Nhamunda Blue Heckels in a blackwater biotope

[illumnae]

Some of you may have seen the 6 xlg Curuai discus that I posted in another thread from the first shipment in January 2012.

About a month ago, I obtained a batch of Nhamuda Blue heckels from Singapore's 2nd shipment of wild discus from Hudson (H&K Discus). In that batch were 4 "Blue Moon" and 4 "Blue Face" heckels. I added another 4 "Blue Face" heckels from the 3rd shipment too

In this tank now are 12 Nhamunda Blue heckels, 7 altum angels (in the pictures you will see 17 altum angels, but I have removed 10 over the weekend to reduce bioload), 3 Geophagus winemilleri, 3 Satanoperca daemon, 4 Mesonauta insignis and 3 Dekeyseria sp (L52). The tank is 240 gallons (with a 4ft sump below).

Without much further ado, here are some pictures!

FTS

Some group shots

The guy in the middle is imo the nicest blue moon of this batch. The guy at the bottom is a not so good blue moon (definitely not 1/3 body fusing)

The one with the spotted gill plate in the next 2 shots was bought as a blue face, but as you can see he isn't a blue face...yet his lines seem to be fusing more than some of those I bought as blue moons - blue moon in the making?

Huddle!

 

[illumnae]

Some individual shots in this post.

Blue Moons

This one is the nicest blue moon.

This would be the nicest, if he didn't have a grey cast to him. He usually seems more grey than blue, especially towards the back.

This guy has a very strong 5th bar. He's usually the first to the food despite being one of the smallest!

Blue Face

As you can see, 1 month down, none of the blue faces show a full blue gill plate as they should. They're not so much blue face as just simply Nhamunda blue heckels imo.

 

[BODYDUB]

!!!!!!

 

[twilight zone]

Very nice. I use to breed discus long time ago. There are too many created discus today. Someone should specialize in breeding pure wild caught discus. It is harder but not impossible. The blue face heckels are something I would want to breed someday.