Breeding Discus
Many consider the discus as one of the most difficult fish to keep in the hobby. That notion might be true when you want to breed with these fish but they aren’t that difficult when you want to keep them in a community tank. Besides, anybody ever seen a discus with white spot syndrome or fungal infection?
A discus is a very sturdy and resilient fish when you keep him in the right conditions, in the many years that I have kept and bread these fish, it never happened to me so why is it such a problem to keep these or even breed these with success?
Often the case can be found with the owner. The discus is a fish that needs to have a quit tank with sufficient hiding spots in the form of large plants and driftwood. The companions in a community tank with discus fish should be calm and not erratic nor aggressive. The discus is a jittery fish that needs a calm environment to thrive. I have had a tank for years with only six fully grown discus (the aquarium was 2 meters in length) and a shoal of about 100 Cardinal Tetra fish, that was it. Imagen, I kept only 2 species in a tank of 500 litres.
A true show to see! My discus swam slowly back and forth, followed by a cloud of blue from the Cardinal Tetra fish who followed peacefully behind them. Where can you find a tank with two or tree species of fish? Many want to keep a complete collection of different species of fish and however beautiful in the beginning, it won’t be long before the problems will occur.
Back to the discus. He likes soft, slightly acidic water with a pH of 6 to 6.5 and a DH of 10. This water can be filtered on peat. I never really fed my discus with live foods such as red mosquito larvae as these sometimes contain disease or bacteria. I did give them on a weekly basis enchytraeid which I cultured myself.
Buying Discus
When buying, pay attention to the fish and their colour, making sure they aren’t dark, blackish and make sure they aren’t swimming with their fins closed. Clamped fins aren’t a good sign. The fish should give a healthy look, swim around calmly with its fins open and be sure there are no signs of flagellate parasite infection which can be seen near the head of the fish.
Discus tank
The most important is to look out there is no white stringy faeces hanging out of the vent and sometimes jelly looking. It’s a common disease with Discus and often mistreated for worms. Once taken hold it is next to impossible to get the discus back to full health and because it is very contagious being bacteria. If the faeces are black than there is no need to worry. By itself, this parasite is not on the fish so the only way of getting it is by contamination with water or from another discus. Always take care when introducing new discus in your tank (organise a quarantine) and only buy them from respected breeders.
Another attention point is that Discus fish can eat the entire day. These fish eat a lot but they eat slowly so pay attention that the fish actually get a change to eat when kept with quick feeders. If they can’t eat sufficient and in a calm environment, the fish will go into hiding and withers away until nearly blackened. Once a Discus is colouring dark or black, usually this a very bad sign and in most cases it’s too late to save the fish. When feeding make sure the fish has the time to feed itself properly.
Selecting a pair of Discus fish
When taking the points above into account, you’ll see that a couple will form. This couple will set out in the tank to choose a territory and they will defend this against other fish. Be aware that once these fish have bounded, they stay together until death so best to have several fish when you have the intention to breed with these fish. When they feel good and are provided with a good diet they will automatically start with mating. Make sure that there is a male within the group as females will also court each other when there is a lack of a male. Experienced breeders can tell the difference between males and females based upon the sexual organs when they will lay their eggs. Besides the difference in their reproductive organs, there are also other features to check the gender of the Discus. Males often have a bulkier head, which has a more rounder shape than females and the dorsal fin is ending in point where the female’s dorsal fin is more rounded in the end tip. When holding these fish in a community tank, there is no need to remove the couple unless there are any fish of the Characid species. These are known to love the eggs of the Discus and will immediately target these.
The breeding tank
To avoid any loss of eggs to predators it’s best to remove the couple to a breeding tank and add a breeding cone. After a few days of getting used to the breeding tank and at a temperature of around 28 ° C you bring down conductivity from 600 ms down to below 100 ms. They usually start mating instantly. This way you can almost decide yourself when you want to start breeding the discus fish.
Breeding Discus fish
The Discus couple thoroughly starts to clean and even push away the breeding cone until it is in the place suitable for them. The spectacle can now begin. The male is a king in all its beauty. Shaking with his whole body and spreading his fins for the female. At the female you can see the breeding tube coming out. The female lays a row of eggs from the bottom to the top, followed by the male who immediately fertilizes them. This continues until all eggs have been deposited. The mating can sometimes take more than an hour.
As a result, you will see a pack of (200 to 400) light brown eggs about one millimeter in size sticking to the breeding cone. A good couple will seldom or never eat their eggs. If they do, it means that they only do it for sex (we do too) and not to care for offspring. A couple who eats his eggs usually means that they are simply not ready for raising fry.
Discus fish eggs
After a day you will see that the eggs are dark brown in color. This means that the eggs are fertilized, between the eggs there can also be some white ones, which indicates that they are not fertilized, the parents will remove the unfertilized eggs themselves.
After 48 hours you notice that the eggs are gradually turning into larvae and moving. Both parents constantly fan the eggs with their fins to give the eggs and larvae the necessary oxygen.. Now you must definitely and slowly, uninterrupted for about 2 days, increase the conductivity again to around 600 ms. This very soft water (which only serves for egg deposition) is too unstable for our young brood.
The critical moments are now over. After five days you can see that there are already some larvae on the skin of the parents. This is the first indispensable food they need. Indeed, the first three days they only eat this food. A kind of secretory or mucous membrane. You see this well when you look at the discuses from behind. You can see a kind of velvety skin. This is that indispensable food for our young discus who will eat this for a month.
After three days you can start feeding artemia. Make sure they eat it, if they do you give this 2 to 3 times a day.
With a rapid forward movement, the parents shake off the fry, which move to the skin of the other parent, and thus relieve each other. After a month, the parents are completely stained. No panic, this is the secretion that the fry ate. In the meantime they have already learned to eat artemia and small daphnia. After a month our fry are already 2 centimeters in length. You notice that the fry no longer feed that much on the skin secretion of the parents and so they can eat independently. Yet I give you a golden advice: leave the fry with the parents as long as they feed on the secretion. It still is the most indispensable food that the fry need to grow into beautiful specimens. After five or six weeks, I move the fry to a larger aquarium. The nicest youngsters who grew the fastest were then further raised separately to eventually form new couples after about 15 months, and so on.
We now leave the parents alone for three weeks. If necessary, insert a separation in your aquarium so that they can see each other but can not mate. They will be so horny to pair again when they swim together again, because once they start with it, they just do not know how to stop!
I hope I have helped you with my tips. Just try to breed them sometime, the process is very rewarding! Just go for it and good luck!
Author: Arsène Vanheuverswijn, Roeselare
Translation: John de Lange
Images: John de Lange
Source: Aquarium en Terrariumvereniging Exotica Roeselare
