The Discus
belong to the genus Symphysodon of the family Cichlidae. My Discus are
commonly called Cobalt Blue High Fin.
The Discus are found in Amazonia, encompassing parts of Venezuela,
Columbia, Brazil, and Peru. The rainy season for this area starts in
December, but the rivers do not rise to any great degree until January
or February. By May or June the principal rivers are approximately 40
feet higher then in October or November. It is very probable these high
water
rivers are the way discus can travel from one water system to the
other, thus allowing for interbreeding and generic interchange. When
collecting Discus from the wild the excursions
will normally occur in October & November when most of the smaller
Amazonian rivers are no more than 2 feet of water deep. The water is
usually turbid and beige to light tan in colour. The Discus hide in
caves & holes in the river banks, under roots or logs from fallen
trees and in marshy areas with heavy vegetation.
The majority of Discus raised in the aquatic hobby or commercially are
the result of cross breeding from the original wild Discus Symphysodon
aequifasciata axelrodi (Brown Discus),
Symphysodon discus (Heckel's Discus), Symphysodon aequifasciata
aequifasciata (Peruvian Green Discus), and Symphysodon aequifasciata
haraldi (Blue Discus). My Discus
are the Blue Cobalt variety and were purchased from Cary Strong of
Great Lakes Discus on July 12th/03 and were about 1 1/2" to 2" long. I
chose one that was the largest and one
of the smallest of the group, The reason I did that was when I
purchased my first pair of Discus several years ago from Wet Thumb
Aquatics Deloris showed me What she looked for
when trying to sex very young fish explaining that the males will
usually grow faster than the females and the males will usually but not
always have pointed dorsal and/or anal fins, and
the pair I bought from Deloris were in fact a pair.
Using that rule of thumb I was lucky enough to get my present breeding
pair (I might add that I had some help from Jack VanderAa). I also
bought two Snake Skin Discus, which were
more uniform in size and thus was not lucky enough to get a pair from
them.
I have not always been lucky with my Discus as I had the pair of Discus
mentioned above, three Brown Wild Discus from Brad Filback (a former
member of SAS). The Blue Cobalts had just paired off, and the next
morning when I came down to turn on my tank lights, I found all my
Discus dead and when I put my hand in the tank to remove the dead fish
I noticed the
water was really hot, further investigation proved that my heater had
malfunctioned and would not shut off. We also had a 90 gallon tank set
up with salt water with Blue Regal
Tang, Percula Clowns, Damsels with yellow head and tail. We also had
live coral. You can imagine how I felt when I found this tank had gone
the same way as my Discus tank.
When I started remodeling our basement and tearing out the old walls I
found bare electrical wires in sections of the wall, further
investigation revealed there was a 20 amp breaker on a 15 amp
electrical system. This system ran the whole basement and kitchen.
Someone before us must have put this breaker in to stop the breaker
from kicking out because of the overload on that circuit. We feel very
lucky to have just lost fish and not all our other possessions due to a
major fire. Needless to say we have corrected the above situation
during our remodeling.
Getting back to the original reason for this article, my Discus once
they paired off they started laying eggs, at first they would eat the
eggs (this happened several times), then they
let the eggs hatch and would care for them until they became free
swimming and then eat them (again this happened several times). On
March 9th/06 I saw eggs on the back glass of
the aquarium and for the next few days the parents fanned the eggs and
picked off the white infertile eggs. On March 11th the eggs were gone,
on further inspection I noticed
some wiggling on the glass in the spawning site, then later when I
looked the fry were gone, then I noticed them on the gravel bed of the
aquarium and the parents keeping them in
one area. The next day I noticed more movement by the fry and could see
their egg sac. Then on March 14 I noticed the young starting to eat off
of the parents and the egg sac had
disappeared. At this point the young fry do not resemble the parents as
they are more elongated like a minnow and they have sharp teeth so they
can eat the slime off the side of the parents’ body. The young fry will
feed off of one parent for several minutes and then that parent will
swim by the other parent and the young will then start to feed off the
other parent. On
March 17th I started to add brine shrimp to the tank, which the young
fry did not pay attention to at first but by the second feeding which
was in the evening I noticed some of the young fry eating the brine
shrimp and their little bellies were a kind of orange colour. The books
say that after 7 days the fry should be removed from their parents
because their aggressive
feeding can hurt the sides of the parents, but because we were going
away for several days I left them with the parents and took my chances.
On April 1st I moved the young fry
from the parents tank to their own 5 gallon tank. At this point they
were about 1/2" in length and their body resembled that of their
parents shape. They have vertical bars and are
grey/brown in colour. On April 11th I switched the fry to a ten gallon
tank as they were about 3/4" long. On May 29th the fry were again
transferred to about a 25 gallon tank and that is
were they are at this time. At present they are about 1 1/2" long.
Once I separated the fry from the parents I was feeding brine shrimp
and flake food at the same time. This was to stop the bigger more
aggressive fry from taking all the food. This
method seems to have worked for me as I so far have not lost any young.
Also I have added frozen blood worm, frozen beef heart and frozen
shrimp to their diet as we progressed, but
the staple part of their diet is still flake food and live brine shrimp.
A big help for me during the above process was a book called "Handbook
of Discus" by Jack Wattley, and my good friend Jack VanderAa.
The Sarnia Aquarium
Society
