home decoration diy

hi everybody joey here again and welcomeback so in today's video the topic we're going to cover is how to breathe disqus in this video i'm going to sharewith you my experience with breeding discus it wasn't too long ago where ihad a few breeding pairs and established a breeding program that produced about athousand disqus fried now just to be clear this video is not going to focus on howto keep disqus in general i have an hour long video on that already and i highlysuggest you watch that in fact you should probably watch itbefore you watch this

i actually have a video on the breedingprocess itself with disqus which is extremely interesting and i suggest youwatch that as well finally i have another video on sellingdiscus and how i made approximately twenty thousand dollars off of thosethousand disqus that i told you about a moment ago that is a video where ireveal the true details and the nitty-gritty important information aboutwhat really goes on when you're selling disqus why you want to breed disqusdoesn't matter to me all i'm going to do is share myexperience and my advice with what i did and how i did it

some of you will agree some of you willdo with different none of this is written in stone but ido hope that you find something useful from this video at some point when itcame to disk is breathing for me there were three main aspects that i focusedon and really what i focused on throughout my entire hobby the first is consistency and simplicitythat will make more sense in a little while the second is there's ado-it-yourself aspect to almost everything that i do you also need toput in a lot of work and have a lot of patience

those are two things that most peopledon't want to do or don't have ok so one last disclaimer and then we'llget started i swear for this video i decided i would basically do this inconversation style basically sharing my accounts off the top of my head however i did take some bullet points ofthings that i want to talk about and make sure i touch base on with that setif i miss anything i apologize however we can revisit thisat a future time for example i do live videos on my facebook fan page now thisis a great way to interact and ask me questions directly and potentially have

the answer your questions live anddirect so do me a favor before you move any further with this video pause thevideo and follow me on facebook so you don't miss any of my live videos thencome right back here and continue on i'm saying this because chances are i'mnot going to mention it again and if you're anything like me you're probablygoing to forget links will be in the description and there should be a pop upsomewhere okay we have a lot to talk about so let's get started the numberone thing everybody wants to know is how do you get disqus pairs how do you sex discus andin my opinion there's three main options

that people turn to i'll start with the least recommendedand then work my way up many people want to sex disqus they wantto go to a store and see at all disqus to say i want that female and iwant that mail and i want to take them home and i want them to breed and that'show it's going to be that's not the way it works even if youcould sex and adults disc is female in a data all disqus mail and bring them homethere's no saying that they're going to be compatible at all but chances areyou're not going to be able to sex them in the first place

they're not really a fish that you cantell their sex there will be people out there that will argue that the male hasmore coloration yet the female will have more variation in its patterns the mailwill have more pointed dorsal fins the females will be rounded the mail willhave thicker lips so it's able to lip lock and fight other males to provedominance others will say a dominant male willgrow with thick forehead yet others will say the anal fin on afemale is shorter on the body then on a male i mean the list goes on and on and onand on and the fact of the matter is

this there's really no guaranteed way to sexa discus based on appearance alone unless you see their breathing tubeswhich only occurs when they're starting to lay eggs know typically speaking yourchances are you're not gonna be able to buy a lot of adults disqus anywaysbecause i'm typically not that commonly available you'll probably run intosmaller discs that are two and three inches which are absolutely impossibleto sex at the end of the day though when it comes to finding out which one's themale and the female the female lays the eggs

so if your mind is on going to the storeand bought and sexing a couple of disks and bringing the male and a female and creating yourown pair that they're going to breathe because you have a male and a female i'm sorry but that's just not going tohappen but hey people win the lottery all the time so you never know butthat's not the way i would do it the second thing is that you can buy aproven pair from established breeder but even then just because you buy abreeding pair doesn't mean it's going to breathe in your tank for example i'vedone that myself i paid almost six

hundred dollars for a breeding pair tookit home and it took almost two years for them to start braiding in my tank fourto six hundred dollars is an average price for a good breeding pair don't be scared of that price thoughchances are you'll make your money back on that first batch of fri if you planto sell any the most successful way to get a pair of disc is is by buying sixto eight juveniles raising them up and letting a pair naturally form it's as simple as that that is the number one recommendedmethod the reason you by six to eight is

