Baby Snakeskin Blue Diamond discus

I have had some very pretty Snakeskin Blue Diamond Discus that have been growing out nicely over the past 18 months. Now two pairs have established themselves and the one pair has spawned very nicely on 13 June 2010. They became freeswimming on 17 June and are now 7 days on and eating baby brine shrimps already. There must be about 120 youngsters. I expect that there will also be some pure Blue Diamonds amongst the babies.

The first pic below is of the father a few months ago, when he obviously did not have babies yet. The second pic is of a true blue diamond with the mother of the present spawn just behind him and some more of these fishes below (the other fishes are young Alencer red discus). The last pic which is very poor, but which was very difficult to take as I did not want to upset the pair, shows them with their young.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Now why did you have to go and upset the balance Dirk??

I was all happy not having a Discus tank, convinced myself it was too much work and effort, and now you go post some pics like that, which have gotten the bug going again!! My wife is gonna end up kicking me out!! Hehe!!

Yours Gratefully,
G!

 

Stunning fish. Would love to setup my 1.8 for just Discus.

 

Are you selling and how much?

 

Very nice!

 

Congrats Prof Dirk! They are all very nice!

 

Great stuff Dirk. Must be the magic water out there!

 

Congratulations are in order, Dirk.
Knowing you, I'm sure you will raise 150 out of the 120 to a nice size! lol!

 

Thanks for all the compliments guys, when keeping discus, I have learnt from very bitter experience that you must not count your chickens before they are hatched so before I have raised them up to a reasonable size, I cannot say that I have raised them successfully. However, everything looks OK so far....... let us see.

With regard to specific comments, I can answer as follows:

Big G and Donny, the most important thing in keeping discus is patience, so wait a while longer with your discus tank and do your homework carefully........ and then eventually take the plunge. I kept tropical fishes for 20 years before starting with discus.

Lizid, I cannot talk about prices before they are at a selling size. If I give you a price, the parents will eat the youngsters, I am too scared to do this......

Thanks for the compliment Dolphin, the blue diamond in photograph 2 is one that you supplied and is a very nice fish. That specific pic was taken in February and it has grown considerably since then.

Rowland, yes the water is magic, overseas folks would have a heart attack if they heard that these fishes were bred in tap water, but that is the advantage that we have here in the Western Cape. I have kept discus since 1988, in other words for 22 years now and I am still learning. What I am learning is to observe the fishes to assess when they are ready to spawn and how they interact with one another. Discus remain one of the most fascinating fishes and it is not surprising that there are many forums worldwide which are only dedicated to these fishes.

Marco and Gert, also thanks for your comments, I appreciate them.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

congrats Prof

Prof. Congrats. They look stunning! I'm running up a serious bill trying to read all yr posts how are they doing? A few weeks now.

 

Hi Guys,

My camera is out of action at the moment so I cannot show you some pics of the babies, but they are just over four weeks old now and growing like rockets. The largest have a body size of a R1 coin. They have a few weeks to go before I will be looking to sell any but I normally sell them in the 6-7 cm size range which I expect they will reach by somewhere between 10-12 weeks.

Kind regards.

Dirk

 

Hi Dirk what is your feeding regime for these little guys? Please keep us posted as to when you are ready to sell.