My name is Vern Archer, and along with my wife Karen, we devote much of our time keeping and breeding Discus. I was a member and editor of the North American Discus Society's quarterly magazine and club supporter for many years. During that time I had the pleasure of meeting and exchanging knowledge and experiences from the world's top Discus breeders and hobbyists. It's this knowledge and experience that we hope to pass along to the next generation of discus hobbyists. Have a question about discus? Drop us an email at archer@rogers.com and we will do our best to help. Unfortunately due to time restraints we are only available by email.

We focus on only the best pairs and producing quality rather than quantity. We are primarily interested in genetics and have secured a number of excellent high quality wild stock as well as a number of high quality domestic colour variations from top breeders in which to experiment. We are working on our own enhanced colour variations and crosses without the use of chemicals.  

The Goal of this website is to post general information, on the care and keeping of Discus, through past articles from such publications as the North American Discus Society's "Our Discus".  We also plan to inject our thoughts, through articles, highlighting our experiences and concerns on various topics as well.   

Over the years, we have developed a nutricious Beefheart Seafood frozen food based on research from Scientific studies and our own years of experience.  We now make it available to everyone! See recipe and instructions under the nutrition page. We will continue to produce it for sale. (for our customers only) 

Our focus is to provide a "good home" for our Discus! 

We wrote an article called "Starting Out" found on page 3.
This is based on our not so good experiences with the "new" and " the advanced"  Discus Keepers that purchased discus from our hatchery. I urge you to read.

Our experience has taught us that those that take the time and set up their discus tank per our suggestions have success and those that don't quickly loose their fish! 

Discus require a little more effort than your "run of the mill" tropical fish and do not do well in a community tank environment.  They require a good pathogen free diet and regular water changes. New fish and plants need to be properly quarantined to prevent the introduction of pathogens and viruses. 
 
We try to avoid fatalities by asking questions up front about experience, size of tank, whether there are existing fish etc. We are not trying to insult anyone we are just trying to ensure your success (a rare thing these days I know).

We emphasize feeding young Discus a quality food with a minimum 3 feeding's per day and to be kept at 86 F degrees for maximum growth and health. Adults should be kept at around 84 to 85 F, minimum 84 F. 

There are many good books out there on the Care and keeping of Discus and I encourage you to make the investment. 

Over the years I have accumulated nearly every book written on the subject of Discus some good and some not so good. The following books I recomend you spend a few $ and purchase, there are many others but lets start with the following:

A 1994 book by Jim Quarles called "Discus...as a hobby" is an excellent discus keeping book that explains the basics very well and is generally regarded as one of the best introductory books written on Discus. I think it's very useful for even the advanced discus keeper and should be part of everyone's library. I have seen it on Amazon.com for as little as $5 so there is no excuse. 
 
An early book by Jack Wattley called "The Handbook of Discus" is also a great book from one of the world's truly great discus breeders.
 
I also recomend for the more advanced discus keeper, either book by Andrew Soh, his new one "Problems and Solutions" and his first book "Naked Truth".

I also recomend "Discus Health" by Dieter Untergasser especially usefull if you plan on the purchase of a microscope.  I believe this book has recently been rereleased.

In closing, if you're serious about keeping Discus and have the time to provide the care they require, send us an email and set up an appointment to visit.
regards
v