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Dud
Discus Dad Delivers
by
Ali El-Mohandes
Finformation,
February
2002
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I'm
kind of amateurish at writing articles but I was enticed into doing
so by the thought of literary stardom in ichthy world. I will endeavor
not to be so wordy hereafter.
In the fall of 2000 at the Greater Pittsburgh Aquarium Society auction
I decided for the first time to acquire adult discus. I've been down
this path before but it’s always been with fifty cents size
juveniles and I've failed miserably either getting them to adulthood
or to spawn them when they became adults. So, I decided to pay the
extra two bucks. I grit my teeth, and raised my bidding number aggressively
and acquired four six-plus inch body size discus. They looked like
two red turquoise, one blue turquoise, and a deep cobalt blue. They
were badly bagged but I managed to get them home with gill plates
beating like hummingbird wings. As soon as we arrived home I deposited
them all into one 5-gallon bucket and filled the bucket from their
designated tank. Ten minutes later I did a half-bucket water change
from the same tank and ten minutes after that they were unceremoniously
dumped into their present home.
Their new home is now a 125-gallon tank (six feet long and almost
bare), a Whisper V power filter with a sponge over the intake in the
tank, two HydroV sponge filters vertically stacked and air-powered
for biological stability, a handful or two of gravel strewn haphazardly,
two angelfish breeding slates, and a few, four-inch clay pots.
Tank mates included a six-inch gibbiceps sailfin pleco, two pairs
of double black veil angels, various apisto pairs, a trio of altispinosa,
and a group of corys.
I keep almost all my tanks at eighty to ninety degrees Fahrenheit
unless there's a specific reason not to. Like cooling down a fourteen-inch
aggressive festae at sixty-five degrees or a breeding group of corys
at seventy degrees. My water changes generally average about eighty
percent tank volume every two to three weeks. Replacement water is
from the tap directly and slightly warmer by feel than the residual
tank water. My pH, rarely measured, is anywhere between 6.5 and 7.5.
I did pick up a conductivity meter at an auction once and it registers
about 120 Siemens. I rarely clean anything but the front glass of
my tanks and the plecos do the rest. They work to eat.
I didn't feed that tank for almost a week. I tried discus bits, which
I knew the rest of the tank would eat. Within minutes discus were
being fed as well. I must hand it to the original owner, these four
fish bounced back admirably. Beautiful--the blue was vivid, and the
red crooked horizontal lines were dazzling. The foreheads were round
and wide. I was pleased.
Usually I feed my fish two to three times a week unless I'm growing
them or preparing them for breeding. I started feeding this tank twice
daily. One day Tetra bits, one day frozen white mosquito larvae, one
day frozen bloodworms, one day frozen brine shrimp, and one day whatever
else I had in dried food. Boy, you could see fat bellies on those
discus.
Within two months the four had paired up and I thought I had two viable
pairs. My vigil began. My wife calls me a fish voyeur when I do this.
But I guess I stared them into sexual prowess.
I was on my way to work one morning and as I peered into the tank
one of the pairs had laid eggs on the vertical intake of the WhisperV,
right over the top joint. Should I turn the power filter down? Should
I turn the power filter off? Should I dim the tank? Should I brighten
the tank? Should I feed them? Should I starve them? Should I take
away those pesky, nosy belligerent angels? Should I remove that sucker
mouth catfish lest he have a propensity for freshly laid eggs? Should
I take the day off work? What would I say–should I call in because
my fish are expecting? Wow. I can just hear the responses. I did nothing.
I just went to work and came home and nothing had changed. Everything
was well. Daddy discus swam around telling of his capabilities and
showing off. Momma discus steadfastly gazing at the eggs and for the
next two or three days her mouth was never more than a centimeter
away.
They all turned white. Boy. A proud dud dad. Well, maybe he missed.
I'll just do a water change, keep feeding, and maybe he won't miss
next time. Well, he did. And he did again. I could almost set our
clock every three weeks. Then anguish. I looked into the tank and
she was floating badly bruised and pecked and eventually dead. I'll
mangle him, I'll strangle him. I know, I'll pan fry him! But I didn't.
The dud discus dad out-wooed the other pair and paired up with one.
So now I have a new pair, a red turquoise male and a blue turquoise
female. I know she's a female, because they laid eggs within ten days.
I decided to use my brain. I cut an egg crate to size and split the
tank and allowed them one third. The intake from the WhisperV was
in the two-thirds part and one of the two outflows poured into the
discus section. The lighting was dim. An angelfish slate at a sixty-five
degree slant is their only possession. They laid eggs. They had fry.
A 50 to 60% hatch rate as far as I could estimate. About one hundred
and twenty finally start swimming and swarming around the parents.
Discus Dad is a better parent than Mom, not that she ignores the fry,
but it seems that he is more tolerant to their grazing.. He eats better
than she, and always looks fatter. Does this mean he is a better mucous
cafeteria? If I look at the family too closely the parents swim parallel
and two centimeters apart and I almost can't see their fry corralled
between them.
At about four to five millimeters of age, I began to dribble live
baby brine between the parents. The fry grew quickly to about a centimeter
and now are circular in shape. I transferred them to a ten-gallon
tank with an external filter and a sponge on the inlet. Eighty-five
degrees Fahrenheit and a seventy five percent water change every other
day. Live baby brine at 6:30AM, 6:30PM, and 10PM. They grow in spurts.
There are many abnormal fin structures in baby discus. Some straighten
out by two months of age and others don't. I was surprised at the
percentage I needed to cull. Eventually weaned to frozen brine shrimp
and what ever else available, the fry grew well.
Four to five weeks later the pair bred again. Same story, no different.
I have stuff to sell at the next GPASI auction. I made enough to finally
buy my colony of Hypancistrus zebra. But that’s another
story. |
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