Wrigglers and or are they fry?

hi Professor/ Fellow fish friends.

Well , heres my story.
As some might know, i have 3 discus,2 of which are a mating pair well the one keeps laying eggs, the eggs sometimes all die, of which thay are then eaten by the parents,
As of late the Eggs have been turning into wrigglers,The 2 would then eat those wrigglers after a day or so.

This time i decided to place a plastic mesh around the wrigglers , preventing the parents from eating them.
Well the wrigglers have started swimming. This afternoon i had countless number of wrigglers, when i got home there was only a few.
I was told that as the wrigglers swam out, the parents scooped them in their mouths, sometimes spitting them back in behind the Mesh and most times eating them.

Well what i did then was, Placed my Betta box (its empty now as the betta is now living free in the goldfish tank and he seems to love it there)
Iv placed that box in the tank. Scooped up the 11 or so wrigglers and placed then in that box.

Now these surviving wrigglers are wriggling in the plastic box in the same tank as the Parents. The parents iv noticed , stand guard (or waiting for a snack) of this plastic box.

My question is, What do i do next? Are these fish ? fry? or are they still wrigglers?
iv set up a small Brine shrimp hatchery. Do i need to feed the wrigglers these brine shrimp?
What else can they eat?

I Know that these baby fish need to hang onto the parents bodys for food but in this case it seems to the parents , they are the food.

I really didn't intend breeding these fish, but it is interesting watching them grow.

Setting up another tank is a real no no, have to many already and my mom will kill me hehe These discus are really in the show tank.
Outside the plastic box there are neons/Cory cats and the 3 large discus.

What would you suggest i do?

Thanks so much for the help/advice in advance

regards

 

Hi Zippy,

It's getting late so I will have to keep it short....

Theoretically, you can raise discus artificially, but it is hardly possible in practical terms. You need highly specialized food and containers and you need to feed the fishes every 2 hours. However, they cannot accept freshly hatched bs as a first food, they must have either parent body slime or else an artificial replacement for the slime which must be applied to sides of a container.

So, in real terms unless these fishes do not take the fry on the body, and they are the betta container they are not going to make it, sorry.

I would repeat the whole exercise as has happened now. Your parents are clearly learning. Young discus pairs are also stupid and need quite a few tries at raising their babies before they get it right. Try the cage over the eggs and fry again, this is unnatural but I fear that discus in Singapore and Malaysia are all raised in this way and you have little alternative. Try to keep the filter inlet covered with a sponge or a net when the fry go free swimming.

Your parents today tried to take the fry into their mouths and spit them out back onto the area that they were stuck onto. They do not try to eat them in spite of taking them into their mouths but if the tank has lots of hiding places and particularly if these places are dark, the fry will head there, they actually want to head for the dark bodies of their parents but get confused if there are other dark areas. Once all the fry together try to swim onto their parents, the parents actually have to learn to just stay dead still and accept the babies on their bodies, they actually have to learn this and young pairs again get this wrong and just spread the fry all over the place. If you intervene, like you did to catch the fry, the parents will then try to eat their young just out of protective instinct so you must not fiddle in the tank during the phase, this is absolutely the most crucial phase during discus breeding. Also your smaller fish will only be too happy to eat some discus fry so they will also have eaten quite a few today. However, a good pair will manage to get the fry onto their bodies in spite of many smaller fishes around so this can be done. Also in a planted tank the fry tend to get lost much easier which is why breeders use bare tanks.

Wrigglers = fry that cannot swim freely yet, so not much of a difference.

Try again next time they spawn, but try not to intervene.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Thanks for the reply Professor!!

Really appreciate it! esp at this late hour., these fish are really amazing, and as you have pointed out, there are many dark places in my tank, and it is heavely planted.

Yip thay manage to take them into their mouths but , unfortunately decided to keep them in there most of the time.
The good thing though, is thay always lay their eggs on the filter which is kind of protected by plants and driftwood, This keeps the tetras and corys away. The bad, its really dark in those areas and both filter inlets are right above and besides them.

Will take your advice next time and leave them alone.

Regards

 

Hi Zippy,

Maybe get yourself a piece of slate and put this into the tank. Often fish will lay on this if given the opportunity. I would also suggest you remove the Neons. As far as I recall from my reading, neons do not thrive in the water conditions that your discus require (i.e 30deg). You'd be better off getting Cardinals (which look very similar to neons).

Regards

 

hi Zoom , Thanks for the advice,
I do have Cardinals , as well as Neons,as well as hmm forgotten the name but thay are like white/opaque tetras with red tail fins) in the tank, had these fish in with the discus for years. Havnt had any real losses, one though almost got stuck up the CO2 tubing, Thay have been doing well though.

Will slate be safe for the water? im afraid of putting anything in that might change the Ph levels of the water, At the moment it looks stable.

Update on the Fry, Iv been feeding them liquid baby food, Tried feeding them Baby brine shrimp that hatched this afternoon but i cant seem to catch them. I used airline tubing but am afraid i might suck up to much salt water .
Will try another way of catching them.
The fry seem to be really active in the afternoon, towards the evening though they lay at the bottom wriggling.

 

Most slate is completely inert, that is, won't affect the water values. To be sure, just do the vinegar test, by dropping a few drops of vinegar onto the rock. Listen closely - if your hear a fizzing sound, that is the vinegar reacting with the rock. Fizzing indicates that the rock is NOT inert and shouldn't be added to your discus aquarium.

To catch the brine shrimp, turn off the aeration and any lights in the room. Then direct a light (such as a torch or cell phone light) to one corner of the cotainer. The young brine shrimp will be attracted to the light and gather in that area. Use an eyedropper or syringe to suck them up. From there, squirt the brine shimp onto a piece of cotton wool. Then give it a light squirt of fresh water to dilute the salt. Then you can dip the cotton wool into the tank, allowing the shrimp to swim free, where your fry will eat them.