Pairing Behaviourist in Juvies

I've posted it here.
https://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/threads/my-tanks.27645/

 

So they spawned on Sunday.
The biggest one is female, layer about 10 eggs, which where promptly elated by the second one.
She has now decided that the other discus is much more interesting and kicked the one she spawned with to the other side of the tank in brought the smaller discus to her side of the tank.
They are now cleaning and shimmying.
Young ones are interesting.
She should spawn again over the weekend. I'm interested to see if I'll be able to sex the other two. ( perhaps that is what the female is doing, helping me sex them)

 

Great news. Try to see what their tubes look like. The tubes of the males are thinner than the females.

 

This is am image of a female breeding tube (ovipositor).
The male's one is more tricky. It is a lot smaller but I couldn't tell if it was out or not.

Does anyone have a pic of a male breeding tube.

 

So
They are getting ready to spawn today. The female has shacked up with the other aggressive one ( which I hope to be male).
I have since put in a divider to separate them, as they were giving the other discus a good beating.
Hoping to at least sex the other discus ( the one that the female has paired with) today. As I'm sure they are still to immature to get it right.
I have noticed that they have both gotten a lot darker, which didn't happen the last time( as dark as a white and red based pigeon blood can be).
I'll keep an update.

 

Quick update
They have spawned twice since.

First spawn was on Sunday 4th June 2017
Layer around 300 eggs, the male did following runs, so he seems to know what todo.
After 2 days however, eggs started to turn white and where all eaten.

Second spawn was on Monday 12th June 2017
Laid around 300 eggs, male did following runs again.
The next day a lot of eggs had turned white and where eaten again.

I can only conclude that the male is too young to be fertile. At least they are getting practice.
As of this month they are only 11 Months old.
I assume that in the next two months or so, the male will be fertile and I should see wrigglers ( I hope).

 

That sounds very familiar haha. They'll get it right later. I finally got my tds meter and I'm busy preparing for my next spawn with ro water. My tap is at 115 tds and the tank is 119. When doing the water changes with ro and using a kh test only yielded some results but my water was still at 90 tds. Some did hatch in this water but it was hard with kh test only to get it right. I'm aming for a tds of 50ppm now.

Their next spawn was in tap only again as I didn't have enough ro for the mix. All white eggs that time.

 

What is your kh reading giving you? Which test are you using.
I use the liquid sera kits and as soon as I drop the liquid into the test vial (with the test water) the solution turns color. In other words I have 1 degree of hardness, or less than. The test kit does work (tested hard water with it). However it is incredibly frustrating as I don't find that to be accurate ( degrees of hardness). With a TDS reading, my tap water is 85 ppm and my second water source is 135-145ppm. The second water source has a higher TDS due to organics ( tannins) in the water( gh is 1 and kh is 1), ph is 5-5.5.

 

After 24 hrs

 

I use the same kh kit as you. My was water was also kh of 1 or less but with a tds of 90. My ph is now 7 after a wc which is daily, the next day it's just under 7 at around 6.5-6.8 I have to eyeball it because of the limitations of the test kit. Ph crash here I come haha.

 

Nice, good yield too for a young female, my fish was spitting much less when they started out.

 

Yeah it is. Was getting worried that the other one was female, because of the amount of eggs. But I saw their "bits" and was able to sex them.
I have the same issue with ph crashes. Had one that kills 2 other discus. I have to do daily wc of 50-75 % do avoid it.

 

I water changed with pure RO before a spawn at 50/50, will up it to 70/30 with the next try as that gives me a tds of 50, the rest of the time it's tap water. My tap water is stable so I don't need to do daily wcs on my tanks but with all the drolle I have to, it's filthy after 24 hours and by the time I'm done vacuuming its a 50% wc. I tried thinner pipes to save some water but it doesn't have the suction to suck it all up quickly and some of it then gets suspended in the water. With my thick pipe its quick and gets everything with the first pass.

How long did it take for your tank to crash?

 

Im actually curious as to when the tubes of the discus come out? Are they always out or do the tubes only come out when the discus want to breed?

 

Before they spawn you can see them sometimes but mostly it comes out while they do their runs and retract after a run. Haha when I had all of them together two females laid eggs and my male's tube came out for a while but I never saw that happen again.

 

Yeah about an hour or so before they begin. Their dry runs. The females usually pops out first

It took two days to crash ( the ph). I made the mistake of adding drift wood ( which was probably the catalyst)

 

I find that the carbonics get used up but the waste and bb in my filter. When I did tests, the water ph etx would remain stable, however as soon as it's in the tank, it slowly drops

 

I'll keep a close eye on it, as long as it holds for 24 hours we'll be fine. Got my tds down with today's wc to 71. They are starting to clean and the halo is appearing, exerrent.

When my membrane goes in the unit I'm upgrading to a faster one. Mine produces only 75L a day.

 

Let us know
Yeah all one needs is 24 hrs
My ones seem to spawn every 7 days.

 

I'll start updating my thread as soon as something happens again as nothing did except for that 4 that hatched but they are gone, they never started eating and died. When I have wrigglers again I'll take the female out to give the male a rest and he can take care of the babies till they start taking bbs. I want to try my other female again after this round as she isn't related to the male. The two I'm bust with now are siblings. I'll probably come home to eggs later if not then tomorrow as they where very busy cleaning before I left for work. Mine spawn every 7 to 10 days.

Something I saw last night for the first time, when I did the ro wc they colored up and the male was herding the female towards the pot. The pot is in the middle of the tank and he goes to her outside and swims her to the pot in a circle around it, using his head to push her towards it. When they reach the pot the female pecks at it and the male would shake. After a few shakes he gets bored and presses his body next to hers and tail slaps her. She would swim off and then the whole process would start over. He beat her up badly in the past when she didn't spawn for him, even pressing her against the bottom while biting. Now he's more of a gentleman and goes and fetches her so gently, pretty sweet.