A general question about breeding pairs

[Boomer]

Please excuse me as my husband and I are complete novices when it comes to breeding Discus.

A bit of a background. I had two pairs go their seperate ways. In one 45g we had the LSS and Snow White Pair. They laid eggs the very soon after being in the new tank. Four days later laid another clutch with about 4 swimmers around. Some were attaching and others were not. Out of the second clutch alot less were fertalized from dad and we ended up with maybe 4 wigglers. Three days ago I noticed mom/dad cleaning again and we were left with one from the original clutch who seemed to be enticed by BBS as well as 3 wigglers/moving into swimmer stage. As of today...we have no babies at all and mom and dad have some serious concentration on the pot again.

My other pair is a Blue Colbalt and Snow White. They laid eggs the same night as the previous pair but ate them all within 24hrs. These two have some interest in preparing but not even close to the above pair.

So, my questions:

1. Is it ok for the fish to have so many clutches in a row?
2. When there are numerous clutches being laid does this effect the quality of the eggs so to speak
3. Any ideas what would make one pair breed like little rabbits and the other pair to not have a care in the world about it?

[MostlyDiscus]

I dont think I can answer all your questions correctly but if it were me I would seperate your hyperactive pair for a week or so. Clean your water really well, ph to 6.5 or so and tds under 150. Put them back together and when they spawn do not feed untill the eggs hatch. You should get a decent size spawn that way and if the parents are busy with mulitple fry they wont think of spawning again. Most times pairs will respawn when they have a very small clutch to tend.

Ed

[Big Tuck]

i have found that many things affect different pairs differently from tank to tank.Generlly speaking for me parameters seem to effect them most and ph is next.For my fish,they do the best when the tds are 50/80 and ph is in the 6 range. Temp i use now 83/84.I used to have the temp higher but it affected my hatch rate,so i lowered it and it really made a difference.As everyone knows i rase artifically,because i got tired of losing hundreds of eggs and fry to canabalsym.If there spawning be happy for thats a whole lot better than: when they QUIT,and you cant figure out why?For me its not always easy and its a defenet learning process even after many succesful spawns. Tuck