My first spawn!

[v8extra]

Hello to all,

I am writing this post to receive any type of advice, because it is my first time trying to reproduce those kingly beasts.

Listen to that:

I moved my couple last friday (they have neverr breed before One blue diamond and one red turc SS), in a 90g bare tanks with only few branches of driftwood (help reducing pH, but it is quite dark), and 4 corys (which I put in there so that they would eat the food excess).

Sunday, I forgot to close my house window and in the next morning I realised that my tank has drop temperature by 4°C. So in that morning, I closed the windows and manage to slowly get the temperature back to 29°C.

On Monday night, guess what my discus are giving me the dance, heavy cleaning, they even layed there first egg right before my very novice eyes. It was an astonishing show. A fantastic experience.

This morning, I look more closely at the patch of eggs, I thing there may be 200 eggs... They are all deep orange in color, and for a lot of them I can distinguish that a very small section of each egg is whiteish. Is that normal

My water is at 29°C since the spawn, nitrate is at 10 ppm, ph is around 7 or 7.1, Kh, Gh 120 ppm (i know this one is high). The 90g tanks is almost full, and I have a eheim classic 2217 filter running, plus one set of 2 T8 neons on top of the tanks.

What should I do to improve my chance of successfully see these little wigglers hatch and survive...

TY to all in advance

[Merrilyn]

Welcome to the forum, and congratulations on your success.

If your eggs are bright orange with a small dot on the centre, then that sounds like they are fertile. Infertile eggs turn completely white within 24 to 48 hours.

Ninety gallons is a fairly large tank for a breeding pair. The danger is that the fry will get lost and not be able to find the parents once they become free swimming.

You can help by putting in a partition to divide the tank in half, and make the breeding area a bit smaller, and also by dropping the water level, once again to reduce the amount of room in which the fry can become lost.

Their little brain is programmed head for the darkest thing in the tank, which is usually their parents. Now, you have a piece of driftwood in the tank, which I assume is a fairly dark brown. You may find that the fry hang around the dark driftwood and don't attach properly to the parents.
If that happens, remove the driftwood once the fry are free swimming, so that they have no other dark object in the tank, and hopefully they will attach to the parents and begin feeding.

Good luck.

You've done very well with your first pair. :P

[v8extra]

Thanks for the hint,

Yerterday, I decided to act like a purist, I did like it was mentionned in the forum, I removed everything, except for the small piece of wood the eggs are on, I took out the corydoras, I plug into my 2017 eheim input a very large foam to reduce direct flow, and prevent the babies from getting absorbed.

I even if the eggs have not hatched yet I was planning to simply siphon the crap out of the tank slowly, therefore reducing the amount of water in the tank, futhermore I will add peat moss in my filter today to lower the ph and improve mucus production.

My only concern right now is that I dont have a sponge filter but only an classic eheim 2017 shall I reduce the output flow even if the filter not made for that. If I reduce the flow I will simply, close a little bit the valves used to unplug the filters...

Cheers and thanks...

[v8extra]

Yup thanks to all my great ideas of perfection, today, all the eggs were gone, eaten...

Stupid me I am sure I did stress up my fish, when I did remove all the drift wood... But at least is was a good thing, there was crap all under it...

So I am now ready for round two.

The tanks is now a real bare bottom, with only the small pale branch the spawn over.

In one or two day I will put my home made breeding cone in.

It is one large clay pot plus another one on top makes a nice cone.

I decided to glue another pot on top. In that last one I will put a echinodorus that will put shade over the cone. And relax my discus a bit.

Any hits regarding the lighting system...

Cheers...