Breadhead

Well, the other day I decided my tank had aged enough, and it was time to put in there, the reason I set up the tank to begin with... to have a beautiful home for the king of the aquarium. So I started searching the web for discus hatcheries. I had gotten some from Watley ten or so years ago and of course found his page first. I did a few google searches, and finally came to http://www.macsdiscus.com where I found a large selection of strains. After researching a few sites, I always found myself back at Mac's looking at all the beautiful fish. To make a long story short, I ordered 2 Royal Blue, 2 Red Rio Purus, and 1 King Cobra. Took off a day at work to wait for the FedEx man and crossed my fingers. I live in North Carolina, Mac's is in Washington State... at a few min before noon, the FedEx man came to my back door, and handed me a large box marked Perishable. I was nervous in expectation of opening... Opening the box, I found easy instructions for acclimation of the new fish. Skimming them, i dove into removing the top of the cooler... I was pleasantly surprised to see how large the fish were! Four of the five were up and swimming, with one laying on his side aspirating normally. I noted on the instructions that it was not uncommon for fish to arrive on their side and for them to stay that way for a day or so. Undaunted, I started adding 2 cups of water, every 10 min to the cooler bag (as per the instructions) for an hr. After an hr, I dipped them out into their new home (darkened of course). I left the lights off all day and night, the next morning, I had 4 well acclimated fish, and one still sluggish hiding under a large sword. After a few hrs, the other discus came over and rousted the lazy guy up, and got him swimming and he has been on the road to recovery ever since. Today (4th day in the tank) all of them were fighting over a cube of Tubifex, destroying it with fins held high.

Nothing but good things to say about Mac's Discus. If you are in the market for some, give them a look. I couldn't believe the size of the fish, well over 2 inches. The ones I got from Watley 10 years ago were the size of a 50cent piece and had no color.

Now I just hope I got a pair out of the 5

I'll include some pics below...

JanS

Nice pics and fish Chuck.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who will take a day off work to await the Fed-Ex guy, and be like a giddy kid in a candy store when opening the much awaited package.

Piscesgirl

If I had to take off work for Fed Ex, I'd have to save up a lot of vacation days! Even next day air they take more than a week (they say they can't find my house, but I know better -- they don't want to mess up their 'time schedule' so they hold my package until another package is to be delivered out my way somewhere).

Ughh, sorry about that rant. Beautiful discus -- glad to hear you had a good experience with buying them!

Breadhead

Vance Co. !?!...... no wonder!... Don't you have to go toward town to hunt there?

Just kidding of course... glad to see another Tar Heel here.

Piscesgirl

LOL, sometimes I feel like hunting IN town (ok, bad humor...don't report me!)

Where are you in NC? There are quite a few tarheels around, Trenac and Phil Edwards being two others.

bharada

I hope you get your shipping charges refunded when thatr happens! Whenever FedEx/UPS/USPS fails to deliver on time I always get shipping charges either fully refunded or reduced to the appropriate rate for the actual delivery time.

bharada

Oh, yeah. Great looking fish!

Breadhead

Down in the southeastern part... you know where South of the Border is off I-95??? (as if anyone from east of the Mississippi hasn't heard of SotB) About 15 min from there...

Piscesgirl

LOL, yep I've been past South of the Border -- so you are way South of me. Oh well, there is a fish club in Charlotte, not sure how far that would be from you (my NC geography sucks).

Nope, Bharada, no refund for me because they lie and say it is my fault my place is "not mapped." However, UPS have never had a problem finding my place. Fed Up does even when they've been to my house the day before! Gets on my last nerve. One person there even told me "maybe the driver doesn't want to go out that far." I told her too bad! That's HIS JOB! aCckkkkk. OK, I'm hyperventilating here. Fed Up Ground can find my place no problem, it's the other Fed Ups that can't.

Algae_Grower

nice pics