My Maze Discuss laid eggs......

[goldfisher]

What should I do?I'd like to try to breed them.Easy or difficult?Need advice.Thanks.


Eugene

[nacra99]

Woohoo! Congrats.

My advice for the first spawn is just to leave them alone and see what they do.
Don't mean to be a downer, but quite likely the first spawn will get eaten.
But this is still good because you know you have a pair and it gives you time to get prepared for future spawns. (which will be in as soon as 2 weeks).

So.. .for the next spawn...
1) if you haven't already, house the pair by themselves in a 20H or a 29 gal tank. Preferably paint at least the bottom & back of the tank with a light color (like baby blue) or cover with white paper. This will help the fry attach to the parents as they will instinctively be attracted to the darkest thing in the tank. (which hopefully is the parents).
2) Prepare a breeding surface which may be an overturned terracotta flower pot or a piece of flooring slate (which you can get from home depot).
3) Purchase some brine shrimp eggs which you will need at quite some amount when the babies come.
4) If you haven't already, replace your power filter with an air driven sponge filter. This will keep the fry from getting sucked up.

As a rough guide, discus eggs should hatch on day 3, be free swimming by day 6 and may take a day or two to attach to the parents. If they don't attach, turn on the lights, cover the side of the tanks with white paper and try to reduce the amount of dark objects in the tank. If still doesn't work, lower the water level in the tank till its 1 or 2 " above the dorsal of the parents. You can re-fill the water when the fry have attached.

One week after they attach, you can start on the brine shrimp. They'll take a few days, but usually within a week, they will be eating BBS.

You should stop the water changes during the egg phase, but should resume small changes after free swimming. Use a rigid airline tubing to vacuum the tank bottom. After spawing, the parents may be likely to lose appetite, so feed in small amounts and vacuum out the excess.

When the fry get large enough that they are ripping up their parents scales, or start feeding by themselves at the bottom of the tank, they should be removed and given a tank by themselves.

Troubleshooting:
1. If eggs don't hatch, replace 50% of the tapwater with RO water to lower the hardness. This should help the fertilization and hatching
2. If parents eat eggs, immediately after you are sure that the parents are done laying & fertilization, add a plastic mesh screen on top of the eggs to prevent the parents from eating the eggs. The mesh should still allow parents to fan the eggs while keeping them away from eating them. Usually by the time the eggs hatch, the parents will have bonded and should take care of the fry.
3. If eggs fungus, make sure you do a huge waterchange right before spawing (you will begin to notice signs of spawning when they start cleaning their slate / pot) to make sure that the water is clean. Add Meth blue, acriflavin or hydrogen peroxide to prevent minimize fungus.
4. Parents beat the hell out of each other. Go to home depot and get eggcrate to divide the tank after eggs are laid. Cut out larger holes in the eggcrate such that you combine 4 holes into on large square hole. This will allow fry to travel through the screen from one parent to another later when they are bigger.

Post Pics!

Goodluck!

[goldfisher]

Thanks Nacra99 for that info.I'm not sure if I'm going to set-up another tank just for them.......will see but I'll keep your advice.Thanks again.

Eugene

[wvgdiscus]

Be carefull with hydrogen peroxide as it will remove the air in the water

[Tetranerd]

I know its a super old post - but peroxide is h2o2. So its water with an extra oxygen molecule. How can it remove oxygen from water?

[jhenry]

Nice work Eugene