Week 8 since birth

[Zephaniah]

So I finally broke down and decided to make my own beefheart mix since the babies weren't eating any of the BF bought from the LFS.

I followed Merrilyn's recipe in the Food and Nutrition forum.

Tried to feed the babies and they still won't eat it. :(
A couple of them pick at it but that's it, it just sits at the bottom of the tank, cloudying up the water until I suck it out.

They don't seem interested in BBS anymore as that also just sits at the bottom of the tank now.

The only thing they'll eat is crushed up flake food.

What am I doing wrong? They don't seem as big as they should be at 8 weeks.

[Zephaniah]

Here are some pics:

[Zephaniah]

I just realized I never posted a pic of the parents. Here they are.

[Zephaniah]

Female:
Red Turq

Male:
Marlboro Red?

Does the female look slightly stunted?

[bronco]

wow, great fish mate,.. try bloodworms, every single fish i have eat them, prefered over anythin.. i givE em.

[bronco]

How old are they btw? they do seem very young breeders.

[Zephaniah]

wow, great fish mate,.. try bloodworms, every single fish i have eat them, prefered over anythin.. i givE em.

I tried bloodworms too. The babies ignore it and wait for the crushed flake flood, lol.

[Zephaniah]

How old are they btw? they do seem very young breeders.

Honestly I can't recall. The parents are probably 1-1.5 years old. I got them as juvis about a year ago.

[Hollowman]

What are the water parameters? Change regime?


To answer your other question about the female, I would say not really stunted.
What is your intention for the fry?

[Matt15]

First of all congratulations on raising fry to this stage....;)

Now i'm going to say a few things Zephaniah which will upset you but I think its best to be honest.

I personally would never have bred with those parents. The end result is off spring loaded with peppering that nobody will want to buy. You could try and give them away but then the last thing the industry needs is zero quality fish entering into the market.

It's like breeding a pug with a rottweiler.

A suggestion would be to put them into the freezer and buy a male turq for your female.

[Hollowman]

Matt, you took the words from my mouth. I fully agree with your sentiments on this. If Zeph' can find another Marlboro or RT to match his existing fish, then fine. But like you say Matt, totally zero quality fry imo.
If you want to raise them Zeph and learn from them ok, but please do not try to pass them on or sell them.

I try not to upset people, but this type of random breeding practice should be stopped for everyone's benefit. Too many unsuspecting new discus keepers get fobbed off with this type of fish, pay stupid money for them, and for me they are all culls.

Steve

[gabriel_15]

Lets just focus on his question and lets try to help him.

I understand your point guys but please lets not discourage mr. Zephaniah.

To answer your question, we encountered that kind of situation also.. Just make sure to keep the waters clean, give them medicine if they look sick.

Try bloodworms as first move. and try to place heater on your tank. Hope that helps. Good luck ;D

[Hollowman]

We have already asked for the water parameters and water change regime, there has been no answer....... other observations have been raised.
What more can be done without input from Zeph?

[Zephaniah]

Yeah I know about the poor quality fry. I've been reading a lot on these forums and knew someone would bring that up. :D
I'm let them breed to see if I could actually raise fry successfully before purchasing new fish. Consider this a learning experience for me.

There's about 20 fry in a 29 gallon tank.
pH is ~6.5
Temp is 82 degree F
Zero ammonia
Zero nitrate
Zero nitrite

I do a 50-75% water change every day.

And chill about the no input thing. I posted last night and just woke up to reply. I am on the other side of the world from most of you guys. :shock:

I have a couple of friends I plan to give the babies to if they get big enough. They want to see if they can keep discus before purchasing some higher quality ones.

[Hollowman]

Zeph, nothing meant by no input, I know you are in the US, so times and posting do not always happen immediately. Being in the UK, I am normally here on my own too :lol:

If anything I would up the temp a bit, 84-86 would be better. You should be showing some NitAtes, not sure why you are not? So are they just eating the flake? Also, the ones that are on the bottom, are they belly gliding? do they swim normally them fall to the bottom ?

I understand why you are trying to raise these fish, it takes time and effort to bring on fry just to prove to yourself you can do it, you are doing ok so far, but your ethics on 'raise to learn' are not always followed by the unscrupulous greedy breeder. This is where I have a problem, not with you though :wink:

Steve

[Zephaniah]

I live in a 950 sq foot 2 bedroom apartment with 2 kids in NYC. My wife complains I take up too much space as it is with my two tanks. Plus Con Ed here charges an arm and leg. You should see my electric bill.

