Breeding discus fish

I have a pair of red ghost which have layed eggs,within a day the eggs were covered in a white fluffy growth I doubt if the eggs are any good but the male is still fanning them.I am unsure of what to do.should I take the eggs out or leave them?Finally I would like to say hI to everyone as I'm a new member.

 

it sounds like they've been gotten by fungus. I'd remove them. if you want to try & see what they do, remove them to a container filled with tank water (keeping the eggs in water). When they next lay eggs, you can try removing them (as usual, keeping them in water) to a container treated with:


Welcome to fishlore.

 

thanks,I agree most likely fungus .I will try the container and see what they do.cheers

it sounds like they've been gotten by fungus. I'd remove them. if you want to try & see what they do, remove them to a container filled with tank water (keeping the eggs in water). When they next lay eggs, you can try removing them (as usual, keeping them in water) to a container treated with:


Welcome to fishlore.
[/Thanks for advice,just letting you guys know I put fish back in community tank they laid again but the male ate them most likely because he felt frettend by the other fish,I will get it right sooner or later(I hope!) anyway thanks for the help and happy fish keepingquote]

 

Maybe you can take the fish out, including the proud parents, to a big bowl or something that you could cover while you moved the eggs out after their next spawn?

 

Yeah maybe,but its good to let the parents fan the eggs until they become wrigglers.I should put them back on their own but they sulk when moved to much.I love the photo's of your tanks you guys have posted keep up the good work.

 

Yeah maybe,but its good to let the parents fan the eggs until they become wrigglers.I should put them back on their own but they sulk when moved to much.I love the photo's of your tanks you guys have posted keep up the good work.

too bad the happy couple can't have their own tank to do their thing in. it sounds like the other fish are making it harder for you to get a successful spawn.
Thanks - we're working on our new fishblog too.. as I get time, I'll have pages with lots of pics for each fish and threads on all the fish.

 

I'll be watching out for that,by the way stupid question,what time is it where you are?I'm australian

 

BettaCouple is the man who never sleeps. Something to do with Vampire bettas or something. It's 1.17pm my time (Netherlands, Central European Time). Oh, and welcome to Fishlore, and I loooove Australia!

 

BettaCouple is the man who never sleeps. Something to do with Vampire bettas or something. It's 1.17pm my time (Netherlands, Central European Time). Oh, and welcome to Fishlore, and I loooove Australia!


Thanks,Yeah I'm gettin that impression with the vampire bettas LOL.It's 10.10pm here, and I'm lovin this forum you guys are all so friendly,been checkin out everyone's posts and they're really good!!!!!

 

Hello Nicole
and a 'late' welcome to fishlore! I just came across your posts. I wanted to tell you that I just love.. love..love the discus fish! they are so beautiful. I would love to have one of them in my 29 gallon tank,but not too sure if the tank is big enough for them. But I sure wish I could have one of my own. Ive checked out the discus photos in the fish photo section and fell in love with them.
How are your discus doing now? any new eggs as of yet??
~ kate

 

Thanks kate,I'm not to sure with the gallon measurements as I measure in litres to lazy to convert the measurements, I had to put the pair back in with the other discus they look like they are ready to lay but I don't think the eggs will last until I put them back on their own.I'm still learning and hopefully I will get it right one day soon,I would love to have some fry from this pair.Just letting you know if you do get a discus you will want more,they are very addictive

 

HI Nicole
Yes, I can see where they would be addictive! ;D When I look at all those beautiful salt water fish with the fabulous color combinations I wish I could do SW, but its a lot of work. The discus is as beautiful a fish as any Saltwater fish species and a great chance to have such a colorful fish in a Freshwater tank. good luck with your discus!! ;D

 

I'll be watching out for that,by the way stupid question,what time is it where you are?I'm australian

it was almost 7am here when you posted that post.

