Breeding Discus Part 8
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In our last installment for breeding Discus we went over how to raise the fry artificially. We will now go over raising the fry naturally as Discus do in the Wild. Then we will go over growing out the baby Discus to be healthy and grow fast.
Growing out the Discus babies requires very little work on your part. The breeder pair will do all of the work for you. One problem is that it is very common for the parents to eat the babies. If your pair easts the fry you should consider artificially raise the fry. There are advantages to naturally raising the fry over and above that it is much easier. Discus fry eat the slime off the parent’s side for the first 10-30 days. This slime is very high in protein and contains disease resistant antibodies that help the fry fight off diseases, particularily bacterial infections. Naturally raised fry will grow much faster at first and will have much more resistance to disease throughout their lives.
Once the fry get to the point where they are free swimming, they will instinctively go to the sides of both of the parents to feed. They will go back and forth, usually in groups between the male and female breeder pair. They do not show a preference for father or mother, but the male is more likely to eat them. There is nothing more beautiful in the fish world than a pair of Discus, in full spawning coloration, swimming with a school of small babies at their side.
There are things you should remember. First, the fry will be very small and weak, so you will need to turn off all filtration, except for a sponge filter. The biggest mistake that you can make is to do a water change in this aquarium with water that is not EXACTLY the same temperature. This is the one place where many hobbyist have the breeding go wrong and lose their Discus babies. Discus fry are extremely sensitive to temperature shock and will die if you do a water change with water that is more than just a few degrees different in temperature. With that said, Discus fry are also very sensitive to ammonia burn, so you will need to do daily partial water changes. You just need to make sure the water temperatures are the same in the replacement water and the fry tank.
After 10 days, start adding a small amount of live baby brine shrimp to the tank, dripping it over the babies. By the end of one month, they will be about ½ inch and will be eating baby brine shrimp exclusively. At this point they are much more hardy and you are pretty much out of the woods.
