Re: So you want to Breed Discus? Seriously, think about it !
Quote:
Originally Posted by
RogueDiscus
Glad mine are snakes, wouldn't want to compete with those :)
I'm creating a new bloodline and naming it Giant Flora SS. This is cross between Giant Flora x Red base Fineline SS and then the offspring will cross back to Giant Flora. The offspring SS are in the breeding age now but still growing. This project might take at least 5 years to see the outcome.
Re: So you want to Breed Discus? Seriously, think about it !
Quote:
Originally Posted by
warblad79
I'm creating a new bloodline and naming it Giant Flora SS. This is cross between Giant Flora x Red base Fineline SS and then the offspring will cross back to Giant Flora. The offspring SS are in the breeding age now but still growing. This project might take at least 5 years to see the outcome.
Thank you Bryan(?) for presenting this perspective! It takes several generations to develop something special. I'm just coming up to a point where I could consider breeding my F1's. I'm trying to keep my focus narrow and on some long term direction. Kind of like a fish version of bonsai, if I dare say.
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Re: So you want to Breed Discus? Seriously, think about it !
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This post is in response to Al's original post asking about disasters, embarrassments, etc. I plenty this summer.
I am a hobbyist with Discus. I have bred them on and off for more than 40 years. I always did well with the first couple of batches pairs would have, usually small batches (70-100) of fry. I only have a few tanks so the small numbers did well. However, the pairs always seemed to lose fertility and I eventually gave up on them, got rid of the pairs and started over.
Last spring, I figure out how to stop the loss of fertility and have large batches of fry. This did not end up going well. Be careful what you wish for is the name of this story.
I posted the first part of the story in the spring. Very few people paid any attention to it. What I posted was that I found out that the lack of fertility was being caused by something, most likely a mold or fungus, or bacteria that stops eggs from hatching. This pathogen can be stopped by treating with Acriflaveine. I just removed the eggs, put them in a 10 gallon tank with 1 tsp of Acriflaveine, used very soft water (30-33) and after the eggs hatched, screened the cone and put the fry back in with the parents. I got 80-90 % hatch rates. I did this with another pair just to see if it was a fluke, and the same results. After the fry were large enough to be removed the problems started.
I now had 600 fry and only two 20 gallon tanks and one 50 gallon tank to raise them in. To make patters worse, I raised one more group of fry just to prove it would work with the first pair again, so now I had even more.
I got rid of one batch of fry that were only 1.5 inch that I had from one of my small successes before the hoard (thanks Mike Dennis), but soon started to have fry dying all over the place. I did not have enough good food for them and not enough time to grind what they really needed. I blamed the deaths on disease, but it was actually the over crowding and lack adequate water changes and good food that was at fault. I tried every drug in the book, and all the tricks, but in end had to cull nearly all of the fry. WAY TO MANY FRY = NOT GOOD. So, be careful what you wish for.
I gave up trying to raise any fry for the rest of the summer, and just concentrated on finishing the grow out of the 8 Turks that I saved from a batch of fry from last November. They are finally pairing off now. I attached some photos of them. They are bigger than I thought. When I moved 2 down stairs yesterday, I measure one while it was in the net, and it was 6 and 3/4 inches. These were from the 2nd generation that started from a batch of 8 that I got from Discus Hans.
Anyway, I now know how to get nice batches of fry, but also know when to stop allowing new fry to be hatched.
Al Light
Re: So you want to Breed Discus? Seriously, think about it !
You raised some beauties despite everything. My hat is off to you.