Discus tragic

[carolerex]

Greetings from Adelaide South Australia
We are new breeders with lots to learn and look forward to sharing of ideas and tips from those of you who are more experienced. We have raised our first batch of young, and have just purchased a set of six tanks set up with a trickle filter. We have a six foot community tank and six others of varying sizes apart from the trickle filter system which will house our breeders. We only have two pairs at present and are looking to pair up some of our young discus. Looking forward to your comments and a rewarding relaitionship with other forum members

[syndosis]

Hello there.
Lovely result on your discus breeding.
I will be looking for around 10 discus in around 6-8 weeks. Have started whole setup process and will allow plenty of time for cycling and getting things just right. Going to spend some serious time setting up the planting also.

Where are you based? Contact details? I am in Mt Barker, SA.

Also interested in any drift wood or substrate you might have spare.
If you have some coming up for sale or some ready at moment, could you please post photos or email me at windsword79 at gmail.com

Many thanks.
Oh, to settle your nerves you may have, I have bred cichlids for 5 years but am just getting back into hobby after 4 year absence due to circumstances.
Successfully ran 26 tanks including breeding environments and one large discus display tank.

Damon and Louise

[Merrilyn]

A very warm welcome to the forum carolerex.

Lovely fish you've got there.

If you put up some pics of the parents, I might be able to give you a better idea of the strain.

:P

[carolerex]

Thanks for your welcome Merrilyn, and advise on this young fish. We bought the male as a Marlborough Red but as you can see he is not. I know that they are not an ideal couple but he had his mind made up on this particular female. Untill we get more pairs we will let them have a few more batches as it is all a good learning experience for us.

[Merrilyn]

Well you've got some very nice looking parents, and they've produced a very attractive offspring which I would probably call a Pearl Pigeon Blood.

He's a very clean Marlboro Gold, and she's a well marked Red Turquoise. By a stroke of luck, they've actually made an ideal couple.

How many fry did you get from that batch, and did they all look the same, or did you get variations?

Rather than buy in more breeding pairs, I think you should continue to work with this pair, cross the best looking of the female offspring back to the father, and also cross the best looking siblings to each other. That's the way new strains are formed.

Continue working with them, and within a couple of years, you could have your own strain which breeds true.

Time consuming, but fascinating :P

[carolerex]

We did get 70 or 80 from that batch but we did cull about 15 because of poor dorsal fins. we got about one third each of turqs, some that looked a little like (Alenqures ? spelt wrong) and the rest that looked like the male and also like the one in the photo. Unfortunately we sold them all except one to pay for our trickle filter system breeding tanks. After your encouraging comments I wish we had kept more. Oh well we will just have to breed some more so that we can line breed as you have sugested. Thanks again for your advice, much appreciated.