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Southern
Discus Workshop 2004
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Friday night
started off with a nice dinner at a great local Thai restaurant
close
to the hotel. Clockwise from the lower left, on
the left picture is Anand, Jean,
Cary, Jack,
Kenny, Ken, Phil and his wife, and Tim.
On the right photo are
Eric's daughters, Eric,
Vicki and Anand
(who looks like he's frightened of what Tim said).
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These are some of the fish which were auctioned off on Sunday. On the left are
some Leopard Skins and on the right are some Mandarin Passions.
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blue diamond discus.
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Leopard Snakeskins
on the left and one more Wild Peruvian Green discus
on the right.
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This is the
room holding the display tanks of all the discus. Tim and Eric
had to
clean the tanks, replace the table clothes, fill the tanks, hook
up the air hoses,
hook up the heaters, and then acclimate the fish to the tanks.
They didn't
get to bed until 2:00am friday morning!
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Believe it
or not, the photo on the left is Eric Lacroix helping Tim Thimios
get
ready for his presentation! See what sleep deprivation does to
a guy? On the
right, Eric welcomes everyone to the first Southern Discus Workshop.
It was
his dream and he had the guts, time, and effort to make this happen.
I know
it wasn't free for Eric (he paid out of his own pocket for many
things - such
as getting the guests down (often via plane), giving them a room
at the
hotel to stay, he treated us to two nice meals, plus he picked
people up at
the airport and to top things off, he had a family health issue
on Saturday
night and ended up sleeping at the hospital! Tim helped out quite
a lot too.
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Tim Thimios
of US Discus was the first
speaker. His presentation was on the highs
and lows of being a discus importer.
Things that many people don't realize are
that he
has
to drive
4+ hours to an airport to pick up the fish (because that's
the closest one which
has the Federal Inspectors), then drive all the way back to
his facility, or
if the exporter's fish don't look the way they are supposed to, or
when he gets
an order and there are several fish which died while in transit.
Ken Davis of
Fishfarm is another importer of fish. He gave a slide show of his tour
of Asian
discus hatcheries. He stopped in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore,
Vietnam, and
Thailand.
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Cary Strong
of Great Lakes
Discus gave a presentation covering his experience
as a discus breeder; topics included how he cares for his fish,
how he
gets his
fish
to
breed, and he kept telling everyone to quarantine their fish.
Vickie Burnly
of
the University of Georgia College of Veterinary
Medicine gave a
presentation on Fish disease/ parasites and medications.
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Vickie shows
people how to look for gill flukes using her microscope. It has
an
adapter on one of the eyepieces to project the image
to a monitor. On the next
photo, she prepares another sample and
uses a cover slip.
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told by other fish veterinarians; you often really can't properly diagnose what
problem a fish has, unless you get sample and look at it under a microscope
(flukes, costia, hexamita, capillaria, etc...). On the right, David Webber of
Wild Discus gave a presentation of his visits to the Amazon with stops in
Lake Tefe' and Manaus, Brazil. He went on a night fish collecting expedition
and had plenty of exciting events to talk about (for one thing, it's totally black,
yet the locals can find their way around the thickets, another event was an
encounter with the highly venomous Fer DeLance snake.).
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Phil Edwards gave a presentation
on Planted Discus tanks. He covered all the basics
and showed some examples of his and other people's tanks. He
also brought several
plants to auction off and gave out some samples. Jack Taylor
gave his presentation
on how to setup a fish room; covering topics such as drilling
tanks, PVC piping, racks,
etc... He has several nice discus too. Jack flew in an F15 over
Iraq last year.
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Eric, Cary, Tim, and Kenny joking around while bagging the fish prior to the auction. Some photos of the auction. Ken Davis was the auctioneer and if anything went for
a super bargain, he would bid on it himself! ;-) The auction earnings went to Eric to
help pay for this event. The first item up for bids was a nice donated RO Filter. That's Vickie helping out. There were many fish, some plants and some hardware.
Kenny was in constant conversation with Chuck via cellphone, to bid on the items
remotely. Oftentimes the bidding was intense with two bidders warring against
each other to the very end!
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On the left, as Vickie
hands Ken a bag, he immediately bids on the angelfish, so that
Robert
(in the background) doesn't get an easy bargain! On
the right, the bidders
ponder if they have enough spare tanks for the new fish and
if they could afford to
get that one more fish. Eric's wife is in the back tallying
up the bid amounts.
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That's Kenny on the left with cellphone
in hand. In the center is Phil and his wife. In
front of them are David and Kathy Block. Some people came prepared with
coolers.
On the right, are Eric and his daughters. They kept tabs on the bidders
and the
winning bids.
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