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View Full Version : Surprised! Found my discus pair laid eggs! What to do now! Please help.



KhalilSMG
02-02-2012, 05:14 AM
Hi there.
I am an old hobbyist and decided to restart the hobby with my 11yr old son after 20yrs. So, we set up a 300ltr community tank and much later added 6 discus (I have always been a great fan of discus fish as I have always thought of them as the most majestic of all tropical fish). We have been following this website closely with setting up and succesfully (I think) created a happy home for the fish without any great losses. To my suprise, last friday we discovered that a pair of discus had laid eggs on the inlet pipe of the cannister filter. We hurried to removed the other fish to a quarentine/sick bay (which was luckily setup a week earlier) as many of them prepared to feast on the freshly laid 'caviar'.

We then monitored the spawning pair for the last couple of days and watched them slowly seperating the good from the bad (eating the bad/unfertilised eggs) until there were none. We left the couple alone for a few of days just to settle down before swapping them over to the quarentine/sick bay (now breeding bay) but noticed a bit of unsual behaviour and decided not to move them since they appeared to be mating again. By yesterday (Wednesday), I was thrilled and lucky to see the happy couple spawning. We watched the female (a blue diamond) move up along the inlet pipe laying her valuble treasure and the male (a blue snakeskin) coming along to make sure he does his part of the process (thankfully I watched one of the clips last week of a pair of discus spawning on this site. Thats when I realised what they were actually upto).

The problem for me now is, since I am a novice, I need to know what is the best to do next. Do i feed the parents? Do I continue to make water changes etc. Could someone please guide me or direct me to a thread on the next neccesary steps from here.

Thanks in advance
Khalil
Cape Town
South Africa

TURQ64
02-02-2012, 08:33 AM
Congratulations and welcome...Keep everything as normal as possible. Feed, change water, etc. as you always would...The parents will tend the fry for the first few days until you can get some brine shrimp eggs and hatch them....

KhalilSMG
02-04-2012, 10:53 AM
Thanks for the response. By Thursday, they had eaten all the eggs....again. I thought I should isolate them to the breeding tank.