Strange looking fry

[Tomas]

Can anyone tell why some of my fry's have so small dorsal fin? I also dont know why they'r stress bars are so irregular (see pictures). The fry's are 2 1/2 month old and seem to be healthy. Has anyone had similar problems? Those are my first fry's so I might have done something wrong, I'm just not sure what ???
http://bh.is/kev/albums/album23/abj.sized.jpg

[Tomas]

Another picture.
http://bh.is/kev/albums/album23/abk.sized.jpg

This is how the tank looks like.
http://bh.is/kev/albums/album23/abc.thumb.jpghttp://bh.is/kev/albums/album23/abi.thumb.jpg

[chuck]

Thomas,
There birth defects.. sometimes you might find a few and sometimes none in a spawn..It happens :-\ ... The ones with the deformed Dorsal fins should be culled the fins will not grow normally.
chuck

[Rod]

Hi Thomas,

Yes something went wrong with that spawn, unfortunetly you will have to cull them all and try again:( I'm not sure what it was that caused that, i have seen it a few times though, but i would be suspecting water problems.

Rod

[cobalt]

hi guys
I m back
The defect is most likely genetic. It seems to be receseive with a high tenedency of crossing over.
I have 5 pairs that i have isolated in order to locate the gene or at least the patern of hereditery. They all give only "blockhead" offspring.
they grow up fine exept the odd difformity in the first dorsal rays.
I have a dominat male adult with this defect. when I have more info I will be glad to share it with the board.
The best you can do is cull :'( them or to swich mates for the parents.

I thought at first it was enviormental (water quality sucked) but it is persistant per pair in the same water...
Cobalt

[Tomas]

I have already swiched mates for the parents. Should I also cull the once that look fine?

[John_Nicholson]

Cull the bad ones and grow out the good ones. It can be caused by poor water conditions. I would put the pair back together and change more water while the fry are small. I bet it makes the difference.

-john

P.S. You will almost always have some fry that needs to be culled.

[discus_nw]

Don't be afraid to change water. Discus fry are not sensitive to clean water. Change it, the more, the better. Just match parameters. I am doing a 90% change twice a day on a tank of fry. No problems. :)

[afick1975]

Thomas how often do you do water changes? Water quality is the most important thing to raise health discus. You can feed them all the food in the world but if the water quality is not good then you are wasting your time. Make sure to clean the glass when you are doing your water changes.


Andre

[Tomas]

When the fry were young i did 50% water changes a day. I should have done more water changes :-\

[discus_nw]

50% is what alot of people do. It depends on the tank size, number of fish, other filtration, feeding regime. All these factors determine the bioload in your tank. Cleaner and fresher is what I perfer.

[Carol_Roberts]

Most people breed discus in bare tanks as it is easier to siphon uneaten food, wipe down the inside and bottom glass, and maintain water quality.

[cobalt]

hmmm
went right past .....
anyway I would like an explanation that 2 diffrent spawns from diffrent parents in 2 cages next to eachother in the same water one deformed other not.
gee the water might have an effect but there nust still be some genetic tendency.
Cobalt

[Willie]

Tomas;

It might actually be too large a water change. A local breeder in Minneapolis ran into this problem with spawn after spawn of Red Turquoise. When she cut back on the amount and frequency of water changes, the fins returned to normal. She was pumping out 100 discus a month while that pair was producing, so this was not a newbie. I don't think it happened because the spawns don't like clean water, but that there may not have been a good match in water parameters, i.e. temperature, hardness, pH, etc.

I've personally had one Angel Diamond spawn like that, where I ended up culling 50% of the spawn. All subsequent spawns were normal. So I have to think it was some environmental effect (something I did), not a genetic effect (something the fish did).

I personally only change about 15% of the water every other day during the first two weeks. Why? Because I think that's plenty. Could I change more? I see no reason why not as long as the new water exactly matched the parameter of the old water. But I don't think its necessary.

Good luck, Willie