Discus dad getting irritated

[dhernandeztwo]

Hi,

I have 5 day old fry(s) counting from the day they attached themselves to the parents. The male parent is a bright orange and the female is a snakeskin of the same colour.

All is going well until last night I noticed that the dad is starting to be irritated. He tries to catch the fries in his mouth (thank heavens the fries are too fast for him) - and I'm not sure what will happen if he gets to them. :(

The first 2 days from attachment-day, the pair was sharing feeding of discus milk; but the last 3 days the fries always attach themselves to the dad. Also, I can sense some boredom or lack of interest from the mom. I'm not sure if that's the outcome or that brought about the fries sticking more to the dad.

Any advise? :roll: Should I move the dad or the pair out? The fries are not yet feeding by themselves (I'm going to do that this weekend with bbs).

[dhernandeztwo]

Ooops, forgot to post my setup:
40L bare tank. Temp 29C. PH 6.2. Sponge filter.

Also, forgot to mention that some of the frys are smaller in size - same size when they attached to parents 5 days ago; while some have grown significantly. Is this an indication that the parents are not producing enough discus milk?

If so, what can I do to increase discus milk?

[ILLUSN]

try feeding more bbs to our fry if you can do 4 feeds a day it will REALLY take the stress of the parents, as for increasing the milk, try some extra vitamins in the fish food like fishtamins or pro-more.

not much you really can do, once the fry are 2 weeks old (from hatching) they should be big enough for VERY finely ground beefheart in which case you can remove the parents alltogether.

[Hollowman]

As for the smaller ones, going on Andrew Soh's advice, he culls at 4 weeks. I tend to weed out the obvious weak ones at 7 to 10 days as this can lighten the load on the parents and lower the waste content in the water.

[dhernandeztwo]

I woke up this morning and was shocked and frustrated from what I saw. :shock: :x All my frys are gone and the pair laid another batch of eggs! :(

I was too late to pick up on the signs. The female lost interest and last night was cleaning a section of the tank (I took out the breeding cone). :cry:

The thing is, the frys were still clinging to the dad so that's why I didn't take out the parents, and the frys are barely a week old and not yet feeding by themselves.

Trying to understand the lessons learned from this, should I have moved out the female only? Or should I have taken the risk to take out both parents and hopefully the frys will accept fry food?

I failed to mention, these are relatively new parents (and breeder), and so far this is the farthest this discus pair has gone through. So is this normal for a discus pair, to do trial and error and get better and farther on every batch off eggs they produce?

[Merrilyn]

That's a shame. They were doing so well too.

Yes it is normal for pairs to go through a few trial runs before they finally get things right.

I like to leave my newly formed pairs in the community tank for several spawns before I move them into a breeding tank. It tends to make better parents of them, as they learn to defend and protect their eggs and fry from other fish.

You can leave your pair together, and hope they work things out sooner rather than later, or you can remove one parent, maybe the female, once the fry are free swimming, and leave dad to raise the babies on his own.

Young discus fry are fairly fragile, so try to keep the babies with a parent until they are at least four weeks old. By that time, they should be feeding well on newly hatched baby brine shrimp, and very finely grated beefheart, along with some crushed dry food.

Good luck with your pair. You must be doing lots of things right to keep them so happy :P