Its in the air again :)

[roger]

Hello Folks

Im stuck here in Central Florida with my house still torn apart for repairs from the 3 hurricanes. I had to pull all the tanks away from the wall by 3 feet so the painters could get in. In doing so I had to shove stuff from the center of the room up against the tanks.

About 6 months ago my wild tank had a alenquer x rsg spawn (the hurricanes killed off the last of the fry from that :( ).

Well last week I spotted a female rsg guarding wigglers and I hadnt even noticed. Seems leaving the lights on causes all sorts of algae to grow on the glass. It took me an afternoon to figure out that dad was the domestic red ss (asian ss). I put the divider in not really expecting much and a few of the fry did make it to free swimming before getting eaten by the parents.

Last night with the divider still in place I got another spawn from the ss x rsg combo. So hopes are high that with privacy from the get go that this time Ill get a fry out of it.

I might be brave enough to scrape off all the algea and do a water change to clean out that side of the tank. If so Ill try and get some pics of the fish for everyone to see.

This makes for getting one of the 2 wild crosses that I want to try for. So maybe Ill get lucky and get a heckel x ss cross as well.

============
On a slightly different side note this would make the 2nd time my wilds have spawned when I dont do water changes for a while. Previous to this my wilds have never spawned for me even when I ignored them like this. Anyone want to take a guess at why switching from cannister and sponges to just a wet dry system seems to have energized the fish?

Peace,
Roger

[roger]

Hello All

Here is the 1st round of pictures, this would be technically the start of day 3 which means I have wigglers instead of just eggs.

I discovered that the sponge to my pump for the wet dry was clogged up along with another sponge had started to dissolve. So I removed both sponges and the amount of water flow through the filter system has nearly doubled, the amount of garbage that pumped into the tank was spectacular and took most of yesterday to settle/clear out.

This 1st picture is of the right side of the tank which has all of the wilds minus the pair. The extra flow from the filter removed about 1/3 - 1/2 of the algae growing there.

[roger]

Here is the other side of the tank, where the breeders are at.

The divider prevents probably 98% of the turbulance from even reaching that side of the tank so its pretty calm over there.

[roger]

Here is a picture of Mom, she is a RSG from Brazil via Miami.

I have had her probably about 14 months now.

She is actually looking at the wigglers but due to the algae on the pot and the color of the wigglers you just can't make them out.

90% of the time she is guarding the eggs while the male chases me off :)

[roger]

Here is a picture of Dad, he is about the most aggressive fish I have ever had to deal with. He killed his first mate and terrorized the heckels and snakes in another tank. So I dropped into my main wild tank in hopes someone would put him in his place.

Fortunately for him I have 2 large males that did just that and also fortunatley both the males like the same female alenquer. That left this beauty to find another mate.

I got him as part of a mated pair of ss, one red and one blue. He wanted to spawn so bad that he pestered his mate to death. Probably my fault for not seperating them but I was working 70 hours a week and just didnt catch it in time.

He is an asian ss and I have had him probably 6 or 7 months and I believe he was about a 16 months old when I picked him up.

[Ardan]

Congratulations! and best of luck with this spawn.

You have a nice looking group of discus :)

I hope all goes well with the hurricane cleanup.

I have no idea what triggered them to spawn, each pair has its own unique things, as I am told :D

Thanks for posting the pics and keep us updated
Ardan

[oodi]

Hi Roger,

Let me ditto what Ardan said... congrats, and I hope all is going well with the cleanup!

Judi
:)

[roger]

Well today should be the big day. Sometime today the fry should be going free swimming.

This is my 1st cross between domestic and wild discus so it's new to me. I am by no means an expert on breeding fish but I have had several pairs produce fry and several more that never could get it right. So what I am seeing with this pair could be normal for them or it could be something else.

1. Female RSG I think has been in my tank for over a year now. She is probably about 5 to 5.5 inches in size (including tail). In the year that I have had her she has at most put on an inch in size.

2. The male has had atleast 5 or 6 successfull spawns so by any stretch of the definition he is a stud (atleast for a domestic discus) and not a dud.


Observations.
A. In general older females tend to lay eggs in a well defined and densely packed region. Usually something the size of and shape of your thumb.
This female laid eggs in an large loosely packed oval pattern, probably 3 inches in diameter. The only other time I have seen this is in very young females when they first start to spawn.
B. The fact that I got wigglers at all tells me that the male knows what he is doing. He followed her around and got atleast some of the eggs take care of.
C. Normally when I make it to wiggler stage the fry are clumped into a dense circle somewhere. Since the female is doing most of the guarding Im guessing she is doing the moving as well. The wigglers are ending up in several different clumps, almost as if there are a bunch of them there stacked on top of each other.
D. The male spends most of the time patrolling the territory and protecting the female from me :)
E. The female didnt really change color until late last night which is about 72 hours after the eggs where laid. She went from her normal honey brown to more of an overall dark brown late last night and into this morning. Most of the time my other females change earlier in the spawning process. As of this morning the male still hasnt changed colors yet. I havent had him during a successfull spawn so I dont know what he normally does.
F. I have had 2 different wild females spawn now, an alenquer and this rsg. The timing (during the year) was different for each one but the water conditions where more or less the same. The alenquer spawned at the start of the rainy season here in florida while the rsg spawned when the temp changed here (ie winter is finally starting to show up, the temp is making it into the 60s finally :) )
G. For all the spawns in the wild community tank I hadnt done a water change in 2 weeks.

Conclusions?
I. Wild discus take longer to get to spawning age possibly 2 years for females and longer for males.
II. Male discus usually leave mom at home while they do the patrolling.
III. Discus usually do a good job of hide and seek with the wigglers. Since they always end up in an area you can barely see into.
IV. Wilds more so than domestics are sensitive to the weather conditions.
V. Wilds more so than domestics are sensitive to the water conditions.

