Discus fostering angel fry...thread renamed.

[Kindredspirit]

Hi Marie,
The fry are doing great with both discus parents.. In the original set of parents (the ones with all the movies) the fry look like little angels now... Dorsal fins are developing, bodies elongated..

Hey Al ~ I just checked out the latest videos and those Angels are huge! Nice looking too Tell me something I was just curious how long from beginning to now ~ since the time you put the Angel Fry in with the Discus pair...how many days has it been? Total? At what week do or can the baby Angels be completely on their own...w/o the discus parents? Oh...and......lol! You never had any problem with the Angels raising their own fry did you? You just wanted to see if this wld work I'm thinking....NOW you have double trouble....now that the discus can help!

Ever try it the other way around? With the Angels rearing discus eggs?


Inquiring Minds Wanna Know ....ya think? lol! Thanks Al!

The Pair of angels that spawned these fry laid another Several hundred eggs yesterday

Al can you not just split up the pair if you do not want any more fry? ...or not~



Marie ~

[brewmaster15]

Hi Marie,


The eggs were laid on sept 30... The last movies were yesterday oct 14th...so basically 2 weeks have gone by.

baby angels can be away from their parents from the point they are free swimming. The angel parents do guard and protect them..But angel fry are not fed by their parents. I could have pulled these fry and hatched them from eggs without their parents and they would have been fine..

Generally when I have a good pair of angels that parent raise...I'll leave them for 2-4 weeks.. depends on the size of the spawn. most of my pairs of angels parent raise...I have some stubborn but beautiful albinos that prefer having them for breakfast...

This batch of frys angel parents are awesome fish...the best parents I have ever had....and the most aggressive..They'll bite my hand if I go anywhere near their fry ...they also will pretty much kill any other angels...I tried splitting them up before...I have a couple of blind angels as proof. Besides... I still want fry from them... Just not so often or so many!

glad you liked the big angels... They are special.

-al

[pcsb23]

It will be interesting to see if the development rate of these angel fry is any different due to feeding off the discus slime. This is way cool though.

[brewmaster15]

Paul,
I don't know if I can tell that but I do have an observation that may help answer it..

I mentioned how I added that second batch of angel fry to another pair and that these were younger fry, but only 30-40 of them.. The Discus pair raising them look like they may be making some decent slime coat....well anyway.. Both tanks of fry get fed the same....which is basically an excess of what they can eat. The younger fry (smaller group) group are actually larger than the older( larger group).. Both these groups are not from the same parents...but from siblings of the parents.. waters the same...water changes are the same ( could be a factor here as well though because of the numbers of fry)

maybe the difference in growth is attributed to the discus slime being more availible to the smaller group of FRy...hence they grew faster... It'd be a stretch at this point tp guess.. Next time around maybe I will split the group of fry into a control group...artificial raised, control group angelfish raised.. and test group discus raised.

-al

[pcsb23]

Al, as you say there are a number of variables at work, but it could suggest there is a growth benefit, in size terms, from the fry feeding off the discus slime. If you do try the control experiment that would be very interesting. Maybe discus slime is a new super food for angels.

[CAGE-RATTLER]

Very cool stuff AL.

I hadnt been following this thread till now and the videos are excellent!!

So whats next? ................ Artificially inseminating the angel eggs with discus sperm?? Now that would be an experiment!!

[brewmaster15]

Artificially inseminating the angel eggs with discus sperm?? Now that would be an experiment!!

LOL!!! No idea at this point Cage.. I'm still blown away that I have 2 tanks of little angel fish being raised by discus.. Its amazes me.

thanks for the comments.

-al

[GrillMaster]

What amazing videos!! I am literally sittin here eatin cheese an crackers an watchin em..

I can see you going into the LFS now, an submitting to the owner that these fry were discus raised!!! Worth twice as much!

Hope to see it first hand in a couple of weeks! I'll bring the beer.

[brewmaster15]

hey Mark,
It'll be great meeting you!


Everyone,
on these Angels... Its getting close to the time for me to pull them... One of the 2 pairs , the ones with the larger sized, but younger FRY are really starting to show the signs of excessive feeding, I am speculating that the angels Mouths may be drastically different than the Discus in size and maybe structure... and they maybe be damaging the Discus skin....Its still not evident in the smaller sized angels ...but definetly in the larger fry.. I think I will be pulling the fry from that second group today before any real damage is done....I'll take one last vid there before I do.

The Other group...The Pbs that we have been following...Mom and Dad discus still look good... so I'll leave them alittle longer.

