What The....?

[Aurora]

Hello everyone,

Anybody who has been following my posts would know that since I got my pair of discus about two months ago they have done nothing but hate their environment, not eat for the first two weeks, freak out and just generally not seem to be that happy. I have pretty much been waiting for them to turn around and die on me...............and then suddenly they go and do a thing like this! :shock:

Discus are harder to figure out than women. They are trying to give me a heart attack and send me to an early grave, thats what there doing!

I dont know if they were laid yesterday or today. The last couple of days they have seemed especially glum, and the female has barely come out from behind the sponge........now I know why! :lol:

Good news is they havent turned white, and I saw the female fanning them with her right fin, so hopefully that means they arent going to eat them! :)

I thought they were acting like that because I ran out of kH 7.0 powder, so I thought maybe there was a pH crash or something.

How many do you reckon there are? I havent had a chance to try and count.........damn it looks like I need to get another tank :D

[Merrilyn]

Discus are the strangest people. :? Hope you haven't got any other tankmates in there.

[Aurora]

Nope. Their all by their lonesome :)

[DiscusMan]

Mate that is one huge batch of eggs. Either they are really really happy adn healthy or they are actually two females you have.

I hope it is the first one adn that you do get a lot of babies from this pair. But that would have to be easily over 300 eggs as they are quite condensed and there is just so many of them.

Let us know how it turns out.

Wayne

[Aurora]

Well I was just going to say, doesnt it take 48-72 hours to hatch? Well I saw them on Saturday morning, and that would mean 72 hours would have been this morning some time. Do you think thats a problem, or am I just getting impatient for them to hatch already :)

If they were both female then wouldnt the eggs have gone white? and would they be fanning them? Only one of them seems to do 90% of the fanning though. You would have thought if they werent fertilised then they would have eaten them?

If they all do hatch I have no idea how Im going to handle them........or how the parents are going to handle them!

Wayne, you recent had about 200 fry didnt you? How did you cope with that many?

[Aurora]

Well they still havent hatched. As you can see from the pic a few have gone missing too. I havent seen them eat any, in fact they are still fanning them.

Merrilyn, you said on another post that too high a reading of nitrate can kill them too. How high are you talking?
Somebody told me not to do any water changes till the eggs had hatched. That has meant that the tank now looks really bad. Also the nitrate has risen to over my second reading which is 12.5ppm.

Do you think this may have killed them?

[Merrilyn]

You should have some nitrate reading. It just means tat your filter is working and converting the ammonia to nitrite and then into the end product, which is nitrate. The only way to remove nitrate is to have lots of plants or to do water changes to dilute it. Anything over 6 is way too high. Do a water change without disturbing the pair too much.

Is that filter running at full speed? The suction may have prevented the sperm reaching the eggs. Funny cos they still look like fertile eggs. By now any infertile eggs should have turned white. Temperature will affect the length of time it takes for eggs to hatch, so you should something soon, either way.

[Aurora]

Yeah, I am going to do a water change tonight. Should I do a small water change each day to bring it down, or do a big one tonight?

The filter is only a sponge, so I dont think the suction from it is greatly noticable, besides like you said, they look like fertilised eggs.

I have the temp set on 28C. I checked it yesterday and it was about 27C. I checked it this morning and it was 25C and the light wasnt on. I hope it isnt broken as I only brought it last week and it is a Scuba with a 2 year warranty.

[Merrilyn]

That would explain your slow hatch rate. There is still hope. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you (but it makes it real hard to type that way LOL)

Do small water changes, about 10% daily till the reading comes down.

Good Luck, and turn that heater up a notch.

[Aurora]

Well they never hatched.

I raised the temp back to 30C and did water changes but they still didnt hatch.

The parents had stopped fanning as well, so I cleaned them off. I have brought a breeding cone now so hopefully they will spawn again on that.