3 months to get 4000 Wild Discus !

Many do not understand the difficulty of getting the amount of Wild Discus allowed by Brazilian Law during such a short space of time . That it takes the Amazon Rivers to descend and to rise. As we have already mentioned, we have a quota of 4000 Wild Fish by Brazilian law. The Amazon Rivers usually begin to descend in May, June and only in September it is possible to collect Wild Discus. In the past, water in the Rivers had only begun to rise in January .

Of course, all this depends on Mother Nature. If we do not see, for example the Season of 2018/2019. The Rivers  started to go down in May, very slowly, but until October they did not go down enough to hold any collection. At the end of October we started to finally select the first Wild Discus. The water has dropped in an extraordinarily fast way and by the end of November it has begun to rise. 

In fact we had about 45 days to collect and select 4000 wild discus in different communities. All very far from one another in ways almost made only by boat.

 
 The difficulty was huge even more when we chose only the Wild Discus that interest us. Those who have good shapes, large size, small eyes and no bar defects. This selection has to be made fast because there is not much time to lose. Sometimes we end up doing 24 hours by boat and stop in only two communities where we have less than 3 hours to select the best Wild Discus.
     

Stress is always great but in Season 2018/2019 it was even bigger to get the whole stock together for a year. Many people have no idea how everything works, because when the river  rises the Wild Discus they enter the forest inside.

 Besides being scattered it is totally impossible to find and capture them. More than that they begin to reproduce as soon as the Rivers begin to rise. The rains also contribute to this factor as is logical with the chemistry of the water to change. At these times we begin to see the slightly thinner and darker fish typical of when they start breeding. 

It was an atypical season. In the last years, it is almost impossible to predict when the Amazon Rivers rise and fall. Probably due to climactic changes. The reality however is that this is the phase of immense work and of an organization taken to the extreme.
Runs from one side to the other and often imponderable situations happen. I often say that they are the " Unforeseen Amazonicos" I give several examples ! 

 There is no internet or  telephone contact with many communities, so we never know if fishermen are already fishing . Sometimes it happens to gather a significant number of Wild Discus in a box to be selected by us, and during the night a boto (dolphin) or an alligator completely destroys the wooden box in water, where 200 to 300 Wild Discus were gathered. 

Other times a storm struck and the box turned. Others simply the fishermen did not feel like working and fishing. So many trips are waste of time, boat oil costs, etc.

" Unforeseen Amazonicos" over the course of these 12 years there are numerous stories perhaps one day in a book about memories tell some of them. They are part of life in the Amazon.

So many think the Wild Discus are always available to be caught what is a wrong thought. Companies need to be well organized to get them together. Much more difficult for companies like the  Santarem Discus Company that from the 10 years that it was constituted , prefers to choose them one by one. If we wait for the fishermen to do the quality, it would never be the one for which , we are recognized and the costs would be much lower.

In few communities the route is made by car where the boat can not enter. There is a timing for the boat to be able to get in and out. Sometimes the rivers descend so much that it is impossible to sail by boat. Where there are ways for the car to arrive so we do. We will select by car our Wild Discus as it happens for example in Cuipeua , Jaraqui , etc 

The question is always the same in 3 months is necessary a huge logistics that we have improved in the last 10 years. The great problem of the Amazon is the absence of Logistics.
If we lose a lot of time from the usual 3 months we can lose the time of capture and collection. All the time is short and the staff works in a more professional way. Collect 4000 Wild Discus after the select, pack and send to the company is hard work that requires all Santarem Discus team the main focus.


Vitor Hugo Quaresma 

Wild Discus Marketplace

We have no doubt that in the last 10 years both Santarem Discus and other good exporters in Brazil , have been changing the Wild Discus market. In these years there has been a competition among exporters ,  to put on the World market the best Wild Discus that nature produces. 

Until then the Wild Discus that were in the World market had little quality, few or none knew what a quarantine was ,  and no one selected them in the middle of the Amazon Jungle with the company Santarem Discus does it.

The companies still worked with Plastic Receipts where the Wild Discus lay for weeks without any filtration.
The Wild Discus came in very poor condition to importers. 

The market has changed in terms of quality and today comes Wonderful Wild Discus for sale and that has given rise to new colors and patterns. Just see the amount of Wild discus that are in the market with the strong bar in the middle. More and more and more appreciated by hobbyists. 

