Discus Delight Frank G Anderson Aquarium.Net May 1997

Discus Delight an introduction to discus keeping, Aquarium Net has numerous articles written by the leading authors for the advanced aquarist

Discus Delight

By Frank G Anderson

Welcome to the first Discus Delight article. I wrote Discus Beat for Freshwater & Marine Aquarium Magazine (FAMA) for several years, and since leaving FAMA, have encountered quite a few discus people mostly from the Discus List, not surprisingly, but also just from people who got my E-mail address ( tongmuan@loxinfo.co.th ), and wanted some beginner’s advice regarding discus care. So, I hope that this new column proves informative and beneficial to all readers and discus keepers, and turns some others into discus keepers.

Unlike what one reader mentioned a few days ago, I do not agree thatanyone can keep discus. My wife contradicted me on this, and said, "Sure, anyone can keep discus……….for a while." That little tag qualification at the end is really the truth. For a while, ranging anywhere from a few days to a week or a month or several months, yes, anyone can keep discus. It’s just a matter of time in many cases, though, until something goes wrong, breaks down, etc., and the discus end up fighting for their lives, or losing the fight, often because the discus keeper couldn’t handle the "situation."

This first column, then, will cover the introductory part of discus keeping, along the following outline:

Preparing for Discus
Buying discus
Keeping and caring for discus
Breeding discus
Buying more discus

I have covered all of these sections and more in my FAMA-published book….And Still King, but like any other publication, information changes or is updated, or needs to be said again in slightly different form. So here it goes for May 1997.

1. Preparing for discus

If you don’t really know about discus per se, and have never kept them, you are not prepared. Either buy a couple of the many good books available on discus keeping, or use your library and the Internet to find out as much as you can before becoming a discus nut. I can recommend the following books and Internet resources:

Discus , a Reference Book, TFH, by Bernd Degen, ISBN 0-86622-545-5,
Handbook of Discus , TFH by Jack Wattley, ISBN 0-86622-037-2,
Discus for the Perfectionist , TFH, by Jack Wattley again,
Our Discus , published by the North American Discus Society,
Discus Talk , published by the Discus Study Group.
Discus Brief , the International Discus Journal,
Discus-List , maintained by Dave Hardy.

Anyone wishing details on how to contact these groups or publications, please feel free to contact me via E-mail if you are unable to locate them.

In addition to reading, you also should see plenty of discus before you decide to buy any. See them at pet shops, visit discus keepers in your area, attend aquarium club meetings and get some discus talk started there if it isn’t already present. Pump up the volume! Contact with discus before your eyes will not only impress you, but hopefully will sound a slight warning that they do need to be cared for properly.

2. Buying discus

I mentioned Jack Wattley and Marc Weiss as excellent sources of discus. There and others’ ads appear in FAMA and TFH. In buying discus, first make sure you have set up for them, using an aquarium that has run its biological cycle for at least a month without any problems. Select discus that have fins erect, natural body color (no greyish blushing), breathe normally, associate with other fish, and are not that skittish. Select discus that are about 3 months old. This is old enough for them to survive readily, and young enough so you can see most of the pre-adult and adult growth cycle. Buy about six discus, and keep them in at least a 30 gallon aquarium for perhaps two months, when they should be moved to at least a 55 gallon tank.

3. Keeping and caring for discus

When you bring the discus home, place them and the plastic bag they are in into your tank water, letting the bag float. Open the top of the bag so air can get in, and over a period of no less than four hours, add water from the tank to the bag so that you have about 2/3 by volume tank water to original bag water. Now, gently net the discus and place them into your tank. Keep the bag of water just in case, but you are not likely to need it. This gradual water adjustment allows the discus to somewhat acclimatize to a different pH and water hardness and other chemical parameters. Somewhat acclimatize is the controlling phrase, and you need to ensure that there is not such a high pH difference between the store tank and yours, or even more importantly, between whatever the discus were raised in and your tank. This information is not always easy to find! The netting from bag to tank is to avoid dumping the bag water into your tank, as it can and often does contain bacteria and parasites.

