Beef Heart or Black Worms Exp.

* In July I plan to raise 20 discus of same size in two different tanks, 10 in a 75 gal. tank. The only difference in the diet will be the main course. B/H in one and worms in another. They will get frozen blood worms and flake food-Formual-1. Same daily w/c's and so on.
*If there is enough interest in this experiment then I will do it.

* Thank You
* Miles

Good Deal Miles!
I bet the ones on Blk grow bigger and faster! anybody?

Cary,

You can only vote ONCE!!

Mat

[Pat_in_NC]

Great Idea Miles,

As a scientist myself I applaud your effort to enlighten by doing a good experiment!

One word of caution though--ask the breeder (or whatever your source of the fish is) to try to pick out 20 small fish which are very similar in size to start.  Just a couple (or worst of all an odd number) of slightly larger or smaller fish could make it difficult to analyze the results later.    You will get the clearest results that way.

Also you might want to get a little scale to weigh your food in (or at least the blackworms and beefheart).  This can help take away any bias (concious or unconcious) you might develop toward one tank or another--if you always feed each tank the same weight of food (which obviously will increase over time).   Along the same lines--make sure you siphon any left over blackworms just as you siphon any leftover beefheart.

Lastly make sure the tanks are placed in close proximity so that one tank doesn't have any structural advantages that make the fish more skittish or causes you to clean algae in it more often.

Go For It Miles!


Pat

[Ardan]

Go Mile GO! ;D
Interesting experiment

Keep us posted. Do we get pics too??

Ardan :sunshine:

[scotz]

Miles - As a scientist I applaud your interest and effort. As Pat_in_NC said try and make sure all other variables remain constant between the 2 tanks so when you are done you can be comfortable with your results. I for one would be very interested in this  experiment, as feeding bw can be a hassle for me since I have to travel so much, ( ie my wife would rather feed beefheart than bw), but from the way my fish go after bw compared to beefheart I think I might already know the answer.

LOL

scotz

[DarkDiscus]

Miles,

Sounds like a great experiment!  I'm really curious to see what happens!  One question though - what beefheart mix are you going to use?  100% beefheart or will there be additional ingredients?

John

[JacKWattleyDiscus]

Miles this is great.
Jack ran the same experiment about 20 years ago, but he used tubifex in one tank, beef heart in the next tank and banana and flake in the last.
I will wait for you results and then post Jack's.
Gabe

[Lynn]

Miles,
How long are you going to carry this out?
It would be interesting to see if the slower group ever catches up near adulthood.
Good luck!!! Keep us posted on what you decide and do!
;D
Lynn

Pat,
   The food will be weighed out. And everything will be exactly the same, i.e. w/c's both tanks will be done the exact same, feeding at the same time ans so on.
   The formula for the B/H will be ????????, tell ya at the end.
   Which group will do better, I have an idea.
   Everything will be documented and so forth and pic's will be posted and daily updates will be included.
   This will be an 12 month exp. or maybe longer.

   Miles

[brewmaster15]

Hi Miles,
 Sounds like a great experiment  to be undertaking. Let me know if I can help in any way.
  A suggestion  for you also... Since you will be going thru all this work, you might as well help answer other questions  if possible.   It might be interesting   to pretreat  both groups for pathogens   like worms,and  flukes.?  If you want help in figuring out the best way to do this, let me know.
   Good luck,
al

Miles,

How long will you run the test? To get a good result, I suggest one year. Reason being, we will see after an extended period of time,  if the  discus will be the same size and what overall general health problems did both batches have.

I would expect to see results showing that intially the fry may show faster growth rates with the worms, but the beefheart fry will catch up and have less health problems.

Otherwise we will end up with results like the Singapore University study where they did an experiment for a short time comparing the results of pure beefheart and beefheart with vegetable matter. The experiment only proved a short term growth spurt with the pure beefheart, but didn't show that the fry would catch up in time or if any health problems resulted from lack of vegetable matter because of the short time duration involved.

Mat

Whoops. I somehow missed the last two posts, which answered some of my questions. Sorry, but I am reading between water changes.  ;D

Sounds good Miles.  

Mat

[Denny]

sounds like a great experiment. are these fish going to be from the same batch or will they mixed from different batches and strains?

will you keep all equipment separate so that if a disease is introduced, there will be no cross-contamination?

i will be looking forward to the progress reports.
denny

[BlueTurquoise]

I will also be very interested in the outcome! Good onya!

Sorry I have to ask then, is there a *danger* of black worms being infected? I read somewhere that some parasites survive the freezing process... or is that just with Tubifex?