Discus fish

To me discus fish are the holy grail of tropical fish. If you can keep a discus fish you have become an expert fish keeper, Discus fish is a native of the calm and warm Amazon. Keeping discus fish requires the owner to have the right information about what to expect and what to offer them to make these perfect fish happy. Discus fish keeps changing their behaviour according to the environmental factors. They are by nature very shy but if you are planning to keep discus fish you will notice that they become quite aggressive to there own species this is because of breeding territory protection. In this type of senario only the strong discus fish will survive and the weak get attacked. Its best to keep to keep your discus fish in groups, a minimum of five individuals is usually ideal. By keeping them in groups it will increase confidence in the group members and lower the risk of bad behaviour. Keeping discus fish can bring lots of challenges and rewards at the same time too.

Pairing:
Discus fish really don't take well to being forced together, the best way to get a pair together is to buy a group of young unrelated fish of the same colour type and let them pair up themselves. This might happen from when the fish are very small, spawning usually occurs when they are ¾ of their adult size. The fish will usually remain a pair until the remainder of there lives.

Spawning:
Discus fish will choose an almost vertical smooth site, which they clean and then the female will lay any ware from 100 to 400 eggs and then the male fertilises them. It can take between 50 to 60 hours for the eggs to hatch and another 36-48 hours until their swimming freely.

Breeding Tank:
It's best to keep the breeding tanks fairly simple and to have a simple air powered filtration, spawning sites terracotta cones, broad leafed plants or slate and no substrate. The water needs to be very soft so the eggs can develop properly. The quality of the water needs to be very very good and have a temperature of about 84-88F. Also a suitable tank size is 24x18x18.

Feeding : The parents will need a good and varied diet not just to condition them to breed, but to provide nutrition when they are feeding their young. Large water changes, a temperature rise and heavy feeding is often a good spawning trigger.

It's a good idea to give the young extra feedings of small foods such as baby brine shrimp whilst with parents. You will notice after about 4-8 weeks the parents will be very tired, also the fry will be growing extremley fast it's a good idea to remove them. This is where lots of tanks and water changes are needed to achieve a decent growth rate. I used to grow circa. 40 fry to just under 2" in a 55G tank, and this required heavy water changing. The discus market is saturated with fish, so it best to grow 20-50 excellent fry than 80 runts. Growth is reasonable, but not spectacular.

So if you're thinking about breeding and keeping discus fish I hope these quick tips have been of some use to you.

Remember it pays to do your research. You can learn everything you need to know from the link in my author bio box.

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