Discus Breeding — Color Questions

[Fish Folk]

Brief background: my oldest son has earned his Advanced Breeder award in our Fish Club’s Breeder’s Award Program, and I’m chasing his score now. By way of perspective, if Master Breeder is 500+ points with C.A.R.E.S. species breeding and some difficult types of spawning, Advanced Breeder is the milestone below that — 300 points. I share this just to say... we have a few years here of breeding tons of fish. I still feel pretty bad at it, but my LFS owner thinks I’m performing witchcraft in my basement.

Now, this same LFS owner has tried in vain to interest the hillbillies in our region in discus. All to no avail. No one here is going to spend $75 or more on a fish that requires an experienced level of care, a decent sized aquarium, and might die unless parameters at the outset are excellent. He decided he’d set up his own Discus tank at home... but realized that his responsibilities were too much for that... SO what’s happened is that we’ve gotten a bunch of discus virtually at cost ($25-$50 each).

It started for us with just a couple to see if they were as impossible to keep as “the internet” said. And it turns out that,  generally speaking, they’re really not that much different than Angelfish to keep.

Now, as these reach breeding size, I’m beginning to imagine breeding them. Like with other fish we’ve bred, I’ve done a lot of reading and video watching. I get the water parameters typically necessary... the light colored sides so that fry will go to parents to eat from their slime coat, the breeding cone, etc.

What I’m trying to figure out is colorations. We have 10x discus. Of that, there’s the possibility that two color patterns could yield similarly colored / patterned offspring.

There’s these two...

And there’s these two...

But I’m questioning what would happen if they’re not male female pairs (discus are hard to sex) and if, instead, two very different color morphs pair off?

Like these two...

Last week, we visited an old fish store that had “locally bred discus” for sale. It’s hard to make out here... but, in my opinion, they were just bleh. Colorless. Barf-sided. I’d never buy them. But is that what happens when you cross-breed color strains?

Here’s a bad photo from the fish store...

 

Now I’ve seen wild-caught discus. They have their own appeal. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of color expectations for fry from differently colored discus parents.

Any ideas? 

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by Fish Folk

[gardenman]

Can't help you with the discus genetics, but the "blue arowana" posted on the store's tank got me intrigued. I'd never heard of a blue arowana before. Silver, yes. Black, yes. I've kept both. Blue? A bit of Googling shows there is such a fish and you should keep them in groups of six to ten or more in a 600 gallon tank.  At $500 each? Yikes! I'm beginning to understand why I'd never heard of them before. 

[Daniel]

My experience with discus color patterns is limited, but what I found is that you get a spectrum of patterns with each end being one of the parents. Most offspring are never as spectacular as their parent (a few are). Once you get going you can crank out hundreds or even thousand of baby discus, so eventually the issue is culling. It doesn't take long to flood the market.

There isn't an issue when breeding two discus from the same fixed strain. When I was breeding Jack Wattley cobalt blues, 100% of the offspring were nice cobalt blues.

Because of the beauty of watching the discus parents shepherd a school of babies around and trade the school back and forth as the babies feed, they are still my favorite fish to breed and watch.

[Fish Folk]

On 7/9/2021 at 9:56 AM, Daniel said:

My experience with discus color patterns is limited, but what I found is that you get a spectrum of patterns with each end being one of the parents. Most offspring are never as spectacular as their parent (a few are). Once you get going you can crank out hundreds or even thousand of baby discus, so eventually the issue is culling. It doesn't take long to flood the market.

There isn't an issue when breeding two discus from the same fixed strain. When I was breeding Jack Wattley cobalt blues, 100% of the offspring were nice cobalt blues.

Because of the beauty of watching the discus parents shepherd a school of babies around and trade the school back and forth as the babies feed, they are still my favorite fish to breed and watch.

Did you just allow them to breed in your large tank? Or did you set up smaller, dedicated breeding tanks for them?

[Daniel]

Before I setup my big tank, I bred discus in 55 gallons aquariums. Nothing special about 55 gallons tanks, it just what I had. After I got my big tank I used that for discus breeding. Eventually I didn't have discus in the big tank for almost 8 years until I acquired a batch last year. Right now there are 5 breeding pairs in the big tank, but that means the fry never grow up because of the heavy predatory pressure from other adult discus. I will probably thin the adults out (maybe to just 1 pair) so that I can watch the fry growth up. When there were angelfish in the aquarium, I could get fry to grow up even when there were 3 breeding pairs angelfish all breeding at the same time.

[Ben C.]

Don't have any advice, but man those are some beautiful fish.

[BriannesFishFam]

@Fish Folk Ok so I keep 4 discus and I agree they are not as hard as everyone says. I kept discus since I was 11 and they have always done good for me. All I say is that with those 10 discus, I am sure there are males and females of multiple colors. You do have 2 pigeon bloods, the two furthest down on the first photo. Don't interbreed the pigeon blood with and other color or you'll get peppered babies and you don't want that. Any other colors, such as the blue diamond and marlboro red discus in picture 5, would be a variety of colors and patterns. The only one I don't recommend is picture #3, like I said above crossing that pigeon blood with the marlboro babies with make your barf-looking discus that are peppered. Any other color or pattern combo with mix together and the offspring will show all different kinds of colors and pattern. This was how new strains of discus were created, they crossed different genes that they liked in certain discus. Made sure the fish had all the feature they wanted and they breed their F1 generation. Then on F2 Smetimes they take the best baby that has what their looking for a breeds back to the parent. so on and so forth until they get the strain they are looking for!

Good luck with your discus!

I have 1 checkerboard, 1 Pigeon Blood Snakeskin, and 2 Santarems discus all from Discus Hans USA, I can't wait to breed them!

Bri

[Fish Folk]

On 7/10/2021 at 7:44 AM, BriannesFishFam said:

@Fish Folk Ok so I keep 4 discus and I agree they are not as hard as everyone says. I kept discus since I was 11 and they have always done good for me. All I say is that with those 10 discus, I am sure there are males and females of multiple colors. You do have 2 pigeon bloods, the two furthest down on the first photo. Don't interbreed the pigeon blood with and other color or you'll get peppered babies and you don't want that. Any other colors, such as the blue diamond and marlboro red discus in picture 5, would be a variety of colors and patterns. The only one I don't recommend is picture #3, like I said above crossing that pigeon blood with the marlboro babies with make your barf-looking discus that are peppered. Any other color or pattern combo with mix together and the offspring will show all different kinds of colors and pattern. This was how new strains of discus were created, they crossed different genes that they liked in certain discus. Made sure the fish had all the feature they wanted and they breed their F1 generation. Then on F2 Smetimes they take the best baby that has what their looking for a breeds back to the parent. so on and so forth until they get the strain they are looking for!

Good luck with your discus!

I have 1 checkerboard, 1 Pigeon Blood Snakeskin, and 2 Santarems discus all from Discus Hans USA, I can't wait to breed them!

Bri

Awesome! Thanks so much. Discus Hans is legendary.

[BriannesFishFam]

On 7/10/2021 at 8:02 AM, Fish Folk said:

Awesome! Thanks so much. Discus Hans is legendary.

Your welcome!