Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
discus fry in community tank
- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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I see a choc gourami eyeing up the 'local' interest.
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- andrewo (andrew)
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- Gedas (Gediminas Derkintis)
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Gedas
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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Yesterday I moved one pair of honey gouramis into a tank with small discus and hatchets just whilst I'm changing tanks around.....and the pair went mad breeding: hatchet fish loved the action on the surface of the water.

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- wastegate (Joseph Farrell)
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You know you're addicted to fishkeeping when...you spend €200 to accomodate a €5 fish.
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- Zoom (Zoom)
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- BillG (Bill Gray)
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Hopefully some of them survive for you
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- ghart (Greg Hart)
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They do need to be separated from the community as in my tank the Rummynose tetras dart in and eat the fry when the discus parents are not close by.

Keep us updated on the fry progress.
Greg
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- paulcavan (Paul Gileoold)
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- davey_c (dave clarke)
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Below tank is for sale
my plywood tank build.
www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php/forum...k-build-diary#137768
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- Melander (Andreas Melander)
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Congrats on the spawns Chris and thanks for sharing the videos!
Hopefully the parents are learning and feel secure enough that the little ones will live on this time, keep us posted!
Melander
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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Sometimes, you get to see some great behaviour when you leave fish to breed in a community tank.....and not just from the breeding fish, but from others as well.
Croaking and chocolate gouramis are demons for super speed in diving in to get fry off others (butter would not melt in their mouths, but they show themselves to be real predators when fry are around).
I've watched harems of emperor tetras work as team with a leader in grabbing eggs and fry off big angels and the like. Emperor tetras appear to be one of more intelligent tetras: it would take a very good set of parents to fend off emperors.
Keep us updated, and see what colours you get in the fry. The mottled parent simply throws in many unknowns in genetics at this stage....they may be unraveled when you see the colours in the fry.
ian
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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There are times when a specimen discus might be simply too aggressive to keep with other fish though.
I keep discus in 'pair-only', 'species-only' and in mixed community tanks. And have done that for 40 years.
People often say that discus are 'boring'. They are far from it....they are cichlids, and they show cichlid behaviour.
Discus are not like chameleons in being loners (chameleons get stressed when they see anything else that is not food); much of their natural behaviour is a reflection that the fish are used to being surrounded by other species of fish and other discus. If it weren't then discus would not have such an advanced behaviour.
I had a pairing-off a few years ago in a discus/cardinal tetra community tank that actually fooled me somewhat.
There was a pair of discus (male and female) who would always hang around together and push all other fish away.
One day there were eggs on the internal filter, and the same 'pair' where in their usual stance of hanging-out and pushing everyone else around. So, I was going to remove all other fish when suddenly I noticed something....... the female always hanging around with the male doing all the bullying was not actually the female who had laid the eggs (she did not have her sex organs clearly showing, and was not doing anything to look after the eggs directly). The female who had actually laid the eggs (she had her sex organs clearly showing) was being kept segregated in a corner.
If I hadn't double checked, then I could have separated the fish leaving the wrong 'pair'. Anyway, with only the real parents left in the tank both took to looking after the eggs.....but they are crap parents and too aggressive to be with any other fish nowadays.
Funny old fish really.
@Draco...so with that little anecdote....back to your story...
ian
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