The demand for Wild Discus has also increased and the demand for Wild Discus exported has accompanied this trend, even by the glitz and ease of communication that grows with the internet, both through social networks, as bloques and information available on the different exporters and their job .

If on the one hand the greatest creators of Asian Discus are mixing more and more Wild blood to recover the shape and size of the Discus Domestics ( Hybrid )   something fundamental instead of using hormones in their Discus, on the other there is a growth of people who try to breed Wild Discus .

This fact is also due to the professionalism of those who export them. Santarem Discus is pleased to be a part of these exporters. There are many who create Wild Discus collected by our company. From Spain to Italy, from Korea to China passing through Portugal to Uruguay , Us , etc etc . People who love these Wild Discus who can form couples and reproduce them successfully. This is due to the state of health, quarantine and transportation of these Wild Discus to these breeders.

If it continues to be a challenge breeding Wild Discus more and more breeders. We think the future of the Wild Discus is guaranteed. Of course breeding Wild Discus is a matter of time and water chemistry and obviously the number of wild discus that breeder has. The more, the easier it is to form couples. There are those who knife in an extremely professional way.

We have the case of Breeder of Austria, Christian Kubitschkae winner of many championships in  Europe , the last years that has managed to gather some of the best Wild Discus that we have collected.

Christian Kubitschkae. as for us  ( for now ) who have the best Wild Discus exported by Santarem Discus in Europe . Also like the Italian Giovanni Consigli .  Wild Discus of high quality in terms of shape, color and size. With excellent standards Christian Kubitschkae is able to reproduce these Wilds. We think that to reproduce Wilds must be made with the best fish. Perfect and almost perfect in terms of form . Something we care about finding and selecting in the Amazon jungle is a posteriori export to our customers.

The Italian Giovanni Consigli has them but does not intend to create them anymore. Whoever does will get fabulous wild discus lines from Wild Discus. Christian this doing a commendable job  like others to get it done. In this way our best Wild Discus in terms of shape, color and size will give rise to more Discus with excellent lineage. Of course for this you need to have the best and most perfect Wilds.

It has breeders  Worldwide who do not care which Wild discus communities they are trying to create. We think that the ideal will always be to mix Wild Discus from the same community and not mix blood and DNA.
We all encourage breeding wilds. We will give support in terms of getting wild discus for many to do and to continue Wild Discus of different communities being played in captivity. We want more and more wild discus be reproduced and less and less removed from nature.


Vitor Hugo Quaresma 

The Most Rare Wild Discus

All or almost all the collection seasons in the Amazon between late September and December we find some Wild Rare Discus.
Wild Discus only ones who are coming back to the same communities can not see another ! 
As you can imagine the joy is great when a Wild Discu is found. I compare the moment like the Christmas Eve. When a child opens the toy he wanted so badly.

The first one I highlight is really a weird Wild Discus. Stress bars never disappeared in a black tone as well as around a beautiful black outline , with a blue . Just absolute amazing and of course ...rare . 

It was a Wild Discus always very shy and away from the others. We finished selling to Hong Kong to Wayne Ng  and second we went to China. Hopefully you have reproduced ...

Over the weeks in quarantine began to become red. Unfortunately as soon as it reached the 3 months of quarantine it was exported

We came back several times to the community that I kept secret, but we never captured another. This community has been closed since last year and should open again in the next  Season 2019/2020 . Maybe we'll be lucky to find another just the same ... who knows !!  

                                        

The second rarest that I highlight is a strange case in nature. Call him Buldog, by his most square form. When we found him and told the story, the fisherman came up to me and told me. "I found a Wild Discu that will not like ... it's square"

In fact it was a strange fish with a bar in the middle and Royal but different from something I had so far seen in Mother Nature

One of its characteristics was the high size. About 18 cms from mouth to tail. A huge Wild Discus captured in the region of the Trombetas River

Red eyes totally Royal and that central bar left us unwilling to sell it by its different form. We ended up selling it to Mynmar for a very high value.

This year also in Rio Trombetas we ended up showing another. Not so big and only red / brown that will be traveling to Portugal where it will be put up for sale

This Season2018/2019  we found another rare Wild Discus and again another Buldog. With a size of about 15 cm and with a bar in the middle is a Wild Discu that will be sent to Portugal from where it will be sold. Less square but with a less round shape, we decided to stay with it even in Portugal to be part of our Stock !!!

