Artificial Raising of Discus

[P4Angels2]

I love watching the parents tend to their fry...I just wish that they wouldn't want to eat them!! I am not wanting to be a (discus fry mill) I would just like to have the little one's to watch as they grow!!

[Mugwump]

I love watching the parents tend to their fry...I just wish that they wouldn't want to eat them!! I am not wanting to be a (discus fry mill) I would just like to have the little one's to watch as they grow!!

Au contraire......you're a responsible breeder wanting results, of course....much different

[LizStreithorst]

Try caging the eggs until the fry swim form the cage.  This generally does the trick for new parents.  The way you do it is put a peice of gutter guard over the cone.  You want the parents to be close, but not too close.  They should be able to fan the eggs but not be so close that they can eat them.

[Mugwump]

Try caging the eggs until the fry swim form the cage.  This generally does the trick for new parents.  The way you do it is put a peice of gutter guard over the cone.  You want the parents to be close, but not too close.  They should be able to fan the eggs but not be so close that they can eat them.

I've seen that Liz...and yes it works.....good call..

[Frank The Plumber]

I artificially raised Discus in 1992. The secret was to use a bakers egg yolk that had been vapor dried at high pressure and low temperature to form a small fat particle that would not coagulate and form into a mass. Most of this was done using bowl batches at that time and you had to place the Discus fry into the bowls and remove them afterwards. You needed to do this every four hours for a great result. It is my understanding that for the most part the process is the same today, the fry concentrates may have been improved but the four hour sequence still is required. The modern method also uses a decoy adult which has a surface that supports the pasting of the yolk mixture to it. The fry eat from the sides of the decoy and this may be done in tank. The genetics are not damaged by this as the adults are still required to spawn and you need nice stock to get a good result. The reason this is being done is because many of the newest strains are fetching $150 for a 2 inch diameter fish. This makes each one precious and so a quality fry rising method is needed. This method also keeps the adult fish from suffering the scarring that can occur when letting the fry feed. This adds to the value of mated pairs as they are cleaner in appearance. While I don't really promote the methods because parent raising for me was easier, I can understand why commercial operations would want to adapt to this type of situation.

[BillT]

Much of my background is in lab fish. Even in labs, where you would think they would know better, people will often end up making genetically poor inbred lines. It is possible to make good inbred lines, but it takes more time, effort, and fish tanks than many people want to deal with. Many researchers are more interested in their short term results of getting their experiments done than in generating a robust line that will last a long time.

In addition, in labs you want real genetic lines, which are genetically closed, meaning that no new genetics are added to the line so that it will be the same for other people who will want to use it later for an experiment. One of the main zebrafish lab lines has been bred in this way for probably 80 or 90 generations now. It hasa clutch sizes of 100-200 eggs while some good fish farm fish I have had could produce 500 eggs per spawning. Inevitably this kind of closed breeding scheme leads to inbreeding, but the inbreeding can be controlled to lessen its negative impact. An example would be the many completely inbred mouse lines that exist.