Doubt regarding delayed growth in discus

[Donethur]

Hello all,

I received an small fish like 15 days ago from a friend. It is a red rose strain, and this little guy has an evident delayed growth, judging for the size of the eye comparing with the body. I am calculating it is half of the size it should have (comparing the eye with my own discus, he is like 7 cm, and it should be 13, a bit more). So my doubt is: do you have experience with this?, can they be recovered or they will never achieve their adult size when this happens?.

My only bet: a lot of top quality food + excellent water conditions.

I appreciate your comments and opinions.

Thanks

[Mattgoanna]

Logic would tell you that it will never be a giant, but I have had stunted Discus grow to a good size over time.

[Filip]

Posting picture of your discus would be your best bet Donethur.
Different strains have different eye to body ratios and its hard to judge his growth potential precisely just from the eye to body ratio .

Also try to determine his age. Find out how long your friend had him and at what size the discus was bought , before he gave it to you . That would be a useful info in determining his growth potential.

[Donethur]

Logic would tell you that it will never be a giant, but I have had stunted Discus grow to a good size over time.

Thanks mate, this gives me hope :)

[Donethur]

Posting picture of your discus would be your best bet Donethur.
Different strains have different eye to body ratios and its hard to judge his growth potential precisely just from the eye to body ratio .

Also try to determine his age. Find out how long your friend had him and at what size the discus was bought , before he gave it to you . That would be a useful info in determining his growth potential.

Thanks for your answer Filip. Actually, I really didnt know this, I used this table below for every single strain, never thought it would depend on the strain. I learned something new :)

107399

This is my discus, I got it ill with internal parasites, but after 15 days in quarantine, he was a lot better and no white extrement anymore after 8 days (I treated it by increasing the temperature to 33 degrees + a lot of food). His age would be like 1.2 years, hard to determine actually as my friend bought it already in a similar size, so I assumed 6 months with him + 6 months with the breeder.

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2017/02/19/redrose.png

[Filip]

If your friend had it for 6 months and it hasn't gain any significant growth during that time , I doubt that it will grow any further Donethur .

[Mattgoanna]

I would not give up it just yet. It looks like a nice fish, so feed away and see what happens.

[Donethur]

Thanks guys!. I won't give up, at least I will give him the best possible life. It is clear to me after all the opinions that it is not guaranteed, but it could be an small chance. I am feeding him with: live red wigglers (controlled batch, clean method cutting and washing them a lot), live zophobas morio, beefheart with garlic, Cobalt Pro Breeder flakes, live brine shrimp, mussels, algae wafers, Nutrafin Max pellet for discus. All days in different portions of each source. I think this is a good enough diet for him.

Rgds

[Second Hand Pat]

Hi Donethur, it might be useful to understand the growth rate vs age for a discus. Generally discus grow the fastest the first three months of life (up to an inch a month). Three to six months is also prime growing time for them. After six months they significantly slow down and at nine month even more. A reasonable target is six inches at a year.

Now some domestic strains will grow after a year and some up to two years. My personal experience with wild discus is they grow into their third year.

If you little guy is 1.2 years you may not see much growth but heck, it is worth a try. Sometimes the fish will surprise you.
Pat

[Donethur]

Thanks mate for sharing your thoughts. I really wish you are right and this is the case where the little guy will success on this. I will post some pics, I expect a noticeable advance in some extra months. My friend didn't take care very good of it, I think bad water conditions and not proper feeding was the cause of this.

[Donethur]

Hey guys, I just want to post an update. About the small chance this little guy had, it seems he has taken advantage 100% of it. Check the pictures only after 8 days:

First image: not a good picture, but you can appreciate that the color improved a lot comparing with the previous picture. Now it is full colour.

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2017/02/26/redrosefull.png


And here you can appreciate that he actually is growing fast, in 8 days this result is really great, this gives me a lot of hope.

Before: counting the eyes from down to up, it is +/- 4 counts.

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2017/02/26/eye1before.png

After: now it is +/- 5 counts, which is a lot for 8 days!!. I am really happy with the result, thanks all for sharing your thoughts :)

https://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2017/02/26/eye1after.png