My Old Discus Breeding Adventure

[LizStreithorst]

I plan to, Al. Attachment will be harder with just 17 (I think). I'll sure find out the parenting instincts these to have. Besides, next time, they'll give me more. I just know it.

[Second Hand Pat]

Great news Liz
Pat

[LizStreithorst]

The kids are still wiggling on the cone this morning. Every day is one more step to a small success.

[LizStreithorst]

I'm down to 10 this morning. I'll put this batch behind me and wait for the real spawn that will come next.

[LizStreithorst]

The fry were already swimming when I went down to the fish room early this morning. I waited until just a bit ago and went ahead and give them a flopping on the bottom WC with pure RO. We'll see now how long it takes the pair into spawning mode again. I expect to see some action in the next few days.

[MichiganDiscusEnthusiast]

Best of luck Liz! Im curious what you keep your parameters at as you seem to have some degree of success with your process.
1. Do you use RO, and if so do you mix it or do you add something to the RO?
2. Is this done in a holding tank or are you bringing your RO water directly into the Breeding Tank?
I'm still waiting for my potential breeding pair to mature more before I start the process over again, but it doesn't hurt to try and educate myself in the meantime.
If you're curious to what I have going on ~> here <~ is the link to my thread in "Our Tank Journals"
Again, wishing you the best of success with this attempt, love keeping up on your gorgeous fish.

[LizStreithorst]

Thanks for the well wishes, Kyle. I have weird water so you won't have to do what I do. I used to be able to add enough RO to get my TDS to under 90 but all of a sudden something happened with my water making it so I couldn't even get a viable spawn in TDS 20! I thought that my fish were sterile. I even sold a bunch of them as good fish to look at but not breeding stock.

Then Cliff came along and helped me. He suggested that after 30 minutes post spawning I moved the breeding cone to a gallon pitcher hanging inside the tank and guess what? I got wigglers. It was a water problem not a fertility problem. But these days, since spawns are few and far between I keep the pairs in tanks of straight RO.

Once again, nobody has to do this except me and people who raise fry artificially. So don't do what I do. Do what works for you. Don't change your methods unless you have a good reason.

[MichiganDiscusEnthusiast]

Liz, that's very interesting. When you say put the pitcher inside the tank, do you mean so that the cone is visible to the parents yet separate from the parent's water? I'm assuming you're filling the pitcher with uncut RO as well? Maybe some MB? An air stone perhaps? This is truly fascinating and I would love to learn more about this process of "pitchering" the fresh clutch. I'm of course going to wait a while until my breeding pair matures and attempts a couple of batches in the breeding tank itself but if it comes down to it this pitcher idea may be something of a "ace up the sleeve" .

[LizStreithorst]

You've got it exactly. Pitcher of RO with the cone inside, all in view of the parents with a dribble of meth blue and an air stone. You do get attachment when the babies free swim, but at least I get better attachment when the parents can have the cone in the tank with them.