The secerts of breeding discus

You will find that many discus owners will come to a stage were they decide its time to start breeding discus fish. Its not impossible however it can be hard work, but if done correctly can be rewarding. Like all cichlids, discus choose a spawning site then guard and rear the eggs and resulting fry.

Here are some quick tips for you...
Pairing: Discus fish really don't take well to arrange marriages, the best way to get a pair to gather is to buy a group of young unrelated fish of the same colour type and let them pair up themselves. This might happen from when the fish are half grown, spawning usually occurs when there ¾ of their adult size. The fish will usually remain a pair until the remainder of there lives.

Spawning: Discus will choose a near vertical smooth site, which they clean and then the female will lay any ware from 80-400 eggs and then the male fertilises them. It can take between 50-60 hours for the eggs to hatch and another 36-48 hours until their swimming freely.

Breeding Tank: Its best to keep the breeding tanks simple and to have a simple air powered filtration, spawning sites (terracotta cones, broad leafed plants or slate) and no substrate. The water needs to be very soft so the eggs can develop properly. The quality of the water needs to be excellent and have a temperature of about 84-88F. Also a suitable tank size is 24x18x18.
Feeding and Conditioning: The parents will need a good and varied diet not just to condition them to spawn, but to provide nutrition when they are feeding their fry. Large water changes, a temperature rise and heavy feeding is often a good spawning trigger.

Fry Rearing: It's a good idea to give the fry additional feedings of small foods such as (BBS) baby brine shrimp whilst with parents. You will notice after about 3-6 weeks the parents will be exhausted, also the fry will be growing fast it's a good idea to remove them. This is where lots of tanks and water changes are needed to achieve a decent growth rate. I used to grow circa. 40 fry to just under 2" in a 55G tank, and this required heavy water changing. The discus market is saturated with fish, so it best to grow 20-50 excellent fry than 80 runts. Growth is reasonable, but not spectacular

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