Vitor Hugo Quaresma 

All About Heckel Nhamunda

Nhamunda Land of Heckel 

They are among the most beautiful Wild Discus of Amazonia. Its electric blue that can be seen with a good light in an Aquarium is sometimes "dazzling". Wild Discus are more difficult to maintain because of their usual stress. 

Living at the crossroads of the branches at the top Nhamunda about 4 hours Nhamunda city boat is the most beautiful places and still wild in the Amazon. Bathed by the Nhamunda River of clear waters with Ph's of 5.8 to 6.0 and with 10 to 15 microsiemans.

The first time I went to Nhamunda was in 2007 where I had the pleasure of meeting one of the oldest Amazon Wild Discus visitors, Manoel Torres.An extraordinary man with whom I had a good time. Huge stories about Nhamunda, about locations where he collected Wild Discus. A true lover of the Amazon and its fauna. I worked with him until his death a few years later.

Years later I started working with his son Manoel Torres. Manoelzinho as he is known is one of the greatest professionals of the collection of Wild Discus in the Nhamunda. He grew up and picked up his father's art, becoming one of Nhamunda's best fishermen.

Throughout these 11 years I have made more than 40 expeditions through Nhamunda and High Nhamunda. A heavenly place with fantastic Wild Discus. In some places we managed to find the so-called Heckel cross. A Heckel mix with Nhamunda reds. Heckel Cross Wild Discus are rare but beautiful !!

Often people including distributors make confusion between different types of Nhamunda Heckel. We divided ourselves into 3 types of Heckel

Heckel Blue - Your body is completely made with a unique pattern of horizontal lines along your body

Heckel Blue Face - Your head and body part is blue without any line. A Wild Discus that we can consider already rare

Heckel Half Moon - One of the rarest. The whole fish is Blue and even half of its Central Bar is solid blue.

Over the years we have worked with another great fisherman Moyses Serrão. Today we have one of our best fishermen and most faithful to our company Santarem Discus.          With him we already carried out many expeditions through the Nhamunda being a great Expert of this region

 Vitor Hugo Quaresma 

Wild Discus what they eating in the Nature !!

There is a great curiosity about what the Wild Discus eat in their environment. For those who dive for 12 years in the Amazon ,  Wild Discus collection Areas, it is easy to see that they change a lot from place to place, from community to community. 

I must be honest that at first .Amazon I made , significantly more dives . It is no longer new, as you can understand, this initial curiosity !!  But I do not stop being close to my fishermen and I always end up putting on the diving glasses to observe . In the past it was hours and hours under water and obviously I drew several conclusions about what the Wild Discus eat in their environment !! 

In this image we can see in and out of water. A community where the water is very clear, where the Wild Discus live under trunks as usual. These trunks multiply in several branches which makes it difficult to observe the Wild Discus when they feel our presence

If we can remain motionless, next to the shoals of Wild Discus, we observe that along with trunks and branches there are pieces of algae. This is one of the Wild Discus food sources ... the algae! The branches are often filled with small algae feeding , their small, tiny fry from other species of fish that we can not determine the species. 

Contrary to what we observe in aquariums with Discus plants are rare , but the bottoms are often sand. I have often watched the Wild Discus begin directly from the bottom of the aquarium. Some small crustaceans certainly belong to your food.

 We say this because by dissecting some Wild Discus to observe its gut and some parasites that can bring when they arrive at our company, through the microscope, we find vestiges of these same small crustaceans. In addition to the algae, small fry, small crustaceans one of the favorite foods are the small prawns.

These are easy to find in communities in Alenquer, such as Cuipeua, Mangal, etc. There are thousands of feet in the water to choose the Wild Discus inside the boxes. Unfortunately due to the color of the water it is extremely filming or photographs. Extremely brown water typical of the Amazon River.

We think that for this reason and because the amount of shrimp is so great that the Wild Discus of this region of Alenquer, Cuipeua and Mangal , Wild Discus have colors so red and intense.

Another food that we have no doubt are small seeds and fruits that fall from the trees. In some regions where we find enormous Wild Discus, we also find trees that have generated certain small green, round fruits that eventually besides the genetics of these enormous Wild Discus, may be the reason for its growth

So to conclude we have come to the conclusion that the feeding of the Wild Discus in its environment is the first base of algae. Small fingerlings of different fish, crustaceans, small seeds and fruits and shrimps.

Vitor Hugo Quaresma