There's no way I'm serious about breeding and selling these things. This is just a part time hobby and a once and done deal with these fry. :D

Yeah, they have no problem eating the flake food. Just wierd.

I did find a couple of them dead yesterday for the first time in a month. They were floating on the surface sideways before I threw them out. Figured that was normal to lose a few of them during this process.

They all seem to like hiding near the sponge filter before coming out to feed.

If anything, they seem to float to the top when they have a problem, not fall to the bottom.

There is a sponge filter and a back filter with an airstone in the tank.

[gabriel_15]

Good to hear you response.

[Old Dave]

Congrats on getting past day 40.
Some of us haven't got to day 1 yet. :oops:
(Still growing them up).
I might need to re-think some of the potential pairs.

Old Dave

[Zephaniah]

So I don't know what's going on but I keep finding 1-2 dead each day now.

The ones in trouble float on their sides at the top before sinking to the bottom.

Seems like I'm catching that week 4 syndrome at week 8....

Now even the flake food hardly gets touched.

Perhaps I need to up the water change regime?

[Old Dave]

As I said earlier, I'm no breeder but if you are having a parasite episode you could be harbouring cysts in the sponge filter.
Give it a good clean in waste tank water, but a spare matured filter is probably the better option.

Have you medicated them up to this point?
I suspect to not medicated is to see more fry die.

Do you have access to pp (Potassium Permanganate)?

You need advice from more experienced discus keepers on whether or not this will help.

JMO, Good Luck.

Old Dave

[Zephaniah]

Well I couldn't find PP anywhere but the LFS did have Prazi which they said would take care of any parasite problem as well. And I do remember people posting on this forum that Prazi does a good job.

So I transfered the surviving babies (There's only around 15 remaining) into a 10G tank with a brand new sponge filter and completely new water.
Didn't have time to cycle the new filter so I used those insta-cycle products that you dump in just before putting fish into the tank. Hope that works.

The instructions on the Prazi bottle said to use 1 teaspoon per 20 gallons so I put in what looked like a half teaspoon. Am I supposed to let this sit for 3-4 days like the instructions say?

I feel like I should still be doing daily water changes and re-dosing.

[Hollowman]

With no cycled filter you need to be doing 100% water changes each day. The cycle product you put in will be useless as you will get rid of it as you change water, and they do not work instantly anyway. You can treat eith prazi, it will work, but PP is better, you shuld be able to get it at your local chemist shop.

Good luck :)

[sf108]

To the experienced discus keepers here, I just want to know what do you do when mixed discus strains breed and produce fry of poor quality? Also what if the breeding is by total chance in a community tank?

Do you dispose of them before they reach maturity, or feed it to predatorial fish? Isn't there ethics involved when you end the life a fish for no reason other than that it's ugly?

Thanks for your time.

[Hollowman]

To the experienced discus keepers here, I just want to know what do you do when mixed discus strains breed and produce fry of poor quality? Also what if the breeding is by total chance in a community tank?

Do you dispose of them before they reach maturity, or feed it to predatorial fish? Isn't there ethics involved when you end the life a fish for no reason other than that it's ugly?

Thanks for your time.

Unfortunately, you cannot stop fish from pairing in a community tank. Of course sometimes it is a good thing if two of the same strains get together, but if you keep a mixed tank the chance is that they will make a poor pair.
But, the chances are very slim of any fry making it to maturity in a community tank anyway. There are too many fish who will see either the eggs or the fry as food. I know of no-one who has ever raised good/any fish in a community tank, they are just another form of food.

For me, and many others the whole point of letting fish breed is to either sustain and/or develop the strain. We pick fish with the very best features/traits and cross breed them, line breed them to produce a fish that is better than the one before.
If you think that a discus can lay 200 - 300 eggs, every 10 - 14 days, (sometimes more frequently) should all these fish be raised to maturity? Will they all be the very best quality? will they all be as good or better that the ones before. Of course not. We have to, if we are to maintain standards weed out the poor/deformed fish first. This is explained in Andrew's book 'The Naked Truth' very well. As the fry grow we can see the different traits showing and again cull the ones that are not the best. This goes on until you have maybe 10-20 fish left to work with.

