breeding question

[twocat]

I have 8 valentine discus in a 75. For the last several days they have been pecking at the cone but no eggs. I now have two more that are doing the same at the other end of the tank. The other 4 are pushed in the middle from both sides. I plan on pulling one pair and putting in their own tank tonight.


When you have a potential pair should you put them in their own tank or just leave them in the community tank until you get eggs / wrigglers?

With one pair, they tolerate a third discus getting close to them without always pushing this discus away, any thoughts on this?


Mark

[nc0gnet0]

It's normal. If they are young, leaving them in the community tank will give them a few trial runs and many times helps to strengthen their bond, but you could go either way with it. I have had young pairs get things right the first time, but it usually takes them a few trys (sometimes many more) to get things right.

[John_Nicholson]

The trouble with pulling them now is that they may both be female, or both be male. I would leave them until you know a little more about who is who.

-john

[Swordsman]

Do you know the hardness of your water? I have 8 breeding pairs that can lay eggs almost on a weekly basis in my water and never produce a wiggler because the water is to hard and causes the eggs to harden before fertilization. My water hardness is about 400ppm from my tap. If I want to see wigglers, I usually have to slowly start mixing in RO with my tap water every day to bring the PH down slowly without shocking them and also reduce the hardness down to about 50ppm. Then I will get hundreds of wigglers. It seems a hardness of between 25ppm and 75 ppm works best for me. when I do this, I usually seperate them into a 20 gal, making RO for my 75 gallon tanks is just to much for me :)

[John_Nicholson]

Just so you know there is no need to change them over to ro slowly. You can do extremely large water changes with ro and get them switched all at once. If they are ready to spawn they will do so pretty quick.

-john

[Swordsman]

I mention a slow change with the RO because my tap water PH is about 7.9-8.0 and my RO PH is about 6.1. So I do it slowly to ensure I don't PH shock my fish. Everyone's water chemistry is different. It should be part of eveyone's "best practices" to check their water chemistries and decide what/how to manage it. Atleast everything I've read says that a PH change of more than .1 can cause PH shock. Not sure if that's the case but that seems to be whats published by most popular discus experts like Watley, Degen and Untergasser.

[John_Nicholson]

LOL....Your right I have only been doing this for the last 20 years or so, I have only raised literally tens of thousands of discus. I probably don't know what I am talking about.........

-john

[Swordsman]

Wow, that's quite an attitude there JOHN! No reason to act like that! I'm just posting to try and help out. If PH shock isn't an issue, I would be glad to read what you have to say about it, or better yet, send me a copy of your book!

Twocat, check your PH levels before dumping your fish in a new tank. It's common knowledge that PH shock, just like temperature shock, WILL kill your fish. Take everything you read here with a grain of salt and apply some common sense to it. Thats my advise.

[Argentum]

LOL....Your right I have only been doing this for the last 20 years or so, I have only raised literally tens of thousands of discus. I probably don't know what I am talking about.........

-john

So John are you suggesting from your experience that its safe to change the water pH from lets say 7.5 to 6 with just one WC with no issues?

[Swordsman]

I'm pretty sure Twocat is smart enough to gleen enough information here to make the right decisions. If not, it will be a bad day for the Discus!

[Swordsman]

Some people may be able to go straight from the tap to the RO because thier water is soft. Not saying that's not possible, it is. John may just be able to do that because his water conditions are right. Benefit of the doubt.

[alcastro]

I add 50% RO to my tanks at one time and than another larger one later that day and no problems my PH is 7.8 I adjust the water till I see 100 or so TDS no problems, the problem with reading some of those books is that they may be to old they say you should keep discus under 7 ph.


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[Swordsman]

I agree, I keep my Discus in water that has a PH of 7.8-8.0 with no problems. i just can't hatch eggs in that hard of water.

[Swordsman]

And my hardness is about 400ppm. My fish do fine.

[alcastro]

Yes that's true my is just as hard as yours, I got one wiggler yesterday, so now that they are confirm I will lower my ph and tds.


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[John_Nicholson]

If your ph is that low on your ro you need to aerate it for 24 hours before use so it can drive off the dissolved CO2. Swordsman you are probably a great guy it just sends up a red flag when some one is new here and then they go around posting in every thread that they can find acting like an expert. Most of them do not have any knowledge of their own they simply spit out information that they have read somewhere else. I guess I could quote experts from books but then again most of the people that are writing them are friends of mine..........

-john

[John_Nicholson]

Yes that's true my is just as hard as yours, I got one wiggler yesterday, so now that they are confirm I will lower my ph and tds.


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Don't worry about lower your ph. Just lower your hardness.