 

hI nicole!
can you put your discus' pic here?
I want to know how to determine gender

 

hI nicole!
can you put your discus' pic here?
I want to know how to determine gender

Hi, It's hard to determine sex until u actually have a pair that are spawning.Female have a tube for egg laying and male have a pointed small bump.Two female can also lay eggs and think they are a pair,the best way to tell is when they are spawning watch what they do,the male should be fertilising eggs while female is laying.I'll post pics for you but I don't think that will help you as I had trouble trying to take pic of underneath fish.Best of luck with your fish.
The female is the cropped pic.

 

Hello Nicole
and a 'late' welcome to fishlore! I just came across your posts. I wanted to tell you that I just love.. love..love the discus fish! they are so beautiful. I would love to have one of them in my 29 gallon tank,but not too sure if the tank is big enough for them. But I sure wish I could have one of my own. Ive checked out the discus photos in the fish photo section and fell in love with them.
How are your discus doing now? any new eggs as of yet??
~ kate

Yeah, Discus are really good-looking fish. If one day I have this huuuge tank. What's their personalities like? Are they as attaching as mollies or bettas?

 

I have a question here....
my discus.. 1of them is colorful and the other1 has a lot of patterns...
they are both big enough to breed I think.

Today when I move them to the new tank for breeding,
the colorful one is useing its mouth to "kiss" the side way of the tank and keep going up and down ...
wut does this mean?

 

I have 5 Discus fish in a 40 gallon tank and two of them have paired off and laid eggs on side of some sumatran driftwood. The eggs have now hatched and I was after any advice as this is the first time I have had Discus fish. The other 3 Discus are relatively young (two around 3" diameter and one is around 4.5" diameter). The parents are also only around 12 months old but fairly large (6+" diameter). I have taken the other fish I had in the tank and put in my other 40 gallon tank so the only other fish I now have in the tank are 6x corys which I don't think will be much of a threat to the new fry. Any advice that can be given would be much appreciated. I am aware that the fry have to be kept with the parents for several days as they feed off some sort of mucus on the parents bodies but above that I am a little clueless.

Thanks is advance. Dave.

 

So the only fish in the tank are the parents and the Corys. Right?
For now leave the fry with the parents and keep the water extremely clean.
Carol

 

No I also have three other Discus, two small (3") and one slightly larger (4.5"~) and the corys who don't seem interested in the fry. The parents keep chasing the other discus even though they don't seem particularly interested. I don't have the facility to remove the other 3 discus unfortunately.

 

I'll echo what Carol said. Here is a rough hatching timeline for a baby discus.

Day 1, Eggs laid, fertilized ones turn dark about 24+ hours later - hatches about 55 hours later
Day 3, Wrigglers
Day 5, Freeswimming (counted as day born)
Day 12, Eating BBS (one week old)
Day 18, Picking at Black Worms (CBW) (nearly 2 weeks old)
Day 23, still w/dad eating BBS, CBW
Day 25, eating CBW (nearly 3 weeks old)
Day 26, moved dad (3 weeks old)
Day 32, moved babies (4 weeks old)

Of course you can change out foods, but this is basically what you should be going with. Your basically going to want to start introducing them to new foods about the 2 week mark (Crushed flakes, crushed freeze dried worms, etc). Still small enough for them to eat it, but big enough for them to see. The BBS can be continued with the other feeding as well. The BBS isn't needed, but its a food that seems to really work well for getting the babies off the parents and on their own. You'll notice when they arn't feeding off the parents anymore, but I would move the fry out at about 2-3 week mark once you see them taking other foods. Some people leave them until about 4 weeks...but once they are eating on their own there's no reason they need to stay.

Hope I helped, feel free to ask more questions here or PM me.
BBS fouls the water pretty fast, so if you feed it be on top of water changes.

 

Thanks very much for the help. Just one question , what does BBS and CBW stand for? I seem to be at stage 3 at the moment, lots of wrigglers on the area where the eggs were layed. Have had other species fry previously but this is the first time my Discus have reproduced so is all new to me so any help you provide is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

 

You could look into getting a tank divider maybe if the other fish become an issue. Bbs is baby brine shrimp, not sure bout the other one.