Too many times we see the result of peoples 'cross breeds' in local shops. These fish imo are the ones that should have been culled, but people do not have the heart to do it, possibly do not know how to cull humanely and pass them on to friends and shops to get rid of them, or try to make money from them.

Imo, if you want to experience raising fish do it, be it a bad pairing or not. But, you must be prepared to cull these fish humanely if they are not better or something special.
Mixing PB's and Blues strains produces heavily peppered fish, how many times do we see them?? Unless you have many years to try to breed this out, why bother, do it right and breed true.

Just my opinion, hth

steve

[Andrew Soh]

Every discus bred is a beautiful introduction to the aquarium. I am not trying to preach but this is usually what you get when you breed an almost homozygous Pigeon mutant with a homozygous turquoise......very dirty-looking offspring are produced across the board. This is known as Hybrid vigour and Pigeon possessing strong and influential genes, manifesting themselves and overwhelming when involved in a hybrid cross.

With this simple interaction....which is a common occurances back in the 90's and my good friend Jack Watley got gift of Pigeon blood discus from Kitti of Thailand and when he crossed them with his own Watley discus....these dirty-looking discus appeared and every single discus....across the board......whether they are Pigeon based or Turquoise based were covered with this overwhelming black peppering and Jack immediate sold them as Jack Watley's Panda Discus.

In these modern days, many designer discus carry a part of pigeon in their genetic make-up (though not all and yours is one example....the Turquoise).....some pigeons genes are so constantly suppressed...that the pigeon genes are unable to express fully. Further to that, not only peppering is transferred to the 'non-Pigeon phenotype'........but because of the many stages of outcrossing, instead of the peppering, the light-colour tissue texture was able to be transferred to and bond to the other phenotype and hence, we have many very clean Pigeon-like discus...which in fact are not Pigeon and shouldn't be called that when they don't reveal any peppering.

Some may say it is a dilution from the selective breeding. Though there is some truth.....selecting fairly diluted peppering of a Pigeon and crossing with the same may never lead to a perfectly Pigeon-like discus totally without peppering.

Back to the topic. Yes, yours is most likely the infamous 4 weeks syndrome as it did not happen in the first 2 weeks.....and the discus fry die for no apparent reason.

To be 'Four week syndrome', discus fry should start dying after 4 weeks for no apparent reason and even feasting or ingesting food a few hours before it drops dead and without symptom.

In your case, I am unsure because all your fry look stressed and you told us your fry have not been eating for many day. The high peppering observed is like stress or falling sick....... but again, on the other hand, they are all about the same size depicting that they are not affected by bacterial infection or the bacterial black disease which we see melon-seed sized falling sick and part turning black, loss of appetite and with high mortallity.

My success with 4 week syndrome is Dipterex and salt long bath...and follow-up with antibiotics treatment as discussed in my second book. It could stop mortality as far as my experimentations.

Take care,
Andrew :wink:

[Zephaniah]

Week 11 update:

So the Prazi seems to have done the trick in a hospital tank. All the surviving babies are back to normal and eating ravenously.
I've got 13 surviving fry back in the 29g tank doing 50% water changes daily.

Andrew,
I'll try to get those pictures for you tonight.

[Andrew Soh]

Thanks :D

[Zephaniah]

Pics for Andrew:

[Zephaniah]

babies up close

[Andrew Soh]

Sorry buddy,

the photos are not sharp and if I enlarge them for presentation....might not be able to bring the message over. Try again???

Thanks,
Andrew :D

[Zephaniah]

Sorry buddy,

the photos are not sharp and if I enlarge them for presentation....might not be able to bring the message over. Try again???

Thanks,
Andrew :D

PM me your email address. I'll take some more pics and send them to you.

I had to shrink the above pics due to size limitations of this forum.

[Andrew Soh]

Hey Zep,

My email is babyface@singnet.com.sg

High resolution is o.k. if sent through personal mail.

Thanking you in advance,

Andrew :wink:

[Zephaniah]

Sent you a bunch of pictures. I think I overloaded your mailbox. Three emails got rejected due to your account being over it's quota.

[Andrew Soh]

Thanks buddy,

Andrew