Hey guys, welcome back. This is Jack Wattley Discus, and today you’re catching us while we are receiving a shipment from Satarem Discus. Come join us and see what the process looks like!

Receiving Wild Satarem Discus

Early this morning at around 10:30, the plane landed from Brazil and we were able to pick the discus up around 1:30. We got 33 boxes with 512 Discus all together. These phenomenal discus come from our good friends over at Satarem. Luckily, this time around we’re doing it in the daylight, so you’ll be able to see a little bit more.

I already opened the first box because time is crucial, but I want you guys to get an idea of the kind of stuff that he’s sending us. First up, we have one of the heckels. I’m not sure if it’s a blue face or not at the moment because they’re very stressed out at first, however; as we progress in the shipment we’re going to show you more and more as they come out so we should be able to get an idea when they calm down. You can see some of the beauties that we received, and these are straight out of the bag, and you could see how many colors they have already.

What we do first is we’re just taking them out of the bag, putting them in buckets and then transferring them directly. But inside the warehouse we set up 725-gallons worth of tanks, so stay with us and you’ll see just how we handle this huge shipment.

Adding the Shipment to Their New Homes

Basically, since we already know what the Ph of the water is in all of the bags, we’ve acclimated the tanks prior to delivery, so we do not need to do any acclimating whatsoever. We just plopping them in. Now, very important and I’m glad it’s happening. You can see that a couple of them are down on the bottom of the tank, laying on their side. Remember one thing, when you’re a flatfish and you’re stressed out, especially from the trip, this is the most offensive mode that you can be in. Also, sometimes they absorb a lot of oxygen from the bag and so they need to release all that gas.

So, when we notice activity like this, we know it is normal behavior. There is no need to worry for their wellbeing, and in fact, you can see that when my camera guy in the video gets close to them, they kind of swim away. They’re alive, they’re not dead, and they will be okay once they calm down. Again, this is normal behavior, and on occasion, you may see this in your own tanks if your discus has to travel a long distance. When the discus travel, sometimes they’re mishandled by UPS or the airlines, and a lot of the times they’re going to do this to you. It’s like I tell clients, don’t worry about it. Leave him there for two or three days and eventually, they’ll stand up and swim around.

You may also notice that after a few moments the discus become very aware and will follow you, especially with their eyes, if you stand in front of them and walk left to right. This is normal behavior and we want you to see it the way it is. I mean, these fish just came out of the bag within five minutes.

Satarem Discus Hatchery

Now, as you can see, we’re using up about seven tanks to house all these fish. Hugo, the owner of Satarem Discus Hatchery, also sent some beautiful decals to put in front of the aquariums. Hugo and Satarem aren’t shy when it comes to advertising, and they shouldn’t be! We’ve been carrying his fish since 2014, back when we first met. So, we want everybody to know worldwide that we are the USA distributors for his beautiful tropical discus, period, there are no other distributors.

Now back to the discus. As you can see these guys already are popping color and they just recently got released out of the bag. In a couple of hours, we’ll show you even more pictures and some still shots that we took as we were opening the shipment. It is always exciting opening one of these shipments because occasionally you will get some bags that are extremely large.

I came across one bag that just stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s just a mammoth bag and there has got to be like three gallons of water in it. Inside there is another blue face, a roughly six to seven-inch heckle, as well as many more. So, you can see that even after traveling for two days, they’re still alive and they’re doing very well. This shipment is nearly 818 kilos, and costs close to $8,000 worth of freight expenses just to bring these fish from Brazil!

They’re In The Tanks, Now What?

We are done unpacking everything and the tanks are already set up with a fish in them. Now, what we normally do (which you guys already know) is we add Acriflavine. Now the recipe is for every 120-gallon tank, we add three grams. Acriflavine is actually very beneficial because the fish that scrape up against each other will not get any secondary bacterial infections. Now, people ask me all the time, “Gabe, how do you do it?” Well, we just showed you the recipe for Acriflavine (three grams per 120 gallons), but we also add one cup of salt for every 125 gallons. The salt will also help in the healing process tremendously, it is absolutely necessary.

Now, there are eight 125-gallon tanks already with the Acriflavine. Once they are all ready, the only thing that’s left is for me to do is go back and add salt to every one of the tanks. All right? And other than that, the fish are ready. The discus fish will be ready, and fully acclimated, in a couple of days

Now I know some people have been saying, “Wait, these guys are growing discus in antifreeze!” Okay, but remember that we do daily water changes. The Acriflavine is already gone by the second day. It is only in there the first time around, and then we remove it. This is a preventative measure we take because we moved so many fish at one time. We don’t want them to break out with any secondary bacterial infections.

Finished Product

The fish are finally starting to settle into their new home and are absolutely stunning. Next, they are ready for food. You could see that when I bring my hand up above the tank, they are looking for anything that comes their way. So once again, thank you for joining us. Please subscribe. It’s important because a lot of you are asking me, “Hey Gabe, this video is shot in Spanish, but you didn’t shoot it in English?” and vice versa. Subscribe and watch for our next video, because there is a good chance we will be coming out with another video shortly after. Thank you for being here. Again, I’m Gabe Posada from Jack Wattley Discuss and we hope you enjoyed seeing the Santorum shipment.