Discus laid eggs in with my other fish (question)
- Thread starter fsirico
- Start date
fsirico;2809031; said:
No, it's unlikely they will make it in your tank. They are too many factors against it. If you want to raise fry, you should separate the pair, and give them their own breeding tank. The pair should spawn several times before they stop. I've had pairs lay a dozen or more times in a row before they stop. I have 6-20gal. "tall" tanks that I use for breeding pairs. I keep sponge filters cycled in my sump ready to go when needed. I can quickly set up the tank with a sponge filter, a heater, and a small clay flower pot turned upside down, for the female to lay her eggs on. When the fry get large enough to eat food offered to them, the parents are removed to another breeder tank to spawn again. The fry are left in the first tank to grow out more, until they are large enough to be moved to the grow out tank.
Hi... As Darrell has said.. they will not make it probably past the free swimming stage.. Sometimes in my discus community tank they have spawned, made it to the wriggler stage and then to free swimming but then they got eaten.. Most of the times the eggs were eaten and thats as far as it went. But it's great to watch and good practice for the fish and pair bonding.. If you really want to breed them it's best to setup separate tanks.. Good luck and enjoy your fish. Sue
Yeah, that's true, especially with young fish. I think a lot of this "eating" behaviour has to do with the constant pressure put on the pair to guard the eggs/fry from other fish in a community tank setting. Leaving fry too long with the parents can trigger this behaviour as well, as the pair begins to spawn again. Although some fish may always eat their young, in my experience, this behavior declines sharply when the breeding pair are separated from the group. This is what leads me to believe that "eating" can be the result of a perceived, constant threat from the other fish in the confinements of a tank setting.
I don't know. Never done that. Maybe if it was dark in color so the pair couldn't see the other fish, and it prevented the tiny fry from passing through, I don't know. You still may have water quality issues with fry in a community tank however. Little ones need very clean water at all times to grow properly, which would be difficult to pull off in a large tank when you are feeding little ones 5 or 6 times a day. All this feeding of high protein food would foul your water quickly. You would be doing a lot of water changes on a large tank, and that's not very economical. It would be much easier doing these changes on a small tank. My advice is to forget about raising fry if you can't get the equipment, or have the time to make the commitment to raising them. It takes a real effort to raise fry to a "sellable" size. This is the main reason discus are expensive. If anyone could successfully do it, discus would be the same price as common livebearers.