Feeding.
Discus require a varied diet, as monotonous food can make them weak and cause a loss of appetite. Competently selected foods are the most important prerequisite for successful growth, development, and subsequently reproduction of discus. First of all, it is necessary that the fish diet is full-fledged, representing all the variety of nutritional components required for the normal vital activity of discus. During feeding, make sure that all discus eat well-balanced food; do not overfeed them, because besides affecting their health, leftover food pollutes the water. Discus rarely take food from the water surface, more often taking it from the bottom or in the water column. To compensate for missing vitamins in the diet, soft-leaved aquatic plants (Limnophila, Cabomba, Hygrophila) are periodically placed in the discus aquarium, which the fish gradually nibble on.
The golden rule of feeding is: underfeeding is better than overfeeding. It is better to feed in small portions but more often than vice versa. One fasting day a week will not hurt adult and well-fed discus, but rather bring benefits. Healthy discus always consume food with greed and are ready to do so all day long. However, feeding adult specimens 1–2 times is enough, while multiple feedings (from 3 to 6 times a day) are required only for fry and juveniles. An adult discus will survive a 1–3 day fast without any problems. When the aquarium lights turn on in the morning, discus are quite apathic for some time — they haven’t “woken up” yet, so you should feed them no earlier than 30–40 minutes later. And conduct the last feeding no later than an hour before the lights go out.
In the morning hours, it is better to give discus less favorite food — they will have time to finish it, and at the last feeding of the day, pamper them with products they always eat eagerly and quickly. In this case, leftover food particles will not remain lying on the bottom at nightfall and will not lead to water deterioration. It is indisputable that food should be eaten within approximately 5–10 minutes, as food remains in warm water quickly decompose and increase ammonia levels. If this does not happen, the dosage is reduced. These time limits do not apply to fry. During the spawning period, breeders should be fed in small portions and use products that minimally spoil the water, such as frozen bloodworms. During this period, discus eat little, limiting themselves to the vitally necessary amount of food.
What to feed discus? The diet of these fish should include vitamin-rich dry food, as well as frozen, freeze-dried, or live food. Perhaps we can conditionally distinguish three main types of food. Each type has certain advantages and, as usual, disadvantages. In any case, there is a fairly numerous audience of adherents of a particular type of food.
Live foods. These primarily include bloodworms, corethra, and tubifex worms, which are widespread among aquarists. Most often, hobbyists use bloodworms as food. According to some authors, bloodworms are simply necessary for fish for normal bowel function. This will be enough for adult discus that are over a year old, but not for the growth of young discus. Raising a discus fry from a certain point when it starts feeding independently, without tubifex and bloodworms, is quite difficult. For growth, they need protein and vitamins. Therefore, in addition to bloodworms, it is also necessary to use minced meat and granules. From spring to autumn, lower crustaceans such as Daphnia and Cyclops are no less traditional food for aquarists. The most valuable food is such representatives of the crustacean class as brine shrimp (Artemia salina).
But the greatest evil is that both bloodworms and tubifex inhabit our domestic water bodies, which are famous for an abundance of infections and industrial waste. Bloodworms should only be used frozen. Freezing bloodworms does not kill 100% of the infection, but only partially. Before freezing, it can be treated in several ways: FMS (formalin + malachite green + methylene blue, 2.5 ml per 1 liter of water) for 25 minutes, MS for 1 hour, or the old-fashioned way with strong potassium permanganate for about 25–30 minutes. After treatment, rinse for 30 minutes, pack, and freeze.
As for tubifex, as is known, it lives precisely in sewage ditches and absorbs all filth. Tubifex cannot be frozen. And washing it in running water is only part of the cleaning measures. Even when well-conditioned (at least a week in constantly changing water), it is highly likely to contain parasites and pathogens dangerous to aquarium inhabitants. Anyway, feeding discus with any live food from domestic water bodies is always fraught with consequences. Be careful with live food, as it can introduce infection into your aquarium.
Combined foods based on beef heart. The recipe for preparing this popular food is quite simple: its basis is fresh beef heart freed from fat and veins — about 60–70%, the remaining 30–40% account for various additives in the form of squid, shrimp (freshly frozen), beef liver, and marine fish in approximately equal proportions. All components are passed through a meat grinder, rolled into convenient patties, and placed in the freezer. It is useful to periodically add various vitamins to the minced meat.
Natural products such as carrot juice, bell pepper juice, dandelion leaves, spinach, lettuce, etc., can be used as additives. Among preparations, the cheapest and most acceptable seem to be “Undevit” or “Gindevit” pills stripped of their outer shell. You can also use specialized vitamin supplements from famous world manufacturers, but they are quite expensive.
Specialized dry foods for discus, which optimally balance proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, etc., necessary for discus. Such foods are quite expensive, but there is still more reason to believe that the contents of the jars correspond to what is written on the label. Perhaps it makes sense to give preference to this type of discus feeding if you have only a few of them. When choosing food, preference should be given to those manufactured by reputable companies that have thoroughly worked on finding a composition as close as possible in biochemical parameters to the natural food of discus in the wild. Additional vitamin and mineral ingredients that improve their quality have long been introduced into such mixtures. The advantages of dry foods are obvious — they are optimally balanced in mineral-biological composition, free from harmful substances and pathogenic organisms, and easy to store.
