain all this.

Next episode after this....

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Right, so the next episode was to try to improve red turquoise discus and the objective was to try to improve the red contrast of the red turquoise discus. IN order to try to achieve this, green discus which have red spots, so-called red spotted green discus were crossed with red turquoises and the resulting strains were calles leopard discus. I show some of these fishes below. Leopard discus were then crossed with snakeskins and this resulted in a strain called leopard snakeskins which have fine dots with a red background which are also very attractive, see image below. What must be remembered in that leopard snakeskin discus do not breed true in other words even if you have a pair of leopard snakeskin discus they will produce some leopard discus offspring. The third pic is off some fishes that come from the same litter.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Snakeskin defined

Hi Dirk,

Just to clarify...and maybe enrich this thread.

Managed to find SOME of my aquarium records
(Now if only I could find my fish photos, and some long-lost books!)

I too have had many Snakeskins , some mutt-ugly, others very attractive. ..and , yes, it's all very subjective when it comes to Discus and their strains, colours, and types.

My local and international Discus, import, keeping, breeding and raising experience leads me to believe that you actually MEANT to say Horizontal Blue lines, in your introduction to defining the Snakeskin mutation above.

Beyond the obvious tell-tale signs:
Finer opercular, facial vermiculation and spotting, as well as on pelvic fins are key cues to Snakeskin ID, when faced with a fish of unknown origin.

Do you agree?

As, really, very few Discus exhibit significant blue vertical striation. And those that do are a very, very small percentage of any given population. This would be true in the wild, as well. Domestic variants with vertical Blue striation are sought after as some form of Tiger, Zebra or whatever name a breeder /marketer accords it.

Thailand, then Singapore and moreso Malaysia, and Penang specifically seems to be the flurry of breeder activity and strain, as well as hybrid production. The Global market inherited much of it's broodstock from the little Malaysian island.

The Snakeskin mutation was identified, as derivative of Wild Discus as long ago as 1993, Fish similar to THOSE , in turn were obtained from Thailand 3-4 years prior , ie. 1990!

THIS earlier (1990) breeding project and their progeny was abandoned, due to delayed pnset in development of the desired fine turquoise Snakeskin appearance. This was a bit of a dead end to Snakeskins...

A few years later MORE Penang breeders went on a buying expedition to Bangkok. Thier collective purchases yieled 14 multi-barred fish....

Proliferation of multi-barred , fineline Snakeskin Discus boomed from then, 1994 onwards as Broodstock and Showfish.

1996 Duisburg, Germany
1st international Discus Championship
Open Class
A Ronnie Teoh bred, German Red Turquoise x Snakeskin F1 specimen eventually took first place.

I had my very first Snakeskin specimens by 1993 Around same time I had procured my first Blue Diamond Discus from SIngapore breeders Gan Aquarium Fish farm..Who, incidentally popularised their success with VERTICALLY STRIATED TURQUOISE Discus in TFH magazine. Again, I had a few of these as well, just to see what the fuss was all about....

These are my observations, and by no means detract from anything else you've laid down here..

 

Hi Altum,

Thanks for picking up the horizontal versus vertical fine blue line markings, you are of course perfectly correct in saying that the blue lines are horizontal, which is also quite apparent from my pictures.

In general, I think one can say that the snakeskins are also easy to breed and tend to have large spawns, but the really fancy ones specifically from Malaysia seem to have problems in raising their young. I hear more and more that young discus are artificially raised in Malaysia which leads to the perpetuation of bad parenting or forces you to go to artificial raising which I think the average hobbyist does not have the time nor the expertise to do. Two of my friends who are really experienced discus keepers bought discus there from one of the big names and found that they could not breed them. Thus although there are very many nice snakeskin types coming from Malaysia many of them are also just about unbreedable.

I also want to show some snakeskins that have specifically been developed there, but will do so at a later point.

Many thanks for your comments.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

these fish are some of the beautiful i have seen. we all wish we could have ones that look like this.

 

wow,those are beautiful fish.

 

Interesting reading, for a novice.