"cleaning up pairs"

[limige]

i've heard people mention it a few times that they clean up thei pairs before trying to breed them, especially if having problems with egg eating or incooperative males...

could someone please elaborate on this? should it be done to all fish as they pair up or just problem pairs?

[redlines]

Cleaning up the pairs is usually done when there is a problem such as the Male not joining in or the Female going a long time between spawns.

Sometimes the fish may have a disease, flukes or tapeworms and this may or may not be the cause of their behavior or lack thereof.

I am sure that some of the other breeders could add a volume or two to my simple answer but I believe that covers the basics.

Andy

[fcdiscus]

I think that if there is something wrong health wise or water wise, the parents will naturally eat the eggs instead of having a sickly spawn. JMO, Frank

Let me add my $0.02 on this. Our main concern in breeding discus is to obtain fry and be able to see the wonderful attachment of fry on their parents' back. Artificial raising of fry is taken the fun out of breeding discus. Cleaning or condition them is one of the most important steps.
Gill fluke is the major enemy for both parents and fry. Why? Too long to explain, just kill them all and you won't be sorry.
External parasites and inbeded worms may irritate the parents to the point of eating eggs to protect them. Natural instinct. Mice do that too.
Internal worms are most active after spawning. That's the time the parents are not feeding much and the worms are , hungry and wriggling all over looking for food. That's the major cause of egg eating parents.
Therefore you have to Hyde to rid the Gill worms. No itchy gills irritation for the parents and healthy fry.
Secondly, Use Metro in food for internal parasites and wide spectrum anitibiotic for external parasites. Minocyline or tetracyline will do.
Tape worms don't bother them much, you can leave it. But the prime suspect is the round worm with the size of a thick noodle in chicken noodle soup that will sure cause them to eat eggs when they search for food after spawning.
I have successfully treated many EESOB (eggs eating sob) based on the above reasons.HTH
Jimmy.

[Carol_Roberts]

Hi JimmyL:
Which dewormer do you prefer for round worms - piperzine? Do you deworm on a regular schedule or just as needed?
Carol :heart1:

No, Don't deworm the round worm. you'll get into trouble with blockage and eventually kill your breeders. You never get rid of them anyway. Just leave them alone inside your fish. If they die,It usually takes more than a week to pass them out in fragments and your fish will stop eating during that time and soon the spawning cycle stop. Confusing??. Me too.
You just don't kill them. All you have to do is to quiet them down for the first 3 days until the eggs hatched and when the parents resume feeding, everyone is happy. Very often, Just antibiotic alone will stun them and keep them quiet for several days. Rock salt do wonders too. The main goal is to keep the parents as comfortable as possible without any irritation internally as well as externally.HTH.
Jimmy.

[jeep]

Follow-up: When you put metro in the food, do you feed every day or just peroidically?

Jeep: Just a week before spawning or they ate the last batch of eggs. I use it only for training period. Once they have successfully learnt how to guarded and looked after the eggs. It's not necessary until they start eating eggs again. I don't do them all at the same time. Usually start with getting rid of gill worms and use rock salt to stunt the round worms, not to kill them. Let them spawn and see if it works. If not , then I fed them Metro laced food and use Minocycline to clean up the external parasites, Then I try again. I usually see wrigglers by then, maybe a small hatch. Let them learn how to carry the fry and wait for the next big one before actually feeding the fry with BBS. Again, there 's a whole new ball game of raising fry. If you start off with a wrong foot. Most of them will be stunted and not grow properly. Who say keeping discus is easy?
Jimmy.