Hong Kong imported RRB in two sizes: 12-16 cm young adult and 6-7 cm youngster.

When newly arrived, adults have bright turquoise blue stripes from head to tail extending unbroken to the edge of the dorsal and anal fins. In the best fish, they are wide, parallel and straight. The iridescence is excellent. Body color is a deep orange red. The dorsal, anal and pelvic fins are blood red. There are small dark red spots in between the turquoise stripes in the best specimens. Body form is generally long but there was about 15% round body discus. I have even seen a few specimens having a concave throat and high body form.  

Nearly all RRB has a trace of Heckel Bar. The 5th, 6th, and 7th bars are darker than the others in more than 80% of the variety. These three bars are even more prominent during breeding. Some fish even have a very dark and broad 5th bar which are actually Heckel Red Turquoise. Those RRB without any trace of the Heckel Bar are rare, high quality specimens; their turquoise stripes are brighter and the body and fins are redder than the common RRB. A few almost solid turquoise fish were also imported yet they lack the color intensity of the German Brilliant Turquoise.

 
Their bright colors began to fade after a few weeks of acclimation in Hong Kong. The turquoise stripes start to lose a lot of its intensity and iridescence but they do not disappear. The orange red body becomes various shades of brown varying from a light yellowish brown to a deep chocolate color. The red spots and the red color on the fins remain although the intensity is reduced together with a change from a bright red to a more dull

 

A few extraordinary fishes develop very long finnage after a few months. Their dorsal, anal and caudal fins grow to 50-70% longer than normal. There is also a long, triangular extension on the dorsal and anal fins to make them looking like a veiltail angelfish. Adding to their distinctiveness, the translucent and colorless caudal fin also turns into a dull reddish brown color. The only unchanged feature is the Heckel Bar.

RRB youngsters have full adult colors when newly imported. All the beautiful turquoise stripes and the red color on the whole fish disappear within a month to resemble young Brown Discus. Although they were rather difficult to grow, most of them matured into fully striped discus.

 

I was lucky my first pair produced nearly 100 young. When I and my friends purchased more RRB, most males were sterile but the females spawned normally. There was only a single slightly fertile fish inside every 12-15 males. It was from these nearly sterile males Rocky and I managed to obtain 20-30 fry in a brood.

 
I found out later in Bangkok that the exporters use testosterone (17β-Hydroxyandrost-4-en-3-one) to enhance the color of their discus before export. The bright orange eggs of Macrobrachium rosenbergii are soaked in a solution of the hormone for several hours. These hormone-treated eggs are fed daily to the discus until the desirable color concentration is obtained. Adults take only a few days but youngsters need a much longer treatment. Their gonads become regressed as a result of massive doses of male sex hormone administered at such a young age. These fish never breed when they are mature. In general, about half of the imported adults could breed.

 
The local bred RRB grows fast on a diet of beef heart, shrimp meat and frozen bloodworms. By six months of age it has an average length of 12 cm and attains the adult size of 14-16 cm in a mere ten months. First touch of turquoise color appears on the forehead and the dorsal, anal fins when it is three months old. The red color starts to be visible a month later. It remains rather drab until seven months of age and then a sudden metamorphosis takes place when both the turquoise stripes and the red body color start to develop rapidly. Within weeks it is transformed into a Red Turquoise. The Heckel Bar gradually develops as the fish reaches puberty. At least 75% of the local bred RRB has turquoise blue stripes from head to tail all over the whole body. There were also a few fishes with a pink body and green stripes.  

 
Like every other discus, the development of red color in RRB is entirely dependent on the amount of astaxanthin in its diet. It has a reddish brown body and deep red fins when fed with the beef heart and shrimp meat mixture. Those raised entirely on frozen bloodworms have a brown body and dull brownish red fins.

Pairing begins very early. The females start to lay eggs as early as 81/2 months after birth. An exceptional pair was able to raise their first brood when only 91/2 months old. While the hormone treated imports were difficult to breed, the local bred RRB offspring were prolific breeders. The biggest brood that I have seen is estimated to have 500 fry.