-john

[alcastro]

John you should write your own book, I bet it would be very different, your a great guy when people get to know you, thanks for all your help.

AL


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[John_Nicholson]

Thanks buddy.

-john

[nc0gnet0]

Just so you know there is no need to change them over to ro slowly. You can do extremely large water changes with ro and get them switched all at once. If they are ready to spawn they will do so pretty quick.

-john
I do the same thing all the time, never an issue, and my water is harder and the ph higher than everyone that has posted so far. Most don't understand the relationship between kh, gh, and ph. Dropping your tds from 400 to 75 or 50 seldom results in much a ph change at all, if it does, then something else is going on.

[nc0gnet0]

John you should write your own book, I bet it would be very different, your a great guy when people get to know you, thanks for all your help.

AL

Will there be lots of pictures??

:)



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[nc0gnet0]

Do you know the hardness of your water? I have 8 breeding pairs that can lay eggs almost on a weekly basis in my water and never produce a wiggler because the water is to hard and causes the eggs to harden before fertilization. My water hardness is about 400ppm from my tap. If I want to see wigglers, I usually have to slowly start mixing in RO with my tap water every day to bring the PH down slowly without shocking them and also reduce the hardness down to about 50ppm. Then I will get hundreds of wigglers. It seems a hardness of between 25ppm and 75 ppm works best for me. when I do this, I usually seperate them into a 20 gal, making RO for my 75 gallon tanks is just to much for me :)

This is not quite what is happening. Fertilization will still occur, but over time the egg casing will calcify and the embryo will suffocate and die.

[dghby]

I'd buy that book.

[Swordsman]

John, I'm sure your a great guy just like most people on here are, never implied anything else. Like I said before, maybe your water PH conditions are condusive to moving your fish from Tap to RO, I don't know. I know that mine are not and most people's are not. You don't have to be a "veteran member" to have experience and be able to provide good advice. I've kept, bred and raised fish for over 30 years including over a hundred species of African Cichlids with my friend who is an Ichthyological Taxonomist (a fish expert), but I would never call myself an expert or boast about my knowledge. I'm just a hobbyest at best with a lot of knowledge and experience to share for what it's worth. As for the red flag stuff, not sure what you mean about that, I've only posted to 2-3 threads on this forum and never giving any "expert" advise, not sure that should be setting a red flag in anyones mind. To me, a red flag may need to be set when a someone tells somebody else "don't worry about the PH, go ahead and dump your fish from a tank with tap water to a tank with RO water" when they don't even know the water chemestry of that individuals tanks. That did raise a red flag with me and that's just not something I would ever tell someone to do, based on my personal knowledge and experience. And that was my stance on that, nothing more. Once again, it's a matter of best practices to know your water chemistry before you make decisions about water changes. I hope Twocat has been provided enough info to make an informed decision from all these posts, whether yours, mine or someone elses. It's been a good debate I think!

[Swordsman]

Yeah, ok, I'm good with that explaination. Actually, I agree with that, it is correct. Thanks for providing that info.

[Swordsman]

I'd be interested in any theories that anyone has on why my RO filter would cause such a drastic PH change??? I really wish it didn't because it would make things alot easier.

[Swordsman]

Besides the obvious that the RO filter is filtering out something. I'm not a scientist, just an engineer.

[twocat]

There was too much fighting in this tank. I pulled one pair and put them in their own tank. Two hours later the secon pair laid eggs on some driftwood. there is no way I can put any kind of egg cover over them. I will wait and see what happens.

Mark

[Milo2]

John is right you can do a 80-90% RO water change in one day. This will create that "dramatic" amazon rain storm effect that will get them to spawn and have a successful fertilization. One tip though, if you know your pair spawns every 5-7 days then do the ro change right when they start to get frisky.

[timmy82]

I do the same thing all the time, never an issue, and my water is harder and the ph higher than everyone that has posted so far. Most don't understand the relationship between kh, gh, and ph. Dropping your tds from 400 to 75 or 50 seldom results in much a ph change at all, if it does, then something else is going on.

I do same also ;) even 15% cold water changes will give results.

[timmy82]

There was too much fighting in this tank. I pulled one pair and put them in their own tank. Two hours later the secon pair laid eggs on some driftwood. there is no way I can put any kind of egg cover over them. I will wait and see what happens.

Mark

Back to the subject here, I wouldn't worry ablout a cage give them a fair go to prove them self it is easier if the fish do all the work and you just feed the fry BBS. With that much aggression sounds like there could be 2 pairs or 1 and some confused males or females? Time will tell the faster you want it to happen the slower they'll take. Discus know what your thinking :gossip: