My Discus are pairing off - what must I do?

Hi prof. Dirk, I have a problem. I tried sending you a pm, but it might be better discussing it here where others can also learn. My apologies. I have a 550liter tank which had 11 discus of varying age and size. This past friday night, the biggest fish, a female, and a young male spawned on a piece of driftwood. The male ate the eggs, he is still young, not even a year. However, this brought about a drastic change in the environment which only seemed to be getting worse. The male became extremely agressive, and along with the female they claimed 3/4 of the tank for themselves, and refused the other fish access to food at feeding time. On monday i went looking for advise at a LFS where the owner's knowledge is based on breeding himself. He suggested i move the other fish, which was not an option. I only had a 250l cycled tank available, too small for 9 fish. So i prepared the tank, and on tuesday i moved the pair. They are still a little skittish today but they are eating and swimming around,even doing their fin 'dance' when passing each other. 1st question-did I do the right thing? My second question relates to the others where since removing the pair all hell seem to have broken out. Everyones fighting and there seem to be constant figting for food,space etc. I suppose this is due to the removal of the dominant pair? How long will this go on for? I'm getting 4 young brown discus in a fortnight, and I'm a little concerned introducing them to this environment. Do you think it will be ok or should I prepare another tank?

 

Hi Marco,

No problem to ask this question here, this thread is so mixed up by now that a different question is not going to matter.

You are actually asking a number of questions here and I will try to unravel them.

Firstly, it is always best to go back to nature to see what discus do there to understand what they are doing in the aquarium. In nature, discus swim around in large schools until the dominant male in a group chooses a female so that they can spawn. They will then separate from the school and go into an area where there is more protection and less current. Normally this is in summer when the Amazon forests are flooded and they will spawn on a log. There they will then raise their young away from the school. Once the young reach a certain size they will then collect in large schools and grow to adulthood. The parents also join the school again.

So, your two fishes have now paired off and are telling the rest to leave, that is why you have the aggression. Although the pair would be less disturbed if they were not moved and you would move the rest of the fishes, you most probably can't afford another tank of 550 litres and have moved the pair. I also cannot afford many 550 litre tanks and would have done the same. What then happens is that all of the rest of the fishes now have to sort out who is the new boss, because you have removed the dominant fishes. That is why you are seeing the aggression amongst the rest of the fishes. If you want to reduce that aggression you can lower the temperature to 29C, but not lower than that. This aggression will then settle down in a few days. With regard to adding the 4 additional discus, you must be careful because you are getting to the maximum carrying capacity of that tank. You should calculate about 60 litre per adult fish, so you can keep about 9 adults in the tank maximum. However, if all your fishes are not adult it would still be OK, but this will have an effect on how they grow out and some may stay smaller permanently, in other words would become stunted.

Now to your pair. Separating them from the rest is correct in order for them to be able to raise their young. However, you have one massive problem and that is that a male that is less than one year old is not sexually mature and although it looks as though he is fertilizing the eggs, he is not producing sperm yet. The fact that he just ate the eggs is a possible indication that this is the case. Sub-adult fishes that go through this breeding ritual also do not have their full breeding instincts and this little male will be very stupid and will in all likelihood continue eating the eggs. The female will continue laying eggs on a weekly basis most likely just after you have done your weekly water change. The reason why discus spawn after a water change is because the temp goes down and the pH goes up which is the natural stimulus for spawning. In nature, in spring the cold water from the Andes flows into the river, raising the pH and dropping the temp. Again nature tells us what the reason is. Bottom line is that my opinion is that this male is too young to spawn. I purposely stop young fishes from spawning for this reason. I separate such pairs purposely and wait for the males to get to 18 months at least before trying to get them to spawn.

Hope this answers your question, although the news about your "pair" may be a little dissappointing. The pair may make a success of it, but if they spawn two more times without success, I would separate them again.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Re:discus

Baie dankie Prof. This is then my action plan - I will leave them together and see what happens for utmost two more spawns. If eaten by the male, I will move him back to the 550, which then leaves the female alone. I will then introduce the 4 browns to her tank for a while to keep her company. I'm expecting 7.5cm Browns so they should be ok with the larger female? What I would like to know is do I then put the pair together again in a couple of months, or might the male take a new mate? I ask this because all the time I was expecting a different pair to form. The male was very close to another young fish, whom i suspect a female as she and the spawning female always tended to get at each other. It wouldnt bother me too much either way. In all honesty the young pair will be much 'better' as they are both really really quality fish, whereas i find the spawning female to not have a very nice shape to her head region. She has a "nose" which is sort of pointy. I understand my space is to capacity. I'm actually building a house and for now living at temp premises which restricts me. What I have done thus far to aid with the volume of fish is doing 10% WC daily. I do this with aged water that i keep in a jojo tank filled with driftwood. Its a nightmare as you can imagine! I actually sold of all breeding fishes due to this, and only kept the discus. Now this happens. . . . Lol!

 

Hi Marco,

I think that all of the things that you have suggested sound very sensible. I would do exactly as you have planned. If you keep the big female with the new smaller fishes you will find that that will work very well because she will dominate them and keep them from fighting with each other which will also be a lot better for them.

The male would choose another female if you took the other female away so this may be the solution to your problem. However, the longer you leave him with this female the stronger the bond will become between them, that is if they do not fight in any case eventually, which can also be the case.

However, what you have planned sounds correct, I would suggest that you simply go ahead.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

can you interbreed??

 

Personally, I like keeping to my own species. But I suppose if you really wanted to, yes, you could interbreed.

 

I explained to you earlier shakes, that just about all commercially sold discus are hybrids and will interbreed, we can therefore not talk about different species here. The only really different species are Heckel discus.

And as SalmonA has explained, you should rather not interbreed, because what you mainly get from this are a batch of mongrels with you cannot give a name and which in terms of breeding do not really lead anywhere. Leave that to the experts.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi all. Found this http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~davidr/discus/articles/sexingdiscus.html on how to sex discus. found it interesting. Can anybody corroborate this?

Thanks
Scaly

 

Thank you Professor. I'll keep posting on the subject. Someday you must please explain to me what makes a 'good pairing' as far as strains are concerned. From what I understand is that it is complicated because the 'family tree' of both parents play a role. With imported fish that makes it impossible. . . I have a request. I posted a thread titled ' Shocking' in the General section. If you have time just peek at it and advise again please.

 

Shakes,

Can I ask you to keep to the topic of the thread please? We seem to start with one issue and in no time the thread changes into something else. If someone else wants to find specific answers then he/she cannot find it and I have to start explaining everything from the start again.

Marco,

I think I will again start a separate thread on your topic as this is different once again.

Scaly,

I had a look at this sexing story and if I would try to apply this then all my snakeskin blue diamonds and blue diamonds would be males because they have slightly longer fins and all my Alencers, normal ones and Curipera Alencers, would be females because they are perfectly round. Sexing discus even has the boffins struggling and is not so easy.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof

Thanks for the insight! I was a bit concerned that all my fish were the same sex after reading that...there is still hope. I guess I will have to be patient a bit longer to see if they pair up. They are about 18 months old now.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Vince (aka Scaly)

 

Hi Prof. Dirk. The pair started spawning again at 17h50 tonight. This time the male did not eat the eggs but actually "fertilized" them. They are now keenly guarding and fanning the eggs. I suppose I now just wait to see firstly if the eggs will be fertile, and secondly if they dont eat them. All and all, though I'm aware of all the possibilities, I'm as happy as a child in a toy shop!

 

Ok Prof Dirk, its been almost 20 hours since the spawning took place. I count +- 80 eggs, and so far there are only 5 that have gone white. They have been picked off by the parents leaving only the 'sticky' part of the shell behind. The other eggs are still there and have not changed much in colour. Compared to Angel eggs they resemble fertile eggs. Has enough time passed to call them fertile or will infertility only show up later?

 

No Marco,

They could still be unfertilized. You must go past 36 hours at which time the eggs will go dark with the developing embryos. Unless you can see that the eggs go dark however, you cannot distinguish between unfertilized eggs and water conditions that are not right and therefore causing the eggs not to develop. Do you think that you water conditions are OK?

In principle though, if the parents are looking after the eggs and not fighting, then you are making progress and things have a chance of working out. Let us keep our fingers crossed!

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Marco, if u dont mind me adding. This is my opinion and the prof may/may not agree with me. He has already told u age here could be a problem. Nonetheless u must be doing sumting right, and 4 that take courage. This pais has made a great jump from the 1st spawn which was eaten to where u r now. They shud in theory keep progressing and u will also get to know them better. Prof will certainly agree that no 2 pairs are ever the same, and u might just have a good pair here. What strains are the parents?

 

Thanks again for your vote of confidence. . .lol. This is actually my 2nd spawning pair I've had. The 1st one I sold would you believe? I just didnt have the space and time needed to do it back then. I MIGHT be doing the right things with my fish, but I am also just aware that I still have a lot to learn! Thus far I think i have been lucky, i havent lost any and I havent had any major problems. The pair I have now was imported for me as 'Royal Snakeskins' Yet i have searched the internet and not found them. All I find that resemble them is Red Snakeskins. They are very nice fish, more so the male than the female like i've said. Her background colour I find a tad too dark. Male is exquisite! Nice red finnage with the fine lines. I'm very excited to see what the fry will look like. Any idea?