Spawning Tips

[jjgallow]

I was just wondering if there are any good spawning tips I'm missing. I have one pair in a tank which spawns, but every 20 days which seems too spaced apart.

My other tank is a 72 gallon with 6 adult fish, 1.5 yrs old. Most are female, but I'm quite sure there is at least one male in the tank. They spend all of their time fighting for territory and flirting but none of their time mating.

Both tanks are fed by the same drip system. The water is a very soft RO/tap mix which I occassionally swich to pure RO to stimulate spawning. Not much luck with that. Temp is 85 degrees, and the water changes bring it down to 81 or so. pH is around 6.8.

I'm in the middle of a water change right now, and I'm watching some serious flirting. But I never see any spawning in the one tank, and the other tank spawns infrequently.

Any tips to encourage more spawning?



p.s....my feeding may play a role? I do not feed live food or blood worms. Staple food is a beef heart/krill mix. Also pellets and frozen brine shrimp. Would live food make a significant difference?

Raise the Ph for a week 7.5 and up the temp! ;D

[jjgallow]

Ok.....should I raise the pH by increasing hardness (works with my water) or is this bad?

I heard you needed 82-84 degrees for spawning. Is the idea to drop the temp from ~88 to ~82 during a water change?

Thanks!

Jeff

[jjgallow]

Woah!

I just checked and I may have found the problem...

My pH is a whopping 8.0. What the heck, it was 6.8 last time. Looks like I'll need to readjust my tapwater mix..

so yeah, that was probably why...

JJ

Calgary tap water is a complete pain in the ***. Even when you only mix a small amount of tap with your R.O. water, the pH will normally shoot back up to 8 or slightly over. I dont even mess with the tap water anymore....I just use R.O. Right and bring the hardness up to about 60 ppm. The pH stays at about 6.8-7.

Tony

[jjgallow]

Ah, a fellow Calgarian!

Someone who knows my pains, lol!

You're absolutely right...Calgary water is just brutal. I'm glad to see someone else pains themselves to handle discus here. On top of everything it's heavily, heavily chlorinated.

I think I may make the switch as well do adding RO right.

On top of that.....I have a 60 gpd RO unit currently doing 30 gpd! That's the other problem with Calgary water! Tested the Gh out of the tap today, and it was too hard to get an accurate reading.

[jesser]

hey there guys,
tony, how do you do spawning at 60 ppms? i domine at 100 ppms and 7.6 ph nothing else but the spawns are few. thinking of lowering my ppms. san antonio texas is hard water too.

Jesser

The discus are currently doing SQUAT right now at 60 ;D
But its worked well in the past. Good hatch rate (80-90%)
I dont know if you'll notice any GREATER spawning rate with a lower tds reading...just a better hatch rate IME. The discus Ive had in the past would spawn in 100tds no problem....just got a lower hatch rate.

Jeff

Whats your water source??...do you know? Calgary has two. Glenmore and Bearspaw. To the best of my knowledge, most of south Calgary uses Glenmore....liquid rock from what ive been told 750ppm+ out of the tap. Mine is Bearspaw....about 250ppm out of tap on average. Ive never noticed a huge amount of chlorine....it does fluctuate with the time of the year though. In the spring when runoff is heaviest the chlorine gets worse.

Tony

[jjgallow]

Bearspaw...yes, I've had water from that source...it does taste better.

I have the Glenmore liquid rock variety. It sure isn't fun to raise discus in, but I like them way better than the other cichlids.