Discus Infidelity! My Turk has Pigeon Blood Fever!

[Jim Curtis]

I was under the impression that Discus pretty much paired for life assuming they are kept together. I had a pair of Blue Turks that were together in a tank with 3 other discus, they had laid eggs in that enviroment but never had any become free swimmers without getting eaten. Last night I noticed one of my Red Melons doing the dance near the male Turk. Well apperantly it wasnt hard to convince him to leave my other turk because this morning I woke up to find this scene...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/theend13/003-2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/theend13/008.jpg

What would offspring from this pair look like? Im assuming they would'nt be very attractive?

[Peachtree Discus]

discus do not necessarily pair for life. sometimes a pair will quit and never pair again. i have a female that was about to drop eggs. i dropped in a male and within 2 days i had fertilized eggs.

IMO, reds and blues should not be crossbred. you end up with peppered reds and offspring that later breed with unreliable results.

[FLGirl1977]

Love knows no boundaries! ;)

[Peachtree Discus]

actually, i don't recall gene dominance to know what happens if a crossed blue is bred with a full blue. in addition, i am lumping multiple strains into 1 category (red or blue). therefore, im not 100% sure about the unreliability in breeding later.

[freestylez_14]

DiscusMaker,

So I have a breeding that is a red melon and a blue turq. So the results of the offspring will be peppered reds? So how much pepper will show on the fry? Do you have any pictures? Currently I have a batch of offspring of this pair and more offspring are coming.

[John_Nicholson]

You will either get 100% PB or 50% PB, 50% turq type fish. PB is the dominate gene. If the parent PB is 100% PB then your babies will all carry the dominate PB gene and the recessive turq gene. If the parent PB is only 50% pb, then you will get 50% pg and the other 50% will be something else. Since we would not know what the recessive genes are on the PB I have no way of guessing the outcome. It keep it simple we will assume that the PB is 100% PB. In that case you will have all PB offspring, most will carry a lot of peppering. You might get a few nice fish but most would have less then desirable color.

-john

[Rod]

Very very few animals pair for life, discus are definately not one of them. :)

[Jim Curtis]

"you end up with peppered reds and offspring that later breed with unreliable results"

That's what I thought. She laid her eggs way up at the top of the filter intake which is a really bad place since I need to do a water change. I would feel cruel doing it now since she is so focused on her eggs.

I'm sure its probably too late but I moved the male who paired with her and my other red turk into a 20 gallon with a cone to see if I can get them to breed again. This are the two fish in the breeder tank. They are both about 9 months old. I think the male pictured here is the only male out of my 5 discus. Clearly not a great fish but oh well.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/theend13/033.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/theend13/631.jpg

[cschwaderer]

Pidgeon Bloods aren't really classified as Reds, are they? They are...well...Pidgeon Bloods - actually a brown based Discus? I have some experience mixing Blue Diamonds with what I call "Tangerines" (you call them Red Melons, but I believe they are just a clean Pidgeon Blood - no white/blue markings).

I won't post pictures of the parents because the male was a standard Blue Diamond and the female was a Tangerine much like the Red Melon in your picture. The fish on the right was one of the offspring. Most of them looked like her - brown/orange body with none to some striations in the forehead:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/cschwaderer/Pair8ClydeBonnie/tangPair2.jpg

There were a very small percentage that look like this - almost what you'd call a white butterfly:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/cschwaderer/PidgeyBluebird/PBClassicLeft.jpg


So the first generation were hybrids that didn't really look like either parent. A couple years later that white butterfly looking male paired with a blue diamond female:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/cschwaderer/PidgeyBluebird/PidgeyAndBluebird.jpg

Their offspring were about 50% that looked like this:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/cschwaderer/PidgeyBluebird/IMG_4361_edited.jpg

About 30% that looked like this - kind of a blue diamond with a grey/white body, but with nice red eyes:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/cschwaderer/PidgeyBluebird/IMG_4359_edited.jpg

And about 20% that looked like a fish that might grow into a Turq-looking thing - brown with blue striations, but the blue striations never get very intense:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/cschwaderer/PidgeyBluebird/IMG_0684.jpg

Your mileage may vary and it greatly depends on the lineage of your Turqs. But Blue Diamonds are the purest form of the blue based Discus (and are just a completely blue Cobalt which is a less striated form of a Turq) and I thought it was interesting to see the different things that this kind of lineage would throw.

Hope this helps,
Curt

[John_Nicholson]

The biggest thing about crossing with a BD is they lack stress bars. You had some nice looking babies, but if you would have crossed with a 9 barred blue fish the PB would have been noticeably dirtier.

-john

[cschwaderer]

The biggest thing about crossing with a BD is they lack stress bars. You had some nice looking babies, but if you would have crossed with a 9 barred blue fish the PB would have been noticeably dirtier.

-john

I see - thanks for the information. So Turqs I know start their lives brown barred, then the blue striations and redder bodies fill in when they get older (starting around 9 months with the ones I own anyway). So you're saying because the Turqs are barred and BDs aren't that's where the speckling comes in. Because the bars are "diffusing" in the gene pool (or however you want to think of it).

You'll notice the blue phenotype of the hybrid picture I posted appears kinda charcoal/blue in the upper half and white/silver in the lower half of the body. I kinda thought this might be the peppering manifesting itself in a bit of a different way in the blue diamond hybrid.

I didn't particularly mean to spawn these hybrids, but I went ahead with letting that pair do their thing and was hoping for some BDs in a couple generations with the nice red eye found in the Tangerine/Pidgeons. Blue Discus almost always have that black bar stripe in the eye that's really hard to get rid of. Or yellow eyes which I'm told from a show perspective is less desireable than clean, red eyes.

I've been trying to spawn the male and female hybrids from the original BD/Tangerine cross to see what varieties they would throw since they'd both have the BD gene and the Tangerine gene. They were spawning quite regularly in the fall, but couldn't get any fry to attach and now they are on a break. Maybe this spring...

[Jim Curtis]

Thanks for posting that. Maybe I will let them go at it and see what I end up with.

[aquadiva]

Nice looking Discus!! I love the real orange Pigeon Bloods, very pretty! Makes me think of sunshine, something we lack here in Upper Michigan during the long winter months! :o

Anna:sun::sun:

[ericatdallas]

Just curious (OP doesn't look like he's still around) how these turned out.... I'm growing out Tangerines and Cobalt Blue (the breeder said they came from Stendker Blue line, is that the same?).

I don't plan on crossing the two, but if it ends up happening wanted to know if I should prevent it (I'm not sure I could destroy the eggs or cull the fry).

[Discus_Glen]

Jim Curtis, did you ever raise any young from your blue cross? Have any follow up?