Male heckels and crossing

[yogi]

I said in another thread I don't know if I ever owned a female heckel. I never owned more than a few heckels at a time. I have had three different male heckels breed for me. Two went with wild browns and one went with a domestic rsg. When the breeding occured or the pairs formed it was in crowded tanks. One hundred gallon tanks with 10 to 12 discus in them. Ph around 5.0, temp around 84, peat filered tapwater with a conductivity of about 200ms and lousy lighting. This pair I moved to a 29 gallon

[yogi]

This pair I left in the 100 gallon and put in a divider to keep them seperate from the other discus. The female does have a partial heckel bar.

[yogi]

Here they are with some fry.

[yogi]

Babies growing and around 2 months old. They are already starting to show a center bar.

[yogi]

Now there will just be pictures of them growing.

[yogi]

more growing

[yogi]

More growing and they are starting to lose the red color.

[yogi]

The sad news is I lost all most all of them. I moved some albino bushynose plecos around to clean up some different tanks. These plecos have been around for a few years and no one was new. The heckel crosses got a plague like illness and died. No other fish in any other tank caught it.

Here are some pictures of a heckel with a domestic rsg.

[Apistomaster]

Hi Jerry,
Your photos are great . Clearly demonstrating what is possible between Heckels and other discus. The Heckel chacteristics definitely manifested themselves on these pairs' progeny and have given me much to think about.

It is a shame about your losses after getting so far along in the project.
I 'm sure I am not alone in thanking you for such great documentation of these Heckel crosses. They looked very strong at each stage of their development you were able to show us. Do you think is just a quirk that they died when they did?
You wouldn't think the bushynoses could have brought in a bug that would attack only your hybrids without also effecting the other discus but it will probably never be known why that is how things worked out the way they did. Fish problems can be so perverse. Like why is it the only fish in a tank you care about always seems to be the one that dies and the fish you might not care that much about will survive just about anything dished out to them.
Larry W.

[mandisc]

hi jerry,
sorry for the huge lost but anyhow it's a great achivement and humongous experience for u. well documented.i enjoyed what u hv shown.thanks n best rgds.
hi larry,
i fully agreed with u.

[raglanroad]

Yogi, did the wilds also perish with the disease outbreak?
Dave

[yogi]

No the wilds did not perish from the out break. But they have all pasted on due to age. I seem to run out of luck with wilds after about 5 or 6 years. None of that breeding was planned it just all happened in a two year period a few years ago. I did have all the fish for a couple of years before they started breeding. I just wanted to show pictures that at least male heckels will breed in captivity.

At the Dallas ACA in 2005 I spoke with Kelvin from Sigapore. He was selling discus in several tanks and had one tank of heckel cross red turq. There center stripes were not as nice as the ones in my fish. But when we spoke about breeding he also stated that he had to take the ph down in the fives to get the heckels to spawn. He said all his domestics will spawn in the sixes.

[Apistomaster]

Those males! Always the more eager to breed than the females.
In all my previous wild to domestics it was always a male blue or green that would spawn with a domestic female.

Many reasons are probably the cause. Wild fish usually are coping with parasites that the domestics are not as like to be infected and wild females are probably very much attuned to seasonal conditions and food availabilty. And maybe most importantly, the female is the part of a pair the permits pairing and spawning.
A male discus cannot force a female to spawn with him.
The domestic females are overall more co-operative in any breeding than wild females are. That is why I have always felt it was their way of complimenting my husbandry whenever I have had wild pairs spawn. Something was being done that met their standards or they would have just blown my efforts off.

[yogi]

The only heckel I curently own spawned today with a wild blue female. Almost everything about this tank is the same as in post #1 of this thread. 100 gallon plus tank, not as crowded as in the past, poor lighting, 85 degrees and ph around 5. I do want to give some additional information I didn't mention before. My tanks are bare bottom, but I place a piece of light brown cardboard under the tank, the backs are painted a light blue, I do have floating plants in the tank. I don't like an empty looking tank so I keep some real dritwood, fake driftwood and fake plants that are siliconed to lava rock. I'm currently mixing my peat filtered water with DI water so my conductivity is a round 125 ms. I also add some tetra blackwater extract because the DI water is to clear for the look I like, plus the blackwater extract helps filter out some of the light. This female has been trying to spawn with this heckel for atleast the past week. Here is mom with the eggs, then mom blocking the eggs and then dad blocking the eggs, but they are visable above his dorsal fin.

[yogi]

These next 2 pictures are of both fish guarding the eggs. If the eggs hatch I will be posting an update.

[Darren's Discus]

Jerry,
all the best with them graet pics !



cheers

[Elite Aquaria]

Great job Jerry...I did get your email about the local club...maybe once I get things under control here I will go visit with you...

[plecocicho]

Females invest a lot moe energy in reproduction than males, so the energy cost of producing eggs must be set at the best possible enviroment parameters.Just like in our species, if the female says no, it's bummer for you.:p. Good to see, that your male heckel is so ready to mate. I will cross my finger for your sucsess. Regarding the juveniles, that died a year ago. did you change food taht you fed them or any other change in their enviroment?
lp

[Göran Ekholm]

love it, just love it!
Göran

[Jason]

whoa dejavu:)

lookin good Jerry,

I don't know if I asked you this before but is it difficult to get the ph low in water thats 200us or so?

[yogi]

Most of the eggs have turned white from the discus that bred yesterday. I have some faith that this pair will breed again. Right now they are still guarding the eggs, but I don't think that will last much longer.

The pictures that start this thread of three different male heckels spawning all occured in 2003. I posted the pictures back when they originally spawned, but as the forum has gone through updates the pictures were dropped. I reposted them all in March of 07 in this one thread. The reason was to help in the heckel project and show that we can get some heckels to breed. I also wanted to tell what has worked for me.

I don't think food is what caused the f1's to get sick. I still feed my fish pretty much the same now as I did then. I feed tetra color bits (or whatever they call them now) in the morning. For dinner they get a mixture of Hikari bloodworms and Hokari mysis shrimp. More bloodworms than mysis. About an hour later they get some live blackworms for dessert. I know in the wild discus are omnivorous. I think it's because of whats available and not by choice. I think when left to choice discus are mostly carnivorus. I still belive what caused the f1's to get sick was moving around those albino bushy nose plecos. Even though I had them for along time they were carrying something that caused the f1's to break down. I still have one remaining f1 it's 4 1/2 years old now. I will post a fresh picture in the next few days.

My water is aged in a 135 gallon storage tank. If the peat moss bomb doesn't lower the water's ph enough at 200 us I will add some muriactic acid to the storage tank but never to the fish tanks. If I do add muriactic acid to the storage tank I will let it settle for atleast 8 hours before I would do a water change and even longer if possible. My tapwater is a ph of 8.5 and the conductivity is about 270.

[plecocicho]

Yogi i thought you fed the beef hearth mix. I am glad that you do not feed wild discus with it. I t is possible. that the peco did carry some sort of disease. Have you got them from some breeder or you bought them in local shops? You can speculate, that teh plecos were imporet from Singapur and it has been known, that those fish can carry fatal bacterias, that are imune to our drugs. Hope your next batch will have more luck.
lp