APRIL 2004 MEMBER SPOTLIGHT - DAVID WEBBER

J - First off, I have to say it was a pleasure to meet David at the NE Discus Association Meeting last month. It was a great time and I learned a lot. Plus it is always nice to meet another fan of good beer. I'm still hoping to make it out for a visit this summer, if the invite is still open! Anyway, I'm just here to announce our guest speaker for the month, DAVID WEBBER!


DW - Thanks, John, for the nice intro. Both the N.E Discus meeting and the Southern meeting were great. I enjoyed meeting people that I only knew from the forums and putting faces to the names. Invitations to my new house are permanently open to Discus lovers.

My name is David Webber.

I was raised on a farm in South West England, in the heart of Devonshire. Did you ever see the movie “ Babe?” The countryside where I come from is very much like that, and so are the farmers, who all wear the same cloth caps & tweed jackets and don’t say much except with a look. Devonshire is famous for Devonshire Clotted Cream and Rough Cider ( Scrumpy) so most of the farmers tend to be chubby with purple noses.

I had pets of every kind, there were always seasonal orphans to hand raise. I even had a pet pig, though she did weigh about 400 lbs. We also had working dogs, Collies for the cattle & sheep herding & Black Labs for gundogs ( & guide dogs). It was idyllic

For the past 20 years I have worked as a professional photographer ( read starving artist). I have lived in Brittany in NW France, London, Israel,
Los Angeles and New York City. After about 15 yrs in Manhattan I finally had enough of the smoke and bought myself a house and moved up to the hills of upstate New York in October last year. Almost a full circle.

Photography and fish are not just methods of income ( jobs) they are also my hobbies. Confucius said “ find a job that you love to do and you will never have to do a days work in your life.” I’m still working on not doing the work but it takes all my time.

When I was about 16 my friend had a 75 gallon long tank with 2 large & beautifully ugly Oscars, which we used to hand feed ‘pinkies’ to see how far we could get the Oscars to stick their heads out of the water. I got my first discus not long after that, a couple of wilds ( I am guessing) that were about 3”. I thought that was how big they got, there was no literature for them at that time, maybe a page here or there but it was hard to find. They survived but didn’t thrive.

Years later, when I got married, the fish ‘had to go.’ Not that there were so many of them but it was the 80s and there was partying to be done. We moved to L.A from London in late 1986, just in time for a few good earthquakes. Unfortunately I was married to a girl who thought that the TV show ‘L .A.. Law’ was a documentary… What’s the difference between an ex-wife and a hurricane? Nothing… they both take the house.

I moved from L.A to NYC in 1989 and after about a 10 year hiatus from the Discus. I was given another tank by a friend & the ‘fever’ came back. Stores were offering ‘2 for the price of one’ deals on tanks – it only made it worse. More tanks require more fish. More fish need more tanks!

Disease issues ( the original “ Plague”) wiped out all of my domestics so I started looking at wilds. I was unable to find anything nice, as wilds were not at all fashionable then, especially Heckels, which everyone seemed to dislike, but which I loved.

I had met a Brazilian Anthropologist who also knew the tropical fish trade extremely well, and he sent me a couple boxes of wilds and our relationship has continued since then and we are old friends by this time. We traveled in Amazonia together. For the last 8 years we have worked together bringing wild discus and more recently rays. At first, I got just a few as I didn’t have a lot of tank space. The market has changed a lot in that time. Quality has risen while prices have come down and the interest in Wild Discus has blossomed.

After few years and frequent minor ‘spills’, finally a massive flood in my 3rd floor loft persuaded the building that they should rent me space in the basement and I had a room there for about 4 years. My very own urban dungeon. Sometimes the Discus did very well for me, other times it was heartbreaking and catastrophic.

Because I get my fish from a trustworthy friend, I have never had to worry about rip-offs and junk fish but I still hear horror stories all the time about the perils of importing. South Americans are not very well organized, shipments are frequently cancelled or bumped. If paperwork does not exactly correspond to the actual shipment, US customs probably will confiscate the whole thing. Most suppliers demand money up front. This often results in lost money with no recourse. An advisor at the Peruvian Consulate told me, “I would not even send advance money to my own brother.” Even if the seller is reputable, you pay in advance, there are always D.O.A.s but replacement for these usually is a credit on the next shipment. So straight away one is tied to them.

