DISCUS BREEDING BASICS - a beginners guide.

From my experience, breeding at an early age does tend to slow their growth down, however, this first batch may well vanish in the community tank, so won't be much of a problem.

I'd give them a few more months of growing time in the community tank before moving them to a breeding tank of their own.

Methylene blue is only used if the parents don't clean their eggs properly, and you're having problems with fungus developing. It's often used by breeders who take the eggs from the parents (as in angel fish) to hatch them in a separate tank. Angel parents are notorious egg eaters and the eggs can be hatched and the fry raised quite successfully on their own. Unlike discus, angel fry don't feed off the slime coat on their parents' body.

It can prevent discus parents developing a proper slime coating to feed their fry, so if you are going to use it, then only use it on the day the eggs are laid, and add carbon to the filter after 2 days to remove all the meth blue, and give the parents a chance to develop a slime coat.

Personally I don't use it on discus. I find that if you lower the pH slightly, to around 6, fungus isn't a problem.

Hi Merrilyn,

First of all very nice article!

I am having a major problem in raising the babies past the 3-4wk mark. They have been eating perfecting until they reach 2cm mark and start fall off in big numbers at a time. Water changes are done daily with aged water and feeding them BBS, microworms and crushed color bits.

Recently i have microscoped one of the babies and found they were smothered with Flukes all around their gills. Parents are always treated with Potassium Permanganate regularly, but seem to also come back. Why is this?

Is there a way of treating these babies?

What can i treat them with and the dosage?

Is keeping the parents clean from flukes the only way to raise discus fry successfully?

Thanks :(
Tyce

Hi Tyce. Gill flukes are a major cause of fry deaths, especially in the 3 to 6 week period when most fry are being weaned off the parents.

I've found the only way to ensure good survival rates is to make sure the parents are as clean as possible before going into the breeding tanks, with two consecutive treatments of gill and body fluke medication then straight into a sterilized breeding tank. The filter you use will have to be cycled using a fishless cycle because any flukes or eggs in the filter media will immediately be transferred to your breeding tank.

Everything needs to be as clean as possible, and I would even take the precaution of adding a UV sterilizer to the tank.

I have heard of strains of gill flukes that needed extreme measures, using very high concentrations (under the guidance of a vet) before the breeding stock was clean.

Hi Merrylin,

I am very pleased that in the last week my blue diamonds have decided to pair up in my community tank and had a batch of eggs which they cared for two nights before eating them on the third night :( Now I have the bug for trying to get some fry and even my wife has become interested!!

Excuse my ignorance but could you please explain how to do a fishless tank cycle as mentioned in previous post???

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rheemas

Excuse my ignorance but could you please explain how to do a fishless tank cycle as mentioned in previous post???

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http://www.discusforums.com/forum/vi...r=asc&&start=0

http://www.discusforums.com/forum/vi...ishless#128559

Enjoy :wink:

Clear ammonia is my preferred method as it is "cleaner" and seems more sterile to me than a prawn but I haven't been able to find any for some time, if anyone does find it please post or pm me where it's available :ug

It seems that pure ammonia was taken off the market after the disaster of 9/11. I haven't been able to find any since then. It's supposed to be an ingredient in bomb making or something.

Anyway, end result, it's no longer available so we have to use something that gives off a large ammount of ammonia to start the cycle.

A decomposing dead prawn does the job very nicely, and is easily available. Definitely not as scientific as the pure ammonia method, because you can't control the amount of ammonia released, but it does work, and you will achieve the same result. A fully cycled filter !

After all, it's the filter that we want to cycle, not necessarily the tank. Although some bacteria do live on the hard surfaces of the inside of the tank, the majority of the bacteria are in the filter itself.

Ammonia is their food, they need both food and oxygen to survive. Remove the food (in other words the ammonia) and the bacteria colony will die off, so once your tank is cycled, and you are getting zero ammonia, zero nitrite and a good reading of nitrate, then drain the tank, clean down the sides and refill with clean aged water. Restart your filter (do all this fairly quickly or your bio colony will die from lack of oxygen) and you're ready to add all your fish.

No need to wait and add a few at a time. You can safely add all the fish at once and your filter will cope.

Hello everyone just a couple of questions. I have a breeding pair of discus that are awesome fish they breed all the time but this week is a big nightmare for me. I have 2 lots of there babies around 140 from 6 weeks to 10 weeks of age fish from 2 batches in seperate tanks and took the parents away.

But the parents cureently have babies on them at 5 days old and guess what she has laided about another 100+ egss.

What should I do the babaies are way to young to take of the oparents but the eggs are due to hatch by late tomorrow night.

Please throw some info I have never heard of this.

Thanks
Jimmy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Merrilyn

<snip>

A decomposing dead prawn does the job very nicely, and is easily available. Definitely not as scientific as the pure ammonia method, because you can't control the amount of ammonia released, but it does work, and you will achieve the same result. A fully cycled filter !

After all, it's the filter that we want to cycle, not necessarily the tank. Although some bacteria do live on the hard surfaces of the inside of the tank, the majority of the bacteria are in the filter itself.<snip>

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Hi,

I'm reading up on fishless cycling to learn the technique before setting up my new tank, and I'd started to twig that establishing the bacteria colony in the filter (rather than the tank) was the idea.

So my question (forgive me if it's just plain silly), so why does the tank need to be involved at all? Why wouldn't you attach the filter to (eg) a bin full of water and chuck the prawn in the bin to cycle the filter if that's the target? This would save draining and refilling the tank (and removing prawn remains...).

The bacteria colony could then be 'fed' for as long as necessary until the filter was transferred to a (stocked) tank.

Would that work?

Thanks,
Doug

The tank doesn't need to be involved at all, I have some sponge filters in a large plastic storage container right now cycling away. I cycled my last sponge in a bucket and it worked great.

Hi,

I am proud to say I now have my first batch of 20 day old discus (about 60 in total) :D . I had to remove the male on the 13th as he was becoming quite agressive to the female. I then removed the female on the 14th as she got eaten alive once the male was gone and could not take any more nibbling!

I have been feeding the babies on frozen baby brine shrimp 3 times a day (1/2 cube per feed) and only lost one small individual to date. I was wondering if this amount of food is sufficent or if I need something else as well now?

The babies are about 10mm long after 20 days - is this growth rate about right?