Now that the discus are in your tank, now what? They will quickly, often that is, dart to or hunt for and stay in a place they feel safe with, perhaps behind rock or driftwood or plants. They will stay there until they decide to move, or until you scare them into moving - not a good idea. Don’t be alarmed at this behavior. It is natural. They do need security. But discus should not stay there day in and day out, coming out only to feed or perhaps not even then (a sign of a major problem). If your discus do come out and feed when you place food into the tank, and if they are usually found fighting with one another for pecking order, looking for food, exploring the tank, etc., then you hopefully won’t have too many problems - if you keep the tank maintained properly. But if your discus constantly hide, are so shy that they hardly ever show themselves, and dart across the tank and are usually or always skittish, the discus have either a stressful water condition, parasite infestation or bacterial infection, other unknown ailments, or a combination of all of or some of these. If you have discus that do displays these symptoms, the only sure way to establish whether it is a parasite or not is to get a swab and place it under a microscope.

Discus require reasonably proficient aquarium keepers, people who observe, consult resources, spot problems before they occur, or get hold of a resource when a problem arises to stop it dead in its tracks. Not everyone can keep discus, as I said, but everyone who is conscientious about aquarium keeping can. What about those elite technologies like RO units, fluidized filters, reverse UG filtration, etc? Basically, shy away from most of this. You may require RO (reverse osmosis) if your water is too hard, and RO is the only way to deal with it. But generally, don’t go out and buy technology just because everyone else seems to be doing it.

4. Breeding discus

Discus keepers who wonderfully discover their mated pair spawning have hearts that almost burst with proxy-parental pride. After all, here in the King of the Aquarium and his mate starting to produce hundreds of little discus. And almost as surely as I write, the parents, both or singly, will eat the eggs or fry. Just talk to anyone who has had discus spawn. To interject a moment, please observe the next couple of spawnings to ascertain which fish it is eating, or which fish it is that isn’t doing its job. The male may not always fertilize the eggs, and the male may not even be a male! But if you notice that the female lays a line of eggs, and then backs off for the male to come over the same batch to fertilize them, you probably do have a mated pair. After 24 hours or even less, some of the eggs are bound to turn white. Several reasons. Unfertilized. Fungus. Water conditions. But if after two days you notice upon close inspection that some of the eggs have indeed turned brown and in fact seem to have little bodies inside, then you are on the road to partial success. When the eggs to become hatchlings, the fry will often drop to the bottom of the tank, or start swimming around looking for food. Hopefully, they will find it on mom and dad’s flanks. If they don’t, they are goners. If mom and dad don’t let the fry feed, you have a problem. You can experiment over possibly dozens of hatchlings until the parents do let the fry feed, or you can raise the fry artificially. This no-so-easy process involves separating either the newly-spawned eggs or fry to their own hatching/rearing container, and feeding them either commercially-prepared fry food or mixing up your own concoction according to recipes found in discus references.

Discus can sometimes mate with another discus, but they do pair bond. Their mating ritual includes becoming concerned about a certain area of the tank and then protecting it as they begin their actual meting ritual. Prior to this, sometimes over a period of some months, one discus might become interested in another, following it around, or allowing another to keep it company. Then the magic mouth-to-mouth butting and waving flanks, some darkening and then lightening back of body color, and finally they go off with one another for life, eating together and spending most of their time together.

5. Buying more discus

Before you buy more, other than the first six, I strongly suggest you make a success there first. Success can be measured in many ways. You might be able to "grow-out" your discus from small to adult size, and then sell them ( it’s not that easy to get the price you want). Or, you might actually have a green thumb and successfully coax a mated pair to raise their young until they are old enough to separate and grow out for sale. Before you add new discus to an existing tank, ensure that the new fish have been isolated for at least a month in a separate "hospital" tank, where they are watched closely to make sure they are indeed healthy. This involves more miantenance and time on your part, but it is well worth the prevention of heartache that can result when you ignore such safety practices.

I trust that this article has been informative, and apologize to those who already know all this and don’t know why it’s appearing here again. I would be interested in reading from those who did find something good or bad in the article, and will respond to your E-mail as fast as I can.

Reefs.org: Where Reefkeeping Begins on the Internet

Sections

Personal tools

Aquarium.Net