Suspicions
1. My RO water is fairly soft but the pH is a little high for the wilds to spawn. So I need to allow for the water to drift down on its own over a period of a couple of weeks. I have gone months with 14 adults in a 120 and only have pH drop by 1/2 a point. There is something in my water that makes it into the RO causing it to be that stable.
2. Sinse my other pair of wilds that spawned are large fish (6+ for the female and male) Im guessing they are close to 3 years old. I have had all my wilds for atleast 8 months.
3. I need to get my fishroom set back up so I can handle the fry if they survive.

Peace,
Roger

[roger]

Wow, its been about 6 weeks since I last posted anything on this.

Im not an expert at breeding discus but this has been one of the most bizzare pairs I have had spawn. A quick recap, the parents (probably the female) have been eating the fry as soon as they go free swimming.

The normal hatching procedure has all of the fry being within about 2 hours of each other. By that I mean all the eggs hatch within 2 hours, and when they go free swimming its about the same.
With this pair its been 8-10 hours difference so I have been ending up with a small small batch of free swimmers with a large batch still on the cone. Im guessing but they must be thinking its a small spawn so they have been eating them.

===========

The latest spawn had free swimmers late friday and a large number of them still around this morning when I left the house. So for this pair thats good news, Im not holding my breath but Im hoping to actually get some fry out of this.

Im guessing about 50 or so free swimmers which fortunatley all that I have room for untill I finish restoring my fishroom.

The plan will be to move the fry to their own tank at ~3weeks of age (hopefully a nice 75 gal tank) and then to do the 1st cull about 2 weeks later.
A cull in this case will be trying to seperate out the ss from the non-ss fry. So long as I dont have any other spawn going on Ill try and raise as many of these as possible, but I really only plan on keeping the SS. If things work out Ill have 4 tanks to raise fish out in (75,100,120,125).

Peace,
Roger

[roger]

Carrying a thought over from the Domestic X Wild bloodline thread.

Something I noticed last night was that the fry even at this young of an age come in really 2 sizes with a few falling in the tweener size.

1. Fry double the size of the others, accounts for about 20% of the fry
2. Normal size fry? these account for about 75% of the fry.
3. Tweeners which are about 5% of the fry.

It should be interesting in this cross to see how this breakdown holds up as they grow. Not to mention what % end up as snakes, as rsg and as tweeners.

Another hurdle is coming up, this pair breeds about every 7 days which makes them due today or tomorrow for another spawn. Lets hope they dont so that they keep this current batch of fry.

Peace,
Roger

[nanik]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for your very insightful thread, please keep us updated with pictures as well

Thanks

[Cosmo]

Roger,

Beautiful Discus :) Thanks for the pics and good luck :)

Jim

[roger]

Heres a nice pic of Mom and you can see some of the fry with her.
Most of the fry are usually hiding out in the overturned pot or with dad.

[roger]

Heres a pic of dad and the overturned clay pot.

Yes the tank is filthy but the water quality has been holding up well.

The advantage to having an oversized wet dry running on a tank with a low bio load.

If time presents itself this weekend (and my plumbing holds up) Ill be doing a water change and cleaning the tank out.

Roger

[Ardan]

Thanks for all the info and the pics Roger :)

Very nice looking fish and very cool to see the fry.

Ardan

[roger]

Pic of Mom with fry.

This is probably one of the better pictures I have managed. The fry actually come out pretty clear in this one.

[roger]

Heres Dad with the fry.

The male seems to have the fry most of the time. Talk about patience ..

[Spices]

My tooth is aching me because of the sweeet fish you have there. Great job. Congratulations.

*Angie*

[roger]

Just an update to cover some of the questions I raised earlier on.

It would seem that most of the smaller fry have grown rapidly in the last week so its hard to tell difference in sizes now. There are 4 or 5 tiny ones still but not like there was 4 days ago.

The parents are doing well, they do fight on occasion but it never lasts more than a second or two. Most of the time the male has the babies, but that could be because the SS really darkens up well compared to the rsg.

I havent purchased any CBW yet nor do I feed bbs. So the fry eat what the parents provide or whatever microscopic rotifers they find. Ill be doing a CBW purchase hopefully this friday and pounding both the parents and the babies with them for another week.

If things hold up the fry will be pulled and put into their own tank when they hit the 3 week age. They will either go into a 29g or a 75g tank since thats all Ill have open for fish.

I got my plumbing working, well kinda, so I can make RO again. But now I have to replace the membranes in the 200gpd unit along with the DI cartridge. The water is a bit on the hard side but its down right soft compared to my tap water. I have two RO units and I only run one of the through the DI so the water isnt to pure.

Ill try and get some snaps for everyone later in the week.

Peace,
Roger

[roger]

Here are some pics of the fry as of today.

Most of them are dime sized with some being nickle.

Ill be moving them to their own tank here shortly, I was waiting for them to start eating on their own. You can see them hunting black worms in one of the pics.

They arent growing as fast as my turqs did but they are growing faster than the straight wild rsg x alenquer cross did.

[roger]

another one

[roger]

If you look you can see some of the 9 bar vs 14 bar fry.

Im hoping to get some nice snake skins out of this cross :)

[RWM32779]

Roger,they look nice I'll have to get over to your place to get a better look
and see how big they actually are.I'm curious they hatched the same weekend that my fire ruby's did.I did use bb even though I said I wasn't going to so I'd like to see if their's much size difference.
Let me know when it's convient for me to come by.
Robert

[roger]

Hey Robert

Just give me a buzz and stop by anytime.

Yours are probably twice the size of mine, but thats just a guess.

Roger