 

BBS = Baby Brine Shrimp
CBW = California Black Worms (not needed and not as widely used anymore but still a decent food)

 

Ah thank for replies, will try the baby brine shrimp in around 10 days as am up to wrigglers stage at present. Any idea if the other Discus are likely to show any interest in munching the discus fry?

 

Hello!
I have roamed the internet searching for info on the dicus fish, and how to breed it. There is a lot of info, and different ways to do it. The purpose of this thread is, that I want to learn how to breed discus.

How do you treat the water?
What parameters do you measure, and how and why?
How often do you do wcs?
What kind of food, do you feed the fry?
When do you remove the fry from the parents?

I have read alot, but nothing that makes me confident enough to try it. So please let me know, how you do it, the pifalls etc.
I'm not currently owning any discus, but I definitely will in the future.

Thankful for replys.

 

Try to get your hands on cheap discus. You can find them usually at swaps. Not sure about your area but typically $10-15 should be a good starter per discus.

Ive heard mix stories about ph. Some say they require low ph to spawn, others tell stories of tapwater. Id use ro water with kent's ro right.

Planted aquariums are best. Keeps the water at 0/0/0

fry will eat parent's slime coat till free swimming and usually parents are great care takers

 

https://www.fishlore.com/aquariumfishforum/threads/best-filtration-for-discus.147688/

https://www.fishlore.com/aquariumfishforum/threads/discus-care-sheet.11955/





A few links of interest above while you wait for more responses.

Ken

 

Discus keeping is a very steep learning curve. Before considering breeding, learn about keeping them. Most discus keepers purchase minimum 5 juvies to start from a high quality breeder.

Your raise them in a barebottom 29 Gallon breeder. While you are raising them, you need to change out the water 100% 1 or 2x a day. Some change even more. You feed them lots of high quality food throughout the day.

If you want to skip the above, buy two adults who are a pair. They will be happy in a 55 gallon planted tank. You may not want to breed them when you learn the work that is involved.

 

Yes, you would probably have to build a type of system for it. I was wondering, how do you measure hardness of the water. I don't really understand, I've read that there's two types of hardness?
Thanks for replys.

 

Yes, you would probably have to build a type of system for it. I was wondering, how do you measure hardness of the water. I don't really understand, I've read that there's two types of hardness?
Thanks for replys.

If you are not interested in breeding, you don't need to worry about water hardness. Discus live just fine in hard or soft water. My discus are in hard water and 8.2 alkalinity. They laid eggs in this type of water too, although I did not get to the wriggler stage. I'm not interested in breeding.

If you really want to breed them, they will need to be kept in their own 40G breeder with RO water. As mentioned above, you can add salts like Kents RO Right, or something similar. Pure RO does not contain enough minerals for discus or any other fish for that matter.

Breeding discus is not a money making venture either. You will spend more time, energy growing up baby discus than it's worth. People do it because they love their fish and it's just another part of the hobby.

 

You have to learn how to keep them alive and look after them properly.
Keeping discus is really hard, takes a lot of time, effort and maintenance if you want to reach full potential and growth of the fish.
If you get baby discuses you need to keep them on the own or with fish that won't stress them out. Discus do get stressed very easy.

Then you need to feed them with high protein food 4-6 times a day. do at least 30% water changes eather daily or every second day to avoid ammonia spikes, still depends what sort of filtration you will have.
For juvI discus it takes up to 18 months until they reach sexual maturity.

You need to keep your ph stable idealy 6.5 to 7 but slowly fish can adapt to higher level of ph but egs would not hatch on high ph.
You must have ApI master test kit and KG and GH test kit to determine most acurate water parameters.
Also discus prefer deep tank preferebly with real plants and driftwood.

If you can handle this and have a lot of time for all care that discus require than at the end it is rewarding having them.

