proven breeding pairs - MORE Q's added 15.9.07

[madasa]

Hi Im the new boy around here and I have a few questions in regard to my proven breeding pair of Royal turquoise blue (RTB) and proven pair of marlboro reds (MR)- not proven by me yet I hasten to add.

Not even sure that Im in the right forum as one question might be health related.

RTB - in a 140 litre breeding tank with a sponge filter and a cannister filter ... approximate turnover 5 times an hour but no current. Other than the sponge, all that is in the tank is a couple of heaters set at thirty and a breeding cone. Have had them betweem 1 - 2 months. Male very friendly at most times, whereas female tends to keep back and during the day is quite dark in colour, but that disappears late afternoon / early evening when she shows her glory. PH always 6.0 - 6.5, ammonia and nitrite 0, nitrate <5ppm, WCs average 50% every two days and I use conditioner and discus geoliquid, bare bottom. Feed three times per day, rotating foods like - discus dinner, bloodworms, brine shrimp, quality flake and pellet.

Comments please re: The female and as to whether or not it is just a waiting game re: breeding.

MR - 200L tank and both interactive and friendly. Everything the same as above - male has black edges to all fins.

Another waiting game?

Appreciate all input.

Pete

[samir]

200 litre too big for marlboro.

[madasa]

[quote="samir"]200 litre too big for marlboro.[/quotI e]

A man of few words or short of time :)

i assume this is because of the latching on of the fry which I intend to make very easy for the young when the time comes .l.. is there another reason?

Cheers

Pete

[samir]

nope just that, a 2 footer is best. red pigeons are a pain to breed.

[dachoo]

nope just that, a 2 footer is best. red pigeons are a pain to breed.

hI samir 2 foot square are 200 litre too.mate.

DA

[samir]

ok standard 2 foot

[dachoo]

Hi madasa

I've sucessful breed discus in as little 52 litre to as big as 324 litre.

The bigger volume of water only mean the quality of water mean less water change or disturbing to the spawmning pair take in account of feeding too.
The smaller tank size mean it easier for the fry to find their parent (food)or the parent to gather them during the first few hours of free swimming.

At the end of the day, it all come down to your experience with water management & the health of each breeding pair plus each pair experience in parenting.

Just have fun

DA

[Merrilyn]

Welcome to the forum madasa.

The problem with buying 'proven' breeding pairs, is while they may have bred for their previous owner, they may not necessarily breed for you.

Discus are funny fish, you may have everything right for them, with regard to food and water, and they just refuse to breed, and yet others can throw two fish into a tank, and they have fry within a week.

There's just no way of 'making' things happen. However, I find that if a pair have gone off breeding, then sometimes the best thing to do is to separate them, feed them up really well, and then put them back together again after a month.

This time out period will give the female time to fill with eggs and get the male back in the mood again.

As to the size of the tank, I always use an 80 litre bare tank with just a sponge filter for breeding, especially with red fish which often have difficulty getting their fry to attach. Reason being that fry are programmed to head for the darkest object in the tank, which should be their parents, but red fish don't darken properly, so the fry become confused and often head for the dark corners of the tank, or the dark top part of the heater.

In the smaller tank, the fry are more inclined to head for the parents, especially if you keep the tank light fairly dim, so the parents appear darker.

In a bigger tank, with a fair amount of current, the fry literally swim to the point of exhaustion and death.

Even when the fry are ready to be weaned off the parents, after 2 or 3 or 4 weeks I still keep them in a small tank. In the bigger tank, they tend to scatter and have trouble finding food. I don't move them to a bigger tank till they are at least 6 weeks old. Obviously during this time, they are getting daily water changes, so the quality of the water isn't a problem in the smaller tank.

Give your fish a break from each other for a while, and I think you may have success when you put them back together again.

Good luck.

[madasa]

nope just that, a 2 footer is best. red pigeons are a pain to breed.

hI samir 2 foot square are 200 litre too.mate.

DA

Yes i had a 2ft cube at one point which contained 225 litres but sold that on as it exceeded my needs at the time.

And yes - very aware that what breeds for one may not breed for another but knowing they have bred is a good start.

I breed fronties, BGK and cuckoo cats and have bred a large quantity of africans and some americans. This is a new challenge.

You have all given me some really good insight which I will digest - at this stage I think they are still new to me and I will give them a little more time to settle before seperating.

Q's;

1. Are marlboro reds and pigeon reds the same?

2. Is it necessary to have an artificial light on the tank or will the natural light of day be okay?

3. I am doing minimum 25 - 50% water changes every other day on both tanks. Can I lengthen that period to three days with the 200 litre?

4. What would happen if I moved the blues in with the reds in the 200L tank with a cone at each end? Might they still breed, be more relaxed to breed?

Thanks guys.

Regards

Pete

[Merrilyn]

I breed fronties, BGK and cuckoo cats

Are you from WA Pete? I think I may have read about your BGK breeding before.

Now to answer your questions. Pigeon blood is a strain of discus. It was discovered sometime in the 80s when a red fish with pigeon blood spots (the black freckels they get) showed up in a spawn of turquoise fish.

Selective breeding gave us a lot of strains of red fish, but they all came down from the pigeon blood lines, so they all had the predisposition to get black spots or peppering, on the face and body. That's a trait of pigeon blood genes and you never fully breed it out.

Today we have other red fish, that have been bred from wild brown base fish, and they don't have any pigeon blood genes, so no peppering.

Marlboro red fish come from pigeon blood lines, so will have black caudal fin and black edges to the dorsal and anal fin. They often develop peppering on the nose and face, especially at times of spawning. You may hear people referring to clean pigeons, that means they are a pigeon blood based fish, but show no peppering at all (however a percentage of their fry will have it).

Artificial light isn't necessary, natural daylight will be fine. Discus prefer subdued light anyway. In the wild they frequent the shadows and are never found in bright sunlight. You will need artificial light 24/7 when the pairs spawn and have free swimming fry, so they can keep track of the youngsters during the night.

Water changes -in the 200 litre tank you could certainly have two pairs, but because you have bonded pairs, they would probably fight. You could use an incomplete divider, and that would work but the problem there is that sometimes the males are so busy defending the territory from the other male, they forget all about breeding. Still, it's worth a try. I've sometimes used a spare male in the other side of a divided tank to get the pair to take better care of their fry, and that works quite well.

With four fish in a two hundred litre tank, water changes each three days would be fine. Change about 30% of the tank volume each time, and you fish will love you.

[ILLUSN]

marlboro are pigion based, the names pigeon reds, marlboro reds, FOTU, red melons etc are a phenotype not a genotype, so technicaly even perfect marlboros can through "regular pigion fry", i believe some forum members here learned that the hard way when fake RGD's (very good looking red melons) were crossed with real RGDs and a few "normal" looking pigion fry were found in the offspring.

[madasa]

Thanks for the replies thus far people - and rest assured that I am anal about water quality and these will be extremely happy fish.

Could I have more input on whether the two pairs together is a good thing or a bad thing? Or best left as is?

Thanks

Pete

[Merrilyn]

Water changes -in the 200 litre tank you could certainly have two pairs, but because you have bonded pairs, they would probably fight. You could use an incomplete divider, and that would work but the problem there is that sometimes the males are so busy defending the territory from the other male, they forget all about breeding. Still, it's worth a try. I've sometimes used a spare male in the other side of a divided tank to get the pair to take better care of their fry, and that works quite well.


Read this again, think you'll find I've already given you the answer.

[madasa]

oops - thankies

[Merrilyn]

LOL no problems Pete.

Good luck with breeding them. :thumb