Interview of Ralf Battenberg

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gep
Posts: 1848
Joined: 26 Nov 2007, 21:19
Real Name: göran ekholm
Location: Landfjärden

Interview of Ralf Battenberg

Post by gep » 21 Mar 2008, 16:21

God evening/morning Ralf

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to participate here in our interview section on Diskusforum.se. Maybe we should start with a little background on you..

1) Whats your companys name?
Diskus Special Battenberg.

2)When did you first get involved in Discus? Any memories you want to share?
With the age of 12 I`ve started with discus, 5 pcs of “red turquoise”, but after 3 months I`ve lost them all – terrible for a boy. But from now on I wanted to know everything about this miraculous fish.

3)Do you have any other hobbies besides fish Keeping?
No time –no more hobbies.

4) What other fish do you keep?
Only southamerica fish.

5) What is the most common mistake hobbyist makes with discus keeping do you think.
They want to do too much. Many people think they have to make a amazonas-water. Impossible! You need :
- a perfect filter system (great capacity)

- your own diligence (cleaning + waterchange)

- to be lucky by getting a healthy fish

- perfect, different food


6) What lines of fish are you working with now? Do you have any breeding pairs set up?.
All nice discus we can get

7) What do you feed your discus and how often?
All kind of food 3x-5x (mostly frozen food)

8) What kind of husbandry do you do on your tanks...wcs, tank wipedowns etc.
?

9) Filtration preferences..what do you use?
Hydroton + filterwool

10) I would like to ask you to describe your quarantine procedures in detail..so that more members can benefit from your experience.
It`s a big difference to have a quarantine with import discus or with discus you have bought and seen by yourself. With a little bit of experience you have bought a discus in best condition, I hope so. By this way it`s always better to bring the fish in a separate tank and make an observation about 10-14 days. During this time you only have to react when “something” is not normal. To make quiet sure you put one of your own discus in this tank, for 10 days. It`s the only way to find out if there is a possible bacterial infection.

11) We all have our own ethics when it comes to medication use.. can you elaborate on your views?
When a fish feels bad you must give a medicine –the right one! But that`s problem for everybody. By 90% we are the reason that the fish feels bad, you cannot bring the amazonas in your house.

12) Do you have any advice for hobbyists looking to buy discus? what should they look for?
At the place where I want to buy all Discus ! must be looking good and have to be very vital.

13) When you look at a fish what do you like to see?
A wonderful fish with a perfect shape and a wild shining red eye.




14) What would you like to personally accomplish? In the discus hobby.
All the years I have done my best.

For this fish and it`s not nice to see that our discus becomes more and more like a guppy. The world market is in the hand of the asien breeders and by 95% of this breeders it`s really, only business, one more article. For the future I hope to find more and more friends of “the one and only” –the wild caught discus.


15) Do you see any negative aspects to the Discus Hobby these days?
No. You know that I only like wild discus.

16) Have you had any mentors in this hobby, that you want give greads to?
It`s not important, may be your neighbour, who has a wonderful discus pair with 100 perfect babies. I´ve seen too much “breeders”, who think they are the greatest.




I think thats about all I can think to ask you about ....... Thanks for being here today to answer the questions



Best regards Göran

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