I have learned my leason on a hard way but at the end of the day when someone comes to my place and see what I have in my aquarium is left speecless. Discuses are just amazing.

 

Okay, I was thinking of a type of dripsystem and sump to eliminate wcs. Do you guys ever use peat, I was thinking that I would have a regular filter in the sump, peat, carbon filter and just build it myself. However I don't really know how much peat effects the water parameters such as ph, hardness. Does anybody have experience with this type of system? And how peat effects the waterparameters in a generell way?
Thanks for replys

 

Peat does lowers ph on a long term. It does releases tanins and tanins lower Ph.
What is your aquarium / tap ph? if it is below 6.5 it might be better not to use peat, but more experienced feeshceepers will give you better advise.
I don't know much about sump filtering as I have 2 canisters for 80g tank and 8x water turnaround.

 

My tap is 7.2, but I'm just discussing my future discus tank or tanks. I want to get as much as info as I can, to achieve my goal. Wich is succesfully owning dicsus, and maybe breed them. The wcs and feeding is overwelming for breeding though...
If you do wcs, that water going in the tank has to have the same parameters as the water in the tank, which would be difficult to obtain. How do you guys do that?

 

Try to get your hands on cheap discus. You can find them usually at swaps. Not sure about your area but typically $10-15 should be a good starter per discus.

Ive heard mix stories about ph. Some say they require low ph to spawn, others tell stories of tapwater. Id use ro water with kent's ro right.

With all due respect, if you buy Cheap Discus ($10-$15) that is exactly what you will get. Cheap, stunted, Discus.
RO water is a toss up, if you really get into Breeding then you may see the need for it, but Domestic Discus have come a long way and will breed in tanks with PH from 6.5 to 8. Ro more than anything helps with the Hatch rate.

To the OP with that said, I would fully involve yourself in Keeping Discus first. then when you feel you have achieved success with that, Breeding will be much easier to understand. JMO

 

With all due respect, if you buy Cheap Discus ($10-$15) that is exactly what you will get. Cheap, stunted, Discus.
RO water is a toss up, if you really get into Breeding then you may see the need for it, but Domestic Discus have come a long way and will breed in tanks with PH from 6.5 to 8. Ro more than anything helps with the Hatch rate.

To the OP with that said, I would fully involve yourself in Keeping Discus first. then when you feel you have achieved success with that, Breeding will be much easier to understand. JMO

100% agree with everything said. Especially about cheap discus, sorry but that's bad advice....good discus cost money, sorry that's life there's a reason for it. You get what you pay for. Use RO tap mix if anything, never just RO. KEEP IT STABLE, that's the most important key. Don't jump into breeding headfirst if you've never kept them before. Breeding is fairly easy after keeping them, they almost do it on their own if the conditions are good....raising fry is where it gets hard.

 

Thanks for the advice! How do you guys prepare water for wcs?

 

Thanks for the advice! How do you guys prepare water for wcs?

Drip system for adult discus will work if you don't get lazy and still vacuum the bottom of tank at least once a week.

If you use drip, you don't need to do anything to the water if the water goes through a two stage filter that contains carbon. The carbon will soak up any chlorine and chloramine before it hits your tanks. Since you are not putting the water through an RO filter, the hardness and PH of your water stays the same.

Don't mess with the PH of your water since yours is in the 7 range. That's fine for any discus and breeding too.

Peat or almond leaves is great for softening and lowering PH, but I wouldn't add anything to your filter until you've successfully set it up and cycled it. It will tank at least a month to cycle your tank.

If you are planning a planted tank, I suggest buy adults since you won't have to feed them as much and the water changes and cleaning is far less.

 

I would probably go with buying juvenile discus, and buying 10 to put in a 450 liters or something like that. Do barebottom for a couple of months, than when they become adults, I will go for a aquascaped tank. Could you elaborate on the two stage carbon filter?
Very thankful for the replys!