Guests & Judges
Bernd Degen will be our principle judge at this years show and will also be giving a lecture.
As early as 1972 Bernd began his journey with discus. In 1974 Bernd imported his first wild discus and also started to breed discus. For more than 30 years he has been infected by the “discus fever”.
In 1984 Bernd published his first book on discus from his own publishing house, bede-Verlag. He is now the most read discus author in the world. Bernd’s publishing house now produces over 300 titles all related to the pet industry.
Bernd was a hugely successful commercial discus breeder up until 1992, selling many of his discus to Asian countries.
Bernd is a very well respected discus judge and receives many invitations from around the world to give lectures and to judge discus.
Cüneyt Birol has again agreed to be one of our judges. Cüneyt has helped us with some excellent suggestions in setting up this years judging criteria, it is co-operation like this that allows us to continually improve, and we are very grateful to him.
Cüneyt has been an aquarist for 40 years and 25 of those years with discus. Cüneyt is one of the founders of the official Discus Club in Turkey and he also owns the largest Discus group on Facebook with over 1,900 members! He has completed the Discus Club (Singapore) training course and is one of their 5 certified judges. The course was given by Andrew Soh amongst others.
Cüneyt has judged at the following shows:
- 1st Turkish Discus Championships
- 2nd British Discus Show (2009)
- Shaquaria 2010 in Shanghai, China where he also gave a lecture on Discus Breeding & Keeping in Turkey
After judging at our show Cüneyt will be judging at the 1st International Show at Indonesia, Petfish at Philippines and also Aquarama 2011 in May.
Jörg Stendker will also be judging for us again and will also be giving a lecture.
In 1965 Heinz Stendker began with just four discus fish and laid the foundations of the professional discus breeding, by chance, the two pairs started to breed and within 6 months about 1,000 discus were hatched.
Very soon after the "discus fever" had grabbed Heinz his two sons, Jörg and Volker, also got "discus fever".
Jörg Stendker's hobby became a profession in 1986 by starting a fish hall of 200 square meters with about 500 aquariums. Step by step the breeding became bigger and bigger and Heinz Stendker and Volker Stendker joined in as their main jobs.
At any one time they have more than 200,000 discus fish in stock!
The company Diskuszucht Stendker GmbH & Co. KG was founded by Jörg Stendker and Volker Stendker in summer 1998.
Sadly Sid Adams has passed away.
Bosse Quiding has been a aquarist since he was 15 years old and has kept most of the fishes in our hobby except those from the sea. When the Nyasa (now Malawi) cichlids arrived all over the world around 1963-64 he was the first in the world to breed Pseudotropheus elongatus.
Bosse started keeping discus in 1964 and despite a few setbacks has, since 1966, always had discus fish. He has been successful in breeding wild greens and blues/browns and many of the domestic forms. In November 2006 Bosse was in Amazonas on Rio Negro where he caught Symphysodon Heckel. Whilst he could not bring them home, it did convince him to start keeping the wild caught forms again.
Bosse is a founding member of the Nordic Discus Society.
In 2010 Bosse judged at the 8th International Discus Championships in Duisburg and after judging at our show will be judging in Amsterdam in October of this year.