For myself, my favorite wilds are… all of them. A good example of any wild fish is a beautiful fish. I keep a few of all types that I bring up, red spotted greens, Golden Browns, Royal Blues, Heckels etc. I also have my own line of domestics I have been trying to get going. I am on F2 with a cross between an original “spot in spot” checkerboard and an Oriental leopard. This produced offspring that have a much more vivid blue in their background behind redder striations in checkerboard pattern. I have some of these paired with each other and others with wilds selected for similar pattern tendencies. I also am hoping that my F1 cross between Marlboro red and wild Golden (I kept the cleanest ones to breed) will soon get their breeding act together. At this time I am getting a lot of spawns but not any good hatches. This is almost certainly because I have too many fish and the bioload is too high. I am constantly draining my well to keep the water good for these guys.

Genetic tests suggest that there is one species of Discus divided into two subspecies. Heckels and everything else. The ‘everything else’ category is divided by appearance into Blues, Browns and Greens.

Blues have blue and also sometimes red striations, from very few on the head to full body they also will run the spectrum in ‘red-ness’. Greens will tend to show a nice metallic sheen , common greens will show striations like blues, anything from a few to being “Royal,” which is not about color but is about the amount of striations and means full striations. Red Spotted greens are almost the same but (obviously) should show spots on their bodies and spots instead of striations on their lower (anal) fin. Browns will tend to only have a few striations on their heads and be a golden to orange color and their lower finnage may tend towards a pink color. You can also find Blues that are called ‘reds’ and browns that are called ‘reds.’ This is how they are usually graded but you can also easily find intermorphs of every type that fall between and defy categorization. Heckels also freely interbreed with the other varieties, producing intermorphs like the so-called ‘Ica’ red or the “Madeira’ heckel.

I currently have a 1000 gallon central system and a bunch of 125 gallon tanks and maybe the same again yet to set up in my basement. When I get new wilds in they get the short-sharp-shock acclimation process with heavy salt and high temperature. Often they will eat immediately as they are usually starving. Other times they will lie on the bottom of the tank for a day or two before recovering. I feed them heartily with anything I have on hand, Bits, flake, blackworms, bloodworms, etc.

Prazi is pretty much standard and often an antibiotic regime is useful, all depending on their condition.

ooooh look....a legend in my own lunchtime
:)

Got questions? ask them here
:)
David

;D ;D ;D

:soapbox: :yikes: :juggle: :jester: :inquisitive: :gossip: :fish: :furious: :crazy: :argue: :bandana: :book:

David,
Thanks for the info about yourself and your fish. I know the wealth of information you possess could fill up books. I too am a full time professional photographer, and make my living shooting photos for such magazines as Field & Stream and Outdoor Life. And too am extremely eaten up with the discus bug. So in some of my photography travels to upper New York State, we'll have to hook up and talk photography and discus. ;D
All the best,
Lance Krueger

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Very nice David. It's always nice to see pics of your discus and rays. ;)

WOW!!! GREAT job on the pics Dave :D

You forgot two things in your write up though. You forgot to mention your constant helper "The Diz" ;D And, you forgot to mention what a mean pork chop with mash potates and gravey that you make ;D

GARY

Cool stuff.

Hey David,

do you think England has any chance in the Euro cup? :o

your bulgarian friend

alex

As always.....THANK YOU David!
When are you going to write a book? ;D
The open door policy applies to Rommel as well I hope?
CUZ I ain't leavin him here! ;) ;D LOL
Great FISH... GREAT INTERVIEW! but I don't have to tell you that I think You are Great... now do I?? ;D

Take care and THANKS AGAIN! :-* :-* :-*
K :gorgeous:

Hey GARY... He left ME OUT TO! GOOD DA(* thing he forgot Dizzy.. saved his Butt! ;) ;)

David,

You are such an interesting study. Thank you so much for sharing with all of us. I envy your talent in breeding the wilds and wish you future successes with your work(fun).

Love you beautiful discus, the wild x mr is very very nice. Pictures are breathtaking.

Fshngal ;)