My first discus purchases as a discus newbie were from an LFS. Of course I thought they were beautiful, but turns out they were all sick even when they arrived at the pet store, so of course all of them eventually died. My next discus purchase, after I had learned lots more things about them was from Mathius at Discus Madness. He's a great guy. Yes, I noticed some of his tanks were marked "feed medicated food", but I didn't buy from those tanks. But yet I struggled with those fish two, a few hundred dollars worth of juvies in all, and learned much more about discus while I was trying to raise that tank up. I do not have any of those fish today either, lost some and gave some away. They just didn't turn out to be the fish I had hoped for so long and I also struggled with some illnesses with them. Got burnt once more with a handful of juvies from someone out in Ohio. My first mail order discus juvies. When they arrived they were in toxic, smelly water, stressed all to heck, lost one, and saved the other 5 only to realize they were stunted. Then I learned about SimplyDiscus, met Kenny, and bought some of the most fantastic fish imported from top Asian breeders, but not hormoned either. Young, healthy juvies. Disease and parasite free. Vigorous, full of spunk and appetites like elephants. Shipped with perfection, no smelly ammonia filled water or ammonia burns on the fish, fish eating and swimming like they never left home soon after putting them in my tanks. I have also bought from Mike Beals at codiscus.com in Galena Ohio. He was importing fish from the same Asian breeder as Kenny, some different strains though. And while all the sponsors on simply discus have fabulous discus to choose from, I can personally tell you save yourself a lot of headaches and choose one of the sponsors on that forum. Shipping these days is not cheap and must be done overnight with discus but it's money well spent in the end. My discus are all huge healthy thick discus with great personalities! So I say skip all the hard steps and heartaches and expense I went through and go with a sponsor over on simply.
