YEEEEEEEEEEEEES My First Spawn

[narny]

:D

Hi i'm new here, i'm panicing slightly, yet overjoyed as hell. Let me elaborate :

I've been keeping discus for just about a year now. I started with a community tank full of gourami's and tetra's, and then i saw my first discus ! WOW.

A year later i've now got 3 tanks, a Juwel Rekord 70, a Juwel Rekord 96 and a 4 foot 120 Litre clear seal. In the 4 footer i've got 8 discus, a pair of pigeons in the 70 and a now breeding pair in my 96. The pair in question are a female Brilliant blue turq (4.5 inch) and a huge 7 inch white swan. I've got my own RO unit now, after a year of lugging water up and down from my LFS, and i've strived and strived for good soft acidic water, i was beginning to think there was some sort of sorcery involved because i've had no pairings or spawnings. Now, bam, i've got eggs :D

Tank Parameters of Breeding Tank :

6.5 PH
Ammonia - 0
Nitrate - 0
Nitrate - 5 ppm max
Water soft (Hagen test kit)
Water Acidic (Hagen test kit)

My questions now are mounting up fast hehehe

1) No water changes - True or false???
2) What and how much do i alter my feeding schedule? At the moment i feed them well and do twice a week 25% changes, frozen beefheart, frozen brine shrimp and frozen blood worms.
3) When do i move the babies to a new tank
4) How big a tank do the babies need, i've not much room left, i have a 1 bedroom flat. I was thinking of another Juwel 96 or 70, no room for another 4 footer. What water parameters would be different in a baby tank??? Or do i just continue to do what i've been doing (it obviously works)
5) Do i leave the lights on at night???

One final note, i do not use the Juwel filters, i've ripped em out of all my tanks as they've been nothing but Nitrate traps. I only use Eheim internal sponge filters in all my discus tanks. My breeding tank is sand bottomed, if this is of interest.

........................ *Breathe* ................................

Help ! :mrgreen:

[DiscusMan]

Well done on teh batch of eggs. There is many hurdles to getting baby discus and i hope you get over them all.

Ok water changes - During the eggs stage i would do water changes daily to clean the tank. When they are free swimming i have held off doing water changes for the first couple of days as they are so erradic in the swimming it is easy to find them swimming on the bottom and suck them up. But even once they are 4 to 5 days old i still change the tank water into a bucket and make sure that i havent sucked any up by accident :)

2. They say that you should reduce the quantities that you feed a bit but i havent done his to mine as the whole parenting thing must be a strain so i say keep the food up but this means that the tank gets a lot dirtier fast. So maybe reduce portions for the couple of days of first free swimming.

3. Moving the babies to a new tank is all dependant on how well the parents are handling the babies. My first batch of 50 or so i left with the parents for 2 weeks. THe current batch of over 200 babies i will be removing sooner and the best judege i think to to watch the parents and the behaviour as this time i can see they are already a lot more stressed.

4.I would think the babies only need like a 10 to 20 litre tank to start off with as they are only very small still and in a very small tank you can do twice daily 90% water changes and it will take you all of 3 mintues to complete. This will see large growth rate. BUt once they start to get bigger you will need a tank that is big enough to hold how many babies you have left.

5. I have been turning the lights off at night with no problems after the eggs have hatch. I don thtink it required to leave them on and many of hte breeders in Penang dont even have lights in the fish farms at all.

i am not a huge filter expert so i can comment on that :)

Hope all goes well for you

Wayne

[narny]

Day 2 Update,

The Female turq ate the eggs :cry:

[DiscusMan]

Time to go and and by yourself soem gutter leaf guard and cover those eggs up once they are laid. It cost $2 for 8 metres of it from bunnings i was there today :)

Hope you can get a bit further with the next batch

Wayne