Discus

First of all I want to stress that I never bred Discus before.

The ideas behind this little project were to try to breed Discus and show that it’s not as difficult as it may seem. To obtain offspring of so called AA grade, which is the best shape, colour and health(at least in theory).

The fish are not mine as I don’t keep Discus. Friend of mine is long term Discus enthusiast and the pair is from his stock.

The male is Red-White and the female is White Butterfly. The male was brought from Poland and the female is import from Asia bought from England.

I know that the choice of different colour strains might seem poor but in this case it should work well(I hope). Also both fish have very nice round shape.

The water I used was from RO filter with not very new media KH-2, GH-3, pH-7, filtered through turf filter media(sera I think) for few days. After that It stabilized at KH-0, GH-3, pH-6.5.

There is loads of info on breeding Discus and what and when is happening with eggs and larvae. It’s well described and documented, including what to do when the fry is not feeding from the parents(which was the issue in this case).

The parents didn't tend to larvae properly when they started to swim and I had to feed them artificially. I used liquifry no1 diluted and fed through dark air stone(wit use of small syringe). The fry was attracted to the dark colour and was “sitting” on the stone and feeding from it.

Fortunately after two days the parents took over (mostly male as he is darker) and the fry started to feed from their skin, which should happened from the beginning.

I think two things happened here. The parents are somewhat bright colouration and the fry is attracted to dark surfaces(adults usually get darker when they breed). The parents weren't producing the feeding mucus yet and the fry couldn't “smell it”.

After first week I started to feed newly hatched brine shrimp and micro worms in massive quantities. The fish were practically swimming in food most of the time.

After 2 weeks I started to feed very finely grated beef hart and chicken breast, crushed tetra prima, continuing with brine shrimp and micro worms.

Today is the end of third week since they started to swim. I culled all the abnormalities I could see. The water changes are 25-30% daily with use of tap water KH-4, GH-6, pH-7(started after week one). The fry is over 1cm now. It is no different than with other fish species I breed at this stage. Just routine of good feeding and keeping the tank clean.

Your some boyo Bart
Fair play,you seem to make fish breeding easy
Well done!

Good stuff Bart! Keep us posted with pics too.....

Gonefishy wrote:

Good stuff Bart! Keep us posted with pics too.....

Think I'm having an issue with my ipad as in think you included pics but I just can't see any....

Cheers
Will keep updates on this as usual

well done mate im gonna be trying meself soon fingers it turns out as good as yours

nelsondls wrote:

well done mate im gonna be trying meself soon fingers it turns out as good as yours

Good luck. Just remember that you need your water bang on for eggs to develop properly

8 weeks old now
Feed on beef hart, prawns, white worms, mix of dry food
Water changes are 30% daily
The size varies from 2.5 to 4.5cm with only a few from the extremes. Most are 3.5cm

Well done Bart. Cannot see pics though

thanks mate what ph would u recommend for a breeding thank if u dont mind me asking ive been watching a lot of videos and the ph levels seem to vary from video to video i bought a ph buffer yhat keeps the ph level at 7.2 do u think that will be ok

Actually none of the eggs hatched until i got the pH down to about 6.5. Another important thing is to have carbonated hardness KH(german scale) down to at least 3 or even lower. Defo forget about using pH buffer, that actually adds to KH. All u need is RO water filtered through peat media for about a week.

The fry are growing nicely(around 5cm now)
I quit the beef hart after doing large research on what to feed them
The food mix is based on chicken, fish and crustacean meat with some chickpeas, spinach, Sera vitamins(fishtamin)
In the meantime i managed to obtain fry from other pairs

Look at them, they have grow a lot. For sure has to be a lot of work.

I like how you put all the tanks together

Another small update
The growth rate slowed down somehow

nice!

Fair play Bart just ordered a book on discus.i read that the dark band on the skin is getting bred out of some discus and the fry find it hard to locate parents.Band around mouth area,correct me if I'm wrong.So your dark bright theory is spot on.

A lot of the bright colors are brought up artificially, there is loads of videos in the net showing how asian breeders artificially feed newly hatched discus. It causes parental instinct to disappear tho. It happened with fancy angel fish long time ago.

I decided to revive this post
Finally after long time of preparation(mostly waiting until they pair up) i got me nice pair of leopards

I have another one, just paired up (san merah), fingers crossed.

Very nice looking pair,

how did you get on with babies??

Any joy with San Merah??

This batch is gone by now. New one is growing. San Merah unfortunately not so good. They are spawning on regular basis and successfully getting wigglers to swimming stage, but both parents don't secrete the feeding slime and fry are dead within 24 hours.
It's young pair so be batient is all i can do

Yeah, when the pair is young, it can take them a bit of time...

But fry shouldn't die that quick, I had situation few times that fry are not attaching for 3-4 days, some of them do died, but some still attached after 4 days...

But pair will learn, they will get better at it..