In conclusion, I would like to mention one more feeding method — combined. Most often, the first and second types of food are combined. Perhaps this best meets the needs of discus, but, unfortunately, the risk of introducing infection into the aquarium increases dramatically. Combinations with the third type are less frequently used. Good quality frozen food, whether beef heart or seafood, is accepted by discus as readily as live food. The same can be said about dry foods (flakes, granules). Here, however, it is worth reminding that transferring fish to a new food base requires a certain adaptation period.
Discus, like many animals in nature, grow much faster in “childhood” and “youth”, and with age their growth slows down. If the feeding of young discus is not rich in various vitamins, and water parameters are unsuitable, a “stunted” fish is likely to grow. If you encounter such a discus, no complete diet and ideal care on your part will help it grow, and in the end, you will simply overfeed it, which will negatively affect the fish’s health.
Breeding discus.
There is still an opinion that breeding discus is a rather complicated process. In fact, everything is much simpler than many think. The main thing is the selection of breeders and water preparation. The main difficulty in breeding discus lies in selecting quality breeders. If you create optimal conditions for raising future breeders, you won’t have to wait long for offspring. A group of young discus from which we want to get fry should be kept in one aquarium. Like all cichlids, discus raised together break into pairs as they mature and are placed in separate aquariums. Puberty in discus occurs quite early and unevenly: females mature at about a year of age, males sometimes much later.
With good care at the age of 12–16 months, they will form pairs on their own: they will swim together, twitching their fins, bowing to each other, jointly cleaning the substrate, and chasing other fish away from it. When selecting them, it must be taken into account that a sufficient amount of skin secretion for feeding fry begins to be produced only after several spawnings. One pair per spawning usually produces 100–120 and up to 200–300 fry. During the season, discus lay eggs on average every 8–10 days, some females even more often. After 10–15 clutches (if they were all unsuccessful), a break usually occurs, which can last quite a long time. According to most hobbyists and professionals, discus usually reproduce up to 2.5–3 years of age.
Readiness for spawning is signaled by whole-body trembling. A spawned pair is quite satisfied with a cube-shaped aquarium with a 50 cm rib and a water level of at least 35 centimeters. It is better to move such a pair to a spawning tank with a volume of 80 liters or more, at least 45 cm high, equipped with an aerator and a filter (at least the simplest one). The temperature is maintained at 27–33 °C. Fish ready for spawning lay eggs on a pre-cleaned substrate (ceramic or fired clay cones, wide leaves of Anubias or Echinodorus, driftwood, etc.).
Strictly speaking, the substrate is of no special importance to the fish; discus can lay eggs on the side glass and even on the bottom. The water should be soft (2–4 °dH), slightly acidic (pH 6–6.5), and enriched with tannins. On the other hand, I have repeatedly observed a pair of discus spawning and raising fry in ordinary Moscow tap water (9–12 °dH and pH 6.5–7.5), but in such conditions, there is always much less fertilized caviar. They should not be disturbed much by endless walking, slamming doors, sudden movements, etc.
When a pair is selected and the spawning tank is ready, all that remains is to observe — the harmonious pair will do everything themselves. Most often, spawning occurs in the evening. Then discus, constantly fanning the clutch with their pectoral fins, engage in the process of caring for the offspring. They do this in turns, but mostly the male. During the period of caring for eggs and larvae, discus need to be fed in small portions so that all food is eaten, because when removing leftovers, the fish get disturbed and may eat the eggs or larvae.
At a water temperature of 30 °C, by the end of the second day, the eggs darken, and after 54–56 hours the first larvae hatch. The parents move them to a clean place. On the 6th day after spawning, the moment finally arrives when the larvae, increasingly breaking away from the substrate, move onto the parents to feed on their skin secretions (mucus). By this time, the pair has already acquired a special “broody” coloration appropriate for the moment: a light head and a dark body are signs that the fish are ready to receive offspring.
There are cases when discus fight over offspring. In this case, it is recommended to divide the aquarium with a partition that does not reach the bottom by 1 cm so that the fry can swim from parent to parent, which are separated by this partition. If the pair is strong and calm, you should not rush to introduce additional food — the juveniles have plenty of parental skin secretion. But in a week, you can already introduce Artemia nauplii — the ideal starter food. From this moment, water changes in small doses should be started in the spawning tank simultaneously with the removal of leftover food.
A very numerous school grows somewhat slower and rather unevenly. This is understandable — the amount of secretion is limited and not enough for everyone. And therefore, it is better to intervene in this family idyll in time and take the fry away from the parents. Raising the fry independently is not very difficult if they are more than 5–6 days old. The size of the breeders themselves is of great importance. Large fish can feed a larger number of fry — this is one of the reasons why breeders select the largest fish as future breeders. But the size of the breeders themselves does not mean that the number of eggs will be larger, i.e., proportional to the size of the fish themselves.
Fry can feed on parental skin secretions for quite a long time. But after 2 weeks, their attempts to nibble a piece from the parents’ body begin to annoy the latter, as the fry’s food needs grow every day, and the skin layer on the parents’ sides does not have time to recover and the skin gradually becomes irritated. The fish themselves become exhausted. Besides, by this time the fry can already feed independently and it is advisable to separate them from the parents (or rather, the parents from the fry). Some hobbyists and professionals separate fry even earlier, and some almost on the third or fourth day. Again, the decision is made based on objective data existing in each aquarium (the relationship of the breeders, their general condition, attitude towards offspring, presence of skin secretion, etc.).
Most common diseases of discus.
