surrogate parents

recently two of my discus spawned and began raising the fry...I've been having some troubles with the female so i really wanted to pull her out of the tank for treatment...The same day that I removed her, the male started having some troubles-I''m thinking the sheer volume of fry feeding off of him was too much for him....I had read somewhere about discus foster parents-something like that...So I pulled a female from another spawn(only fifty fry and they're just about weaned from the parents) and placed her in the tank with the male....they pecked at each other a little bit, and most of the fry jumped from him over to her!! It's been two days now, and everything is fine...at times all of the fry are on her feeding-it's definitely taken the strain off the male(it's his first spawn)

[Carol_Roberts]

Very interesting David. The surrogate mom must be pretty tough to raise 50 and go right back in for another batch. Is she a REd Turk?

carol: i was under the impression she was an alenquer...the previous owner isn't quite sure, and refers to her as "that ugly fish"....hahahahaha....she's a great parent though..she swims around with over a hundred fry on her back like it's a walk in the park...

david: I like ugly fish like that. It seems to me someone just has this kind of luck and gets everything right at the first time. I'm just the opposite. Most people will put the fry into the surrogate mother's tank and mix 2 broods together. That's a big mistake. The surrogate mother will pick out the new fry and kill everyone of them due to differences in size and color. Very often the larger fry will treat the smaller one as food and end up killing all of them. How many proven pairs you have now?. It's time to do some real discus work and out cross them just for the fun of it. Find out what's the F16 look like. I have some very interesting fry you've never seen before by doing that. they look like a fighter jet and will be sent to Middle East representing Canada.

Jimmy.

jimmy: 4 adults in total- 2 males, 2 females...1 male has spawned successfully with both females, the other male has spawned successfully with one female(for now) 3 different batches of fry...they all seem totally willing to spawn with whomever...
fighter jets, eh?? ;D

p.s. i almost wish i had more adults, but then where would i put all the fry?? :

[roger]

That is an interesting twist on the foster parent theme.

I only have one breeding pair and its only 50 fry so Im not to worried about overworking one fish.

Most of the time people do the foster trick when the eggs are laid, but it can be hard to synchronize fish so that they lay eggs at the same time. Someone did mention that you can move the eggs into a tank that has a pair and get them to take care of the eggs as if they where their own. It was also mentioned that sometimes you have to try several pairs before you find a pair that wont eat the eggs

Peace,
Roger