Can anyone say?

**wcav** · 09-01-2015, 06:33 PM

Hi,folks.I have been wondering what factors produces the striations in Wild Discus.What I mean is, we have Semi royal and Royal Discus.I read some where that Male discus will carry Royal Stripes and Females do not.Does any one know this as a fact? Is it a condition of the environment that determines this striping or is it genetically passed on from one parent to the offspring?Have anyone had two Royals pair off? Or even two semi-royals do this? Have anyone had success breeding Royal or semi royal offspring?If so can you say what you experienced or does anyone have this info? I see lots of pics and videos with Royals, do they ever pair off?

**Larry Bugg** · 09-01-2015, 07:34 PM

My understanding is that most Royals are male but not all. There is a % of royals that are female and yes I have seen Royal pairs. A higher % of solids are female but not all. I don't know if this holds true for semi royals. I would suspect not since any wild with horizontal stripping but not full horizontal (Royal) stripping is a semi. This is genetic not environmental.

**wcav** · 09-02-2015, 06:14 PM

Cool,thank you Larry.Now I have to wait for nature to take it's course.It will be interested to see how they pair off.I have a couple of Royals and a few of Semis and solids ,so time will tell.Exciting times ahead.

**Larry Bugg** · 09-02-2015, 06:52 PM

I certainly wish you luck. It can be difficult to get wilds to breed. I can tell you this from experience. For me, domestics are easy to breed. Wild x domestic, not to too hard. But............to date I have not been able to get wild x wild to breed.

**Second Hand Pat** · 09-03-2015, 08:26 AM

Hi Wayne, one of my wild pairs was a sem-royal and royal. The royal was a female. They spawned several times but no resulting fry http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...light=trombeta. From raising fry form my Cuipeua wild pair and some F1s I bought from Mark (Discus Origins) I can say that you easily get royals from a sem-royal x solid pairing in my experience. Best of luck with breeding your wilds.
Pat

**wcav** · 09-03-2015, 06:36 PM

I've only had them for 5 months and I know they may take as much as a year to settle in .I have one female..I think, that dominates one area of the tank. These guys are in a 220g so they have lots of room.Doing water changes and all else ,have settled Ph at 5.7 and the TDS low also.Have to get an ORP meter soon too.Thanks for the support guys.I'm still learning and SD has old post that are very educational.So I am still reading when I can.I hope to post some pics soon.

**Discus Origins** · 09-03-2015, 09:27 PM

Wayne, opinions on this through the years is that its partly genetic and partly environmental. When I had spawns from my Cuipeua pair that was Royal male and solid female, I ended up with 20% highly striated, 20% solid, and 60% semi. Experienced breeders that had royal/royal or solid/solid pairs normally ended up with higher % of striated from royal parents or higher % solids from solid parents. That's also the idea of line breeding when you continue to cross back royal with royals to end up with fully striated young in future generations or cross back solids with solids to produce a solid red lineage.

The environmental factor comes in when predators can see the striated young easier and they get picked off before they can make it to maturity. My guess is that most of the highly striated young are males, while most of the solids are females with the semi's being a mix. Since most of the royals/semi are picked off by predators in the wild that makes them harder to find which is why there is always a premium price tag put on these fish.