A pet passion

Hairdresser Kevin Pitt enjoys breeding fish as a hobby

It's hard these days to find a good hairdresser, but even harder to find one who loves breeding fish. Kevin Pitt is a South African hair colourist who comes from a family of game-rangers.

He was introduced to this hobby about two years ago. Since then, Pitt has bred and sold 12 varieties of discus, an Amazon fish.

"When my friend was leaving he just gave me 100 of these fish and I was forced to educate myself. No one in Dubai has much information about discus," reminisces Pitt.

He finds fish, in general, to be graceful and beautiful, especially the discus. Each fish is about five to six inches in length, and he sometimes has a 100 of these in a huge 100-gallon tank.

Says Pitt: "It is quite a specialised hobby. The main problem is to create a stable balance in the water. The water needs to be acidic to a certain level. Breeding this kind of fish is a real challenge. It needs constant supervision."

Pitt has turned one of his bedrooms into a fish room. He has 20 tanks at home. Some are just for breeding pairs while others are community tanks. Getting the pair to breed is quite a task, but even tougher is rearing the babies to adulthood.

"At any one time, there could be 250 to 300 babies. These attach themselves close enough to the parents to be able to eat the slime that comes off the latter's bodies. After two weeks, the babies are ready to move on to another diet," explains Pitt.

For the babies, shrimp eggs are bought and hatched. Pitt also prepares special food made of good quality shrimps for the bigger fish. The water in each of the tanks has to be changed daily.

To help him achieve the perfect level of acidity in the water, Pitt bought a reverse osmosis water purifier from Belgium. This filters the water through an extremely fine membrane and removes all the trace elements of salt.

The fish are called discus because of their shape. They are very round but flat in the body. Pitt sells them to some pet shops and to private parties, but keeps the best pairs for breeding.

He judges them on their shape (the rounder the better), the redness of the eyes and the intensity of their colour. Some of the types that Pitt breeds are blue diamond, snakeskin, pigeon-blood and the golden discus.

He suggests that if you are going to breed them it is best to concentrate on one particular colour and type of fish. But as far as keeping them goes, the different coloured discus may be mixed. They have a life span of between four and eight years if looked after well.

For Pitt breeding fish is a passion. He sometimes works into the early morning hours looking after his fish. Next on his breeding list is another Amazon fish called the oscars. The only complication is that the discus and the oscars cannot be kept together in the same tank as the latter will eat the former.

But fish aren't the only thing that Pitt looks after. His love for all animals has made him take in pets whose owners didn't want them or were leaving the country. At present, Pitt is housing nine dogs, two Sphinx cats, some iguanas, lizards and a squirrel.

He even had a python till recently, which he just managed to find a nice home for. Whether it's the animals you want to shelter or find out more about discus, you can call Kevin Pitt on 050-7704459.