-al

[chrisgreat]

I'm a bit late to this thread since I just joined the forum. Don't have any discus yet but they are among the many fish I will be working with within the next year or so once I get a house and a room just for my fish.
Right now I only have angelfish and have raised them almost continuously for the past 20 years. I've always been interested in discus as well but just didn't have the space to mess with them. I was thrilled when I heard about this thread since I have wondered for years what would happen if someone switched angel and discus eggs and saw what each pair would do with different fry. Very interesting.
I've had experiences with angels raising other cichlid fry. Due to a lack of tank space, I had a pair of kribs and angels in the same tank. They both had spawns at the same time several times but basically kept to their own sides of the tank. Once i got a tank for the kribs, I decided to see what the angels would do with some krib fry that didn't have their parents protecting them. At least with this particular pair, they tried to gather the little kribs up and keep them with their own fry. That really didn't work out too well and they gave up in the end since the kribs were NOT about to stay in the upper reaches of the tank. They knew they were supposed to be at the bottom and they did so very quickly. The angels never ate them though.
That same pair was also in a tank with a pair of convicts. This was back when I was younger and had a tank space problem so the convicts had to go in with the angels for a little while. Potentially very stupid, I know, but that's the past. Anyway, the males got along perfectly fine. The two females, on the other hand, won a fight each and then settled down. They also raised spawns at the same time and the fry got totally mixed up within a couple days and both pairs were raising 2 types of fry at the same time. I later dumped some convict fry in with the angels one I got the convicts their own tank, and the angels gathered up the convicts and this time the new fry stayed with the cloud of angel fry.
Granted, I only tried this switching thing with that one angel pair. I've never had a pair not parent raise but this pair was one of the 2 best I've ever had. The male would literally jump 8 inches out of the water to attack my hand. Not sure how other angel pairs would react. Once I get some space to work with, I'll definitely check that out.
As for little angels grazing on their parents, I've actually heard that some wild angels will show quite a bit of that behavior. Obviously not to the extent that discus do, but the wild fry definitely seemed to graze much more than domestic angels. I've seen the behavior with every spawn I've had but it didn't seem to be the whole spawn. It seems that only a small percentage of angels realize that their parents have something good to eat.
However, some spawns WILL end up tearing their parent to shreds as they get older. I've had some spawns stay with their parents for months without any problems while others will kill them if I didn't take them away. It seems that the spawns that shred their parents start to do so when they have been free swimming for about 3 weeks. It happens very quickly too. I'll just wake up one morning and find one or both adult angels clamped down and trying to avoid their nasty little children. I've never seen the angels get aggressive with their babies but they are obviously uncomfortable.
That's why I'm wondering how putting discus eggs with angels would work out. I could be wrong, but since discus fry are built to eat off their parents and obviously have teeth, they might hurt the angels since the angels aren't built to deal with more than an occasional nip. Of course, I think I've also seen pics of baby angels that showed teeth also. I'm not positive about that though. Of course, baby fish of all kinds can be truly scary looking when you see them in high magnification. Baby discus could be used as a model for some horror movie monster.
Well, I'm glad I'm off the next few days because now that I'm in this forum I only have about 20 something thousand threads to look at to catch up. As it is, I've got a few folders that are rapidly filling up with information about various fish I'm interested in and how to best set up the fishroom. Guess they are going to get even fatter very soon.
Great videos too. Just the fact that I got to see healthy discus in motion was good for me. Except for one tank in a shop close to me, every other discus I've seen in person has been in bad shape. Then again, most angels in the shops are the same way. It's just pathetic how some fish are never healthy. You'd think the shops would try some new sources or ways of keeping up their tanks. I better stop there or else I'll be writing a 10 page rant on that subject.
Definitely keep us posted on how the different angels develop as they grow. Very interesting.

[brewmaster15]

Hi Chris,
Welcome To Simplydiscus!

Thanks for adding your thoughts here! I have had many of the same observations with my angel pairs...its absolutely amazing how much harm the fry can do in short time...I thought for sure I was going to lose a pair of angels one time .....they could barely swim...looked like they were hit by a mac truck!....

I still have both sets of angel fry in with the discus parents... though after today I will move out one set of fry... they are very aggressive feeders...I have little doubt by looking at the discus sides that they have TEETH may actually have sharper ones than baby discus.


The other set of fry I will try and leave a bit longer....They are still eating off the sides of the discus.


Good luck in your hobby!

-al

[brewmaster15]

Hi all,
Just wanted to post an update for those of you following along...
I have officially ended this experiment.. I pulled both sets of fry today because the parents were starting to really get eaten. The fry are doing well and are in their own tanks.

The discus pairs protected those fry until the very end...I had two very unhappy sets of parents.

whats next? I have no idea.. I am literally swimming in angels again.....In addition to these sets of fry...I have 3 other sets going with their angel parents.,,I'll need to free up some room before I can try any other experiments.

I hope you enjoyed following along as this unfolded.. I got a lot out of it and really enjoyed it myself..


Take care,
al

[pcsb23]

Al, enjoyed it immensley. Eagerly awaiting the next!

[brewmaster15]

Any one remember this thread? I need to dig out the movies...The old links to all the clips are gone now...but I was talking witha friend about this experiment and wanted to give them the link. ..unfortunately Now I need to put a bit more work into it..

-al

[Disgirl]

Wow what a great story Al.! I had to read to the end , all 8 pages, to find out what finally happened. What did you ever do with all of them? Happen again? I would love to see some of the pictures/video! Thanks for reposting this story.
Barb