Discus Breeding
It's important as it is to choose good Discus
for normal aquarium conditions, it's even more important to
choose the right fish to breed. Breeding attempts must start
out with good healthy specimens. A few essentials required
is good, high-backed shape and intense bright colours.
The round thick discus shape, in particular, should be retained
in the offspring. Too much cross-breeding of different colour
Discus should be avoided. While it's true that inherited features
are established by selective breeding, selective breeding
assumes the breeder has sufficient space for an adequate number
of fish that have the desired features.
To start with, a number of young fish may be obtained from
a good Discus supplier. Because of possible inbreeding fish
from more than one pair should be raised for subsequent breeding;
young from two pairs would be good, and three pairs would
be even better.
As it is not easy to raise young Discus without incurring
some damage, sufficient young must also be kept available
for this purpose.
This means that the aquarist who seriously intends to build
up his breeding stock should raise at least twenty and preferably
between thirty to forty young offspring.
With the space normally available, it's of course difficult
to raise forty Discus at a time. Raising this many is not
strictly essential, but the more the number of young available
the more opportunity there is for selection.
After four to six months the young will have grown to 2 to
3 inches (5-7.5 cm) and should be displaying bright attractive
colours. Their body shapes and sizes must be carefully examined
with a view to determining their sex.
The time has now come for making a selection.
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Half the fish tank should be earmarked for further
breeding. The selection criteria are the initial colours,
the body size, and the overall body shape. The young
that do not come up to expectations completely should
be given away.
When selecting specimens by body size, care should
be taken to ensure that in addition to the largest of
the young an equal number of medium-sized young are
also retained for further keeping.
Experience of breeders has shows that among siblings
the females are rather smaller than the males. If only
large specimens are retained, it might result in a surplus
of males at a later date.
The best specimens are therefore selected from the
original thirty or forty. First attempts at spawning
will be made by the time the fish are about a year old.
However, the fish must be placed in smaller groups of
three or four for this purpose. The fish will not readily
form breeding pairs if kept in groups of ten or more
in the aquarium.
Excellent pairs can be formed from the best fish obtained
in this way. When forming pairs, an attempt should of
course be made to get two specimens that both show the
desired markings.
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Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that ideal pairs
will not tolerate each other; breeding then becomes
impossible. Because of this, it is easy to see why a
relatively large number of fish with similar markings
should be kept. Only then is specialized breeding possible.
Specialized breeding is different from ordinary breeding
in that in the former case particular attention is paid
to establishing the colour and the pattern of markings.
The appearance of the 'brand' on the body, for example,
is important. Fish whose lines run as parallel as possible
are put together in order to establish this marking
in the offspring. Or the high proportion of red in the
ventral or pectoral fins should be retained and strengthened.
When selecting the colours, fish with especially good
depth of colour should be combined.
If a strongly blue-coloured plain Discus can be persuaded
to breed, the young are bound for the most part to be
similarly plain and powerfully blue. These features
possibly can be increased further by backcrossing.
A Discus breeder who wishes to apply himself seriously
to specialized breeding and inbreeding in order to produce
first class specimens must devote himself intensively
to the theory of inheritance and invest a great amount
of time. As the quality of Discus can be assessed only
after they are several months old, selecting specimens
for continued breeding is a time-consuming job.
The rewards of this arduous breeding work can be seen
in the beautiful Discus swimming in hobbyists' tanks
today. These fine fish have been developed from the
natural forms. When comparing even the finest wild catches
with Cobalt's or Brilliant Turquoise, we must admit
that such concentrations of colour simply do not occur
in nature. Careful selection and colour breeding for
years on end were needed to produce these results.
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Nature has provided a fine Blue Discus, Symphysodon aequifasciata
haraldi. Man has selected a few of the finest from hundreds
of these wild catches in order to breed Royal Blue Discus,
Brilliant Discus and Cobalt Discus from them. Success has
been achieved partly through mutations but partly only through
stringent selection.
The Red Discus is now the dream of all breeders, but this
will still take some time to achieve. The base material exists,
but many factors play a part in this. It is unlikely that
solid red specimens will be bred, even though Turquoise Discus
with red cross stripes are already on the market. Turquoise
Discus with brownish-red stripes cannot simply be offered
as Red Turquoise. Where this happens, it is usually more a
case of wishful thinking by the breeder.
For information on other tropical fish Click Discus
Breeding
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