Discus

If they keep going like this id be willing to drive from durban to pick up 2.They looking good

 

sorry checked it over 1000km.Perhaps you can ship me some, with time frieght.Keep us posted

 

Interesting to see that some of the fry are lacking vertical bars. Both parents are snakeskins so cant wait to see how these youngsters develop.

 

Week 3 and a bit, first dose of prazi today.

 

@pHish_man what is prazi? Sorry it might be a stupid Question but i really like your Discus and would like to keep some Discus. So i want to learn, so i dont loose a Discus if i eventually find some available that i can afford.

 

Praziquantal. It's a medicine.

Stunning fish, as per usual Andrew!

 

Yes you can get it in the form of a drug called biltraside spelling sorry.

 

Thanks @SeanJ

Yes prazi = praziquantal. There are mixed feelings as to its effectiveness in treating for gill fluke in fry. I have used it on all my discus babies at week 3, 4 and 5 and touch wood haven't had losses due to gill fluke. So it works for me.

It is available in human tablet form called biltricide as @dash has mentioned, but that is hellishly expensive and difficult to obtain without a script. However, I have sourced it elsewhere at about a 3rd of the cost of biltricide and no script necessary.

 

I guess, you have got few throwbacks or mutation (remember snakeskin is a result of crossing and cross backs - it is possible)
quick search directed me to this link - Hadi Aquarium

 

Hi @pHish_man

Your fish are looking good Andrew.
I have some answers to some of your questions.

Your Snakeskins are Red Snakeskins. The Snakeskin gene is a mutation that occurred some years ago, and much proof exist that some Snakeskin fish might also exist in the Wild.
It is thus not a selective breeding result. There was a definite mutation in the genes and the result was finer expression of coloured lines and spots, as well as stress bars.
A distinct characteristic of the Snakeskin gene is that it never breeds "true"-to a certain extent. If we talk of "true breeding" the accepted industry standard seem to be that 90% of all offspring should resemble the parents.
With Snakeskin this will never happen. No matter how many generations you breed you will always get a near perfect 50/50 split resulting in 50% of the fry being Snakeskin, and 50% being a 9 bar version of whatever snakeskin you may have bred.
In your case -50% will be Red Snakeskin and 50% will be Red Turquoise.

As to the barless fry. Yes it is very possible. I learned about this first from @Altum some years back actually-coincidentally when my own Snakeskin pair left me with fry which also were barless.
I then did some research on this and found that although not common it is not altogether uncommon either.
It seems to be that some of the Snakeskin fry can be born without black bars-but it has not been a succesful breeding "line" as it has proven to be just like any other Snakeskin when bred-(50/50 split) except that for some reason the colours seem to be different to its barred snakeskin siblings.
I raised one to 10cm size and this is what it looked like at that stage -

According to the reports I read, and I saw the same result in this fish, the normal coloured snakeskin lines do not cover as much of the body on these barless fish as the normal ones. You can see the striations are mainly centered around the head area with little to no colour elsewhere. Its siblings were however full body covered in these striations.


Ill be VERY interested to see yours develop!

Rgds

Marco

 

Hi Marco

Thanks for the very informative post. And for adding the photo of your non-barred fish.

Am I correct in saying that this non-barred fish is not pigeon based?

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew,

You are completely correct. It has absolutely nothing to do with the pigeon blood strain or gene.
In fact-if you were to keep all these barless fry and raise them to adulthood and breed them to each other -the result will simply be 50% 9 bar Red turks, 50 % Red Snakeskins. Again you will POSSIBLY find barless fry from such a group but they will not nescessarily increase in number.
The Snakeskin gene was a big revelation when it first occurred.
Now it seem to be mostly phased out by most "modern" breeders, except for its use in Eruption lines. I do believe it has been crossed to just about every strain imaginable, and with the Albino-varieties now being popular the Ss 's have sorta gone into obscurity it seems.
Its still an absolute stunner in some strains, and they are usually strong and big bulky fish.
Your red SS parents for instance are really beautiful and their fry should be the same. We here in SA seem to be abt 15 years behind the rest of the world, so by the time Albinos become popular here....who knows what they will be keeping in other countries

Marco

 

One of the fry that appears to be barless



Another

 

Awesome looking fry.

 

One with bars visible

 

Some nice growth development going on here......

 

Good looking fry



hakaka

 

@Marco

Ive posted 2 photos of what appears to be barless fry. However, in the second photo it seems there are feint vertical bars appearing in the middle fish. Comments?

Thanks again for your sharing of knowledge.

Andrew

 

Hi @pHish_man,

I also see that the bars are almost "golden" in appearance-I remember mine to be exactly the same. I still think they will grow out completely bar-less.

I have been wondering about the possible influence of the original Golden Discus gene.

When the Golden mutation came about; the interesting part was that although the fish appeared without bars-the bars were actually white-and at certain stages of its life-cycle the white bars were visible, until they eventually fade into the fish and is not visible any longer.

I am not very knowledgable as to the Golden discus, besides knowing that it was used by breeders to "clean-up" the Pigeon strains-and to cross them to any strain they wanted the bars removed from. It is however a difficult strain, with high fry mortality and now there are few breeders still using it.

Asian breeders have always preferred Discus with no stress-bars-and it has partly been a reason for the popularity of Albino strains.

I can only imagine that with the Snakeskin types the Asians must've been trying to get rid of the irregular barring-maybe using Goldens? AND-to the best of my knowledge the Golden gene is a recessive gene-so maybe this has something to do with these barless fry.

Snakeskin types are well known for their throwbacks in some spawns-and that, maybe along with the possibility of crosses to golden would be an explanation-but Im merely speculating.

Last remark-if you look at the colour of that fish you can however see, compared to the barred fry in that pic-that the colour is definitly different. Or is that light playing tricks?

Rgds

Marco