RRB is most beautiful at the early ago of 9-10 months. This variety ages very quickly. Wrinkles start to appear on the body when it is only 16-18 months old, which are especially deep and pronounced in breeders having raised several broods of young. Even though it looks old at two years, it can still live to the ripe old age of at least 5-6 years.

Another unique feature of RRB is a gray film which starts to develop on the whole fish at only 9-10 months after birth. This ugly film intensifies rapidly to cover up all the other beautiful colors of the fish to transform it into a gray discus when it is only two years old. At this age, all RRB is ugly, gray and wrinkled. Besides RRB, I have only seen this gray film in the F1 generation hybrids of Heckel Discus.

I was very keen to know how the Red Royal Blue was developed. I asked all my friends in Hong Kong but nobody knew anything about these beautiful discus. In 1984 I went to Bangkok together with Frank Hoff Jr. to study the fish. We visited several big hatcheries inside the city. I was able to see all the different types of RRB that were imported into Hong Kong in the previous years.

 
Star Aquarium was the most famous discus farm in Thailand at the time.  West Germany was their largest customer and for this reason, they had a German manager, Mr. Klaus Derwant from the early 1970s-'80s. It is a small facility with about 100 breeding pairs. Males have a long body while the females are round. They have wider, more vivid turquoise stripes, and redder body color than the normal RRB in other farms. In view of the different appearance, Star Aquarium's discus must be the hybrid of RRB and German discus.
 

Star Aquarium also has the special solid turquoise discus. They are all long body males having a lot of orange red streaks on the dorsal, anal fins and are placed inside community tanks when I was there. I saw a single brilliant male in a breeding tank with a Red Turquoise female but all the eggs were dead. This means Star Aquarium was unable to breed these solid turquoise males at that time.

There were two kinds of 5-6 cm discus in Star Aquarium. Miniature adults with vibrant turquoise stripes on an orange red body and also colorless brown youngsters. I saw a bottle of testosterone on a shelf that they were using to color up young discus for sale.

 
What are the ancestors of Red Royal Blue ? Mr. Virat, proprietor of White Crane Aquarium, told me they originated from wild discus imported in the late 1950s. The full body striation was developed gradually over many years of selection. The whole process took 12-15 years to complete.

RRB is a very unique variety with an abundance of melanophores. Heckel Discus from Rio Negro also has a large number of black cells in the skin. It is highly probable Heckel Discus is in the ancestry of the RRB. Royal Blues from regions west of the confluence of Rio Negro and Rio Solimões have always been rare. 60 or 70 years ago, the variety of fully striped wild discus that was the easiest to obtain should be Heckel Discus. The lower course of the Rio Madeira and Rio Negro are very close to Manaus. There is a good possibility some Heckel Discus were shipped together with other wild discus to Thailand for breeding.

What other discus are in the ancestry of Red Royal Blue? Thai breeders were mass producers in the 1950-'80s. They were breeding with any discus that could reproduce. Any wild discus available, Brown, Blue, Green or Heckel Discus must have been crossed with whatever other hybrids in their hatcheries. The result of such big mixtures of all discus species account for the exceptional fertility of RRB. The presence of Heckel Bar and the unique gray film is the evidence that Heckel Discus (S. discus Heckel, 1840) was used for hybridization. The appearance of red spots is a proof that Green Discus (S. tarzoo Lyons, 1959) was also involved in its development.

Some people believe RRB was used by German breeders to develop their Red Turquoise strains, including Dr. Schmidt-Focke. My breeding experience with a lot of German Red Turquoise does not support this theory; they do not produce offspring with a gray film.

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Thai breeders developed the Pigeon Blood and the 13 bar Snakeskin Discus from Red Royal Blue. Their genes are present in nealy all hybrid discus that are being bred around the globe nowadays.