Tips on Keeping and Breeding Discus Fish

If you're seriously interested in knowing about discus fish breeding, you need to think beyond the basics. This short article takes a closer look at things you need to know about. Ideal for breeding discus fish are 20 or 30 gallon tall fish tanks. You should provide some vertical surface in the tank (e.g.: inverted flowerpot) that will enable them to lay their eggs.

In order to provide some shelter for the pair you could add some potted plants to the breeding fish tank. They can be kept in bare tanks but benefit from bog wood and plants as these help the discus feel safe knowing they have somewhere to hide. If they get stressed and scared in a bare tank they can dash around and hurt themselves. Use some sponge filter for the filtration system to handle the biological load. Also required is a outside power filter which picks up any waste that might be in the water.

Discus fish come from the calm warm waters of the Amazon River and prosper when these conditions are replicated in the home aquarium. For both general maintenance and breeding of discus the pH should be maintained between 5.5 and 7.0, the temperature between 83 and 86 degrees F.

Water changes should be performed weekly. However a small water change should be done every day, or every second day. Frequent water changes increase appetite and promote mating activity in discus. Notice that discus will often spawn after a water change!

If good water quality is maintained the discus will have large appetites and should accept any food offered to them. Spawning discus should be fed frozen blood worms, beef heart, frozen or live brine shrimp, live white worms or Tetra Color Bits. In order to avoid parasites invading the tank you should never feed live tubifex or black worms to discus.

A "happy" breeding pair will lay eggs every week for a period of about 4 months. Usually discus will go through two of these spawning cycles in a year. The female will lay around 80-400 eggs and then the male fertilises them. It can take between 48-60 hours for the eggs to hatch and another 60-72 hours until they are swimming freely.

Immediately upon becoming free-swimming the fry will move to their parents sides, and start feeding off them during this time. The fry will feed off their parents sides for as long as you leave them together, however they should be offered small foods such as baby brine shrimp. You will notice after about 3-6 weeks that the parents will be exhausted, also the fry will be growing fast. It's a good idea to remove them at this stage.