Artificial Raising (persoal proof of concept)

So I've never attempted to artificially raise fry. I've had 3 pairs raise little ones successfully in a community tank but haven't even set up a breeding tank since I was 17 (back in 1998) for pair of wild Heckles (which spawned but ate all eggs).

Well, I currently have an Ica Red hybrid (male) and Brilliant turquoise (almost solid turquoise; female) pair spawning in the show tank. I told my youngest son we'd try artificial raising since the pair keeps losing good eggs to tetras and my son told me after the last spawn that, "...someone's eating the eggs!!! Get them out, dad!" He was right, because only 18 were left.

I put the DW stick in a 2 gallon hexagon tank with methylene blue, aerator, & heater. 8 fry hatched. I told him our goal is to see if a single fry eats egg yolk smeared on a dark gray piece of plastic ONE time.

6 free swimmers are whatwe found today (could've been more). Right away after "turkey beastering" one out & onto shallow Tupperware, he said, "One's tearing it up!"

I said, "Buuuuullll...shiiit...," but then I looked and he was right!

I'll keep trying with this teenie amount, but awaiting the next spawn

Our first success with artificially raising discus produced one fish. That was over thirty years ago. He had his own 29 gallon tank and he was huge. He was spoiled rotten by my wife. It is not easy, but you will get the hang of it if you keep at it.

Gary, I love hearing stuff like that. I'm torn between giving this 6-fry crew a chance or not. Going to show my son what you said (because he's in the mode of: "Keep all 6 alive... screw waiting for 200-400...")

I remember it was a large span to start and only one survived. We did raise large spawns when we got the hang of it.

Good luck Elliot!

Thanks fellas :)

Gary, how many times a day did you feed them from 1-5 day as free swimmers?

Every two hours from about 8:00 am till 10:00 pm. Changed the water in the bowl each feeding. Egg yolk for 3 days then BBS. Stop the egg yolk when you see red bellies. Wipe the bowl clean when the water level is low. Just drop a BB size lump of egg yolk powder in the bowl. It will float to the edge. Use an air line with a bubble every 3 or 4 seconds. Change the bowl every night before lights out. Once you see red bellies stop the egg yolk.

It is a lot of work. Good luck.

Trial and error is the best way to learn how to raise baby discus, it took me a couple years or trial and error to figure things out because it takes a lot of feedings each day for the first 3 days if you want to go to baby brine shrimp after that. That's the way I did it is feed them heavily for 3 days and they will be big enough to feed baby brine after that.

Gary, I might need to start paying you because I think as it goes on I'll have more questions but your answers are as if you're selling it already knows me as the person he says " I'm not the sharpest tool in the crayon box"...lol

Scott, I love that angle because that goes along with a methodology I use often which is make it suck a lot at first so you hurry up and get over the hump

Well, honestly I dumped/discarded that small batch into my sump to give them a very tiny percentage of something happening but we all know nothing well and it was only eight of them. I am very happy that my proof of concept with the one feeding and up resulting in all but one eating thank you the way I put it. Right now I have a small batch of wigglers and because I redid the decor in the tank, I'll label to slide a homemade divider in there that doesn't stop everything from getting in there but when it's at more than the redneck homemade divider I did about 10 years ago and had one pair raise 40 to 50 to be on the one month mark in the community tank. I will try to wait until the next big spawn that I can get to you before anything else does and remove them and try again with artificially raising. So I will definitely be studying and figure out a system tailored to me but includes EVERYTHING youall said. My "biggest enemy" is me... but making it suck for 3 days straight and possibly a fourth or fifth if needed, those little things and other nuggets y'all give me really help my mindset.

Once I do the next line, I'm going to use this same thread just to build upon it. Like you guys said, it might be kind of Spawn before I can be successful but I will say that my first successful artificial raising milestone will be (threshold) 1 / ("min" objective) 10 I ultimately make it to being quarter size and beyond

It was over thirty years ago that we raised them. We have a couple tanks of Discus now. We bought some last July and a few more the end of December. I have probably forgotten most of what little I knew then. We did not give our pairs a fair chance to raise their own fry. I was impatient and went straight to artificial. We had Wattley's book to go by. Well that and a lot of expensive long distance phone calls to other more knowledgeable Discus breeders.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vanman

Every two hours from about 8:00 am till 10:00 pm. Changed the water in the bowl each feeding. Egg yolk for 3 days then BBS. Stop the egg yolk when you see red bellies. Wipe the bowl clean when the water level is low. Just drop a BB size lump of egg yolk powder in the bowl. It will float to the edge. Use an air line with a bubble every 3 or 4 seconds. Change the bowl every night before lights out. Once you see red bellies stop the egg yolk.

It is a lot of work. Good luck.

---

Wattley didn't mention that using medication he doesn't need to change the water for 8 hours?

I always thought that Wattley did not tell all of his secrets. What medication did he use, if you know?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vanman

I always thought that Wattley did not tell all of his secrets. What medication did he use, if you know?

---

Wattley did mention what medication he used.

Gary I did artificial similar to you when I first tried it. I followed Jack's published procedure from TFH.. Breeding Discus Yearbook...Its one of my favorite Discus resources..

Attachment 138365
"Secrets of Breeding Discus"
Pg 104.
To the bowls he added Furan-2.. Its not available anymore but it was the old recipe.

60 mg Nitrofurazone
25 mg Furazolidone
2mgs meth blue

Furan 2 was a hugely popular antibiotic for Aquarium fish for a while. They eventually remade the formula without meth blue and then eventually it was removed from market.

You can get the components but the furazolidone is harder to find and probably not even needed.

I had alot of good success following Wattleys method..but it was a lot of work!

Al

That book must have come out after we got out of Discus and all fish for awhile. All I had was his first book. Wish I knew where it is. I have not seen it in years.

Yes, I did remember some of the meds used plus tetracycline but that was back in the days of Discus Study Group Symposiums so that's really some decades ago. Wattley contacted me after I heard that he was asking about me, about all those Discus coming out from California that was raised artificially.