Good post Niko. I love Discus when they are young and growing.

Be forwarned. re Discus. make sure you have a compatible Pair of the same strain i.e
1 - Don't try to crossbreed.it will produce a good number of runts and they will not grow on.
2- Be wary of buying Poven pairs. there are no such gauantees
3 - If they do breed be prepared to Cull heavily.

There are a lot of Young Discus on the market at cheap prices, but these are tending to be imature & runts, they do not put on any bulk.
You can but a pair that have spawned and produced young' but that does not gaurantee that they will breed in your tank.

Apart from that the best of luck

Thanks for the update.

The parents if they are the real parents are truly beautiful brood stock, if Discus look that good I would sincerely re consider keeping them again, keeping discus fry in a gravel tank with such big gravel with angels needs more input from other members as I am in shock and speechless.

I agree Sean, but as he said he was moving them to a new tank I was giving him the benfit of the doubt. Gravel is a death trap and a disaster waiting to hapen, a fine springkling of sand is o.k as Discus like to blow the food. and is more hygenic . I doubt if the two shown are the parents as one is a red and the other looks like a blue diamond, the answer to his question about the diference in growth rate raises the issue of runts/crossbreeds. where culling should have taken place.
What happens to the ones he dosn't want??? a waste of a good fish!!!!

I do not why you end up with conclusions when there are aren't!!! I breed a number of fish from cichlids to Bettas and never crosses my mind to cull or to get rid of any unwanted fish. They either end up in good homes or in my spare tanks. i cull only the deformed or any sick fish beyond treatment. I could post some pictures of Discus which I pick up from lfs which otherwise would end up as fish food.

In this case, as you can read my original posts, I had no choice but this tank. As to your doubts as to their parents, I can send you an email to the breeder and verify with her. You would do me a favour if she replies to your emails.

Cheers

Don't get up tight Niko
I have been keeping & breeding Discus for over 50 years!!!!! I'm trying to offer advice. The reason to cull is to protect the strain, if you are not prepared to Cull you should not breed them. as I said there are a lot of runts and under developed young Discus coming on the Market. These will never grow to size. Remember what you said "They all eat ravenously some are twice the size of others" there is your answer, Lets say for easy numbers - If I have a spawn of say 100 eggs - 20 are infertile leaves 80. 10 are runts/ deformed /underdevloped. down to 70. over the next 4 to 6 weeks I loose another 20 (called the 6 week syndrome)when some are lost for varying reasons (usualy unknown they just keel over) that gets it down to 50. out of those half make it to a good size and have good finage and colouring. eat well and continue to put on Bulk. then I am lucky. that leaves 25 that are not of a good standard and will never fully develope to there oroginal strain. These should be culled and not passed on as they could breed and produce a weak strain. Any breeder of any fish that is worth his salt will only keep to the original strain
Why for goodness sake would some one cross say a Blue Diamond with a Red Leopard. or a Royal Blue with a Red Scribble, Thats how the Butterfly strain developed.A mutation and Totaly unacceptable. Don't get uptight and always be prepared to listen.

Although I have limited experience of breeding any fish I agree with Russell
There is no point in keeping runts alive, I did this once with mollies that bread in a community tank, I saved as many babies as I could and never thought of the possibility that it could be a bad idea. The babies grew but never grew to full size and had unattractive coloring so I was left with a lot of mollies that I didn’t want and a fish shop would not want either these fish did not seem healthy and most died for no obvious reason. If this was to happen again I would leave the babies in the tank as good nutrition for the rest of the fish and if any survived I would see it as survival of the fittest. It’s the circle of life it happens for a reason.
Just my 2 cents

LB

great thread niko its good to see the different stages of development of both the tank and the fish. keep up the hard work.

As promised I started moving some of Discus to other tanks. I removed the first four of the less developed to a larger 200 litre tank. They have been there for the last 4 days and they seem to be stressed by the move. Though, they are not that dark in clour but they seem not to be eating. I added their usual food i.e. Ocean Nutrition high protein flake food, blood worms and the usual treat of beefheart but with no success. I think that it will take some more days to adapt to the new environment. Next month another batch will move to the new 400 litre tank which will be setup for Discus and Ramirezi (though not sure about their behaviour with Discus)