Raising Discus fry artificial

[Rudra]

Hi folks, decided to give this a try as I have a spare tank to grow the juvies out. My red melon and blue diamond pair decided to ignore the nicely placed discus cones and spawned on the amazon sword leaf. On day 2 (before evening - which is when they usually plan for caviar dinner), I cut the leaf out into a plastic bowl placed in a 38 galong heated to 86. added 2 drops of meth. blue.

Day 3 - got wrigglers.
Day 4 - moved the semi wriggling / swimming frys to a white ceramic bowl floating in the same tank with a air bubbler kept very low - 1 bubble per 10 sec approx.
Day 5 -6 - added some bbs, and discovered they were not ready to eat them yet. so cleaned them.
Day 7 - broke a coconut shell to small pieces, boiled a piece for 10 mts, then smeared egg yolk on it and let it stand vertically in the ceramic bowl. the fry except 3 are all free swimming now and seem to eat them fine. I still added bbs, but wasnt sure if it got eaten. anyways doing this once every 4 hours and cleaning the ceramic bowl after 10 - 15 mts with a 80 % water change using a baster.
Day 8 - is today - 4 hours egg yolk.
Now let me go get some pics to post it...

The bowl
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The whole setup
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[Rudra]

Ok.. the pic and comments got reversed. but you get the idea..

[Kal-El]

Pictures are very small to see clearly... can you upload to Photobucket and link the pictures here? Thanks for sharing and this is giving me some ideas if I ever decide to give this a try.

[Rudra]

Here is a flickr link..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12951535@N08/10347603163/
The betta bowl down with the air tube is for the bbs.

[Kal-El]

I'm assuming the big plastic container floating in the tank is the water you use to WC the bowl?

[Rudra]

Actually no, That bowl was where the wrigglers stayed until I moved them to the ceramic bowl. Now I use them to dispose water from the ceramic bowl when doing wc in case I accidentally suck up a fry. Happened once or twice.

[Rudra]

And I use the tank water itself for wc. The tank has a cycled filter running in it and some hair algae at the bottom..

[CliffsDiscus]

Looks good, do you continue to feed the yolk thru out the night or do you bed the fry down?


Cliff

[Rudra]

Looks good, do you continue to feed the yolk thru out the night or do you bed the fry down?Cliff
I do the last feeding for the night around 11:30 - 12:00 midnight, do a wc, turn off the light save for a desk lamp nearby for the bbs hatch.
next feeding around 6 in the morning. (the first night alone, I woke up at 4 - as I read somewhere the first 24 hours free swimming in crucial)

I am hoping i can stretch by another hour or so tomorrow so it will fit my normal schedule...

[Allwin]

Hello Rudra, Going to be a interesting thread.. Pics/video can be a great share to this thread :)

[Rudra]

Hello Rudra, Going to be a interesting thread.. Pics/video can be a great share to this thread :)
Thanks! Hope so!

[Rudra]

Day 10 update (Day 0 - day of spawn)
Fry still eating a mix of yolk and bbs (i hope so - they are simply too tiny to see if they are getting eaten or not)
Lost 2 fry out of the 30~ something batch. No idea why.

And it is soo... labour intensive. Folks, if you guys ever wanna do it, make sure you commit yourself to this. It is a lot of careful work.... And here is the pic.
Also, I added another ceramic bowl to the mix, as I noticed regardless of how much i suck out using the baster, the egg yolk bits were still sticking to the bottom. So Now I replace the ceramic bowls everynight. the fry are transferred using a large spoon to scoop them out and mostly by the baster.http://www.flickr.com/photos/12951535@N08/10403291063/

Flickr Link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12951535@N08/10403291063/

[rdiscus]

Look great

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5549/10403291063_729f023013_z.jpg

[Rudra]

Thanks Ryan.

[qiyanfeng]

If this is your day 7 of free swimming, I want to say, they are just the size of first day free swimming to me. :D



Look great

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5549/10403291063_729f023013_z.jpg

[CliffsDiscus]

I got a closer look at the picture posted from another computer, and it looks as if the fry are not eating.

Cliff