because you give yourself enough odds toget upgrading pair in the first place even though six to eight might soundlike a lot of fish it's really not because even that can be a roll of thedice is just as simple as that if sexing discus and getting breedingpairs at a discus where that easy everybody would have them ok now let's move on to the tank setupso before we move on to the actual setup and the aquarium there's a couple ofconcerns that i want to address first a lot of people commonly asked can youbreed disqus in community tanks can you have other fish in the aquarium and soforth a discus breeding pair should be

kept on their own in their own aquarium no tank bates reason being is simple tanks will disrupt their breedingprocess and or just simply eat the eggs or fri especially when the lights go outcommunity tanks and tank mates really shouldn't be concerned when you'reinterested in breeding disqus the focus should be on the disc is and providingthem with what they need and what they don't need is other fish getting in theway so what is the best size tank forbreeding disqus sip

personally for me i have found the 33 gallon tanks to bethe best there are three feet long 12 inches wideand about 18 inches tall i like the length that as i'm able todistribute the flow a little more evenly and not have any really turbulent spot it's also big enough to allow the fry togrow a little bit with the parents which we'll talk about in a little bit it's also a nice volume of water whichwill help dilute a lot of the waste that the dog that the disc is produced whichwill help maintain the water quality a

little longer with that said some people breed them in20 gallon tanks others breed them and bigger or smaller 30 gallon 33 gallon tanks are very calmand very easy to come by and is what i have had my most success with i've alsobred disc isn't a variety of other sizes so if this doesn't work for you shootfor around the 30 gallon range as a minimum you also don't want them to be too bigso between 30 and say 40 gallons would be ideal

too big and the fryer not going to beable to find their parents too small and too many fluctuations can occur so how should we actually set this upthough as you can see this tank is bare andthat is exactly how i set them up for breeding what i start with do we know is paintingthe tank and i paint all surfaces that i don't need to see into which is thebottom the back and the two sides the only place that's not painted is thefront panel the reason being for this is chrispretty simple as well but there's two

reasons to mean reasons the first reasonis it provides a sense of security for the discus which is arguably importantfor a breeding pair the second is i find that it also helpsisolate the site of the parents when the fryer looking for their parents they cansee them a lot easier without any distractions behind them the color of paint that i typically usewill be a white or a very light blue like what is used on the basis of thistank i've sense remove the paint since i wasinto breeding but you get the idea of using a light colored paint is

the important it simply allows theparents to stand out more and the fry can more readily find themthat is very important especially if you're going to raise the fry like i doand again we'll get to that in a little while you'll also notice that there's nodecorations in the tank it's absolutely bear let's start with the reason why there'sno substrate know i've done a video entirely on why i do bare bottom tanksand specific tanks especially like a breeding tank and thereasons for this is very simple it maintains water quality a lot longerit's easier to care for and detritus and

waste doesn't collect in the tank these tend to be some of the morepopular reasons and again the reasoning is simple they don't need some breederslike to provide a little bit of cover like some plants or maybe some flowerpots or decorations to some extent but in my opinion that just takes away fromthe fry being able to find the parents the only decoration that i had is abreeding cone this is a do-it-yourself breeding comethe bottom is a porcelain tile has a pvc end cap and a piece of pvc on top of it this just goes in the tank at any placethe height of the pvc pipe is lower than

the overall tank but only about a halfinch under the water surface this is so that water can actually fill it and itdoesn't float yet it's also not too short to allow fri to get trapped insidethe reason i do with this way is to give the parents a preferred area to spawn ontypically disqus like to spawn on vertical clean surfaces having thisallows me to clean it easily and i can move it with in the tank wherever i wantwhich comes in handy when you find the disks are not laying their eggs it mightbe because of the position of the breeding code for example it might be inthe flow rates of the return of your filter so you might want to move it awayor maybe they want it closer to the

front door to the back you're just gonnahave to find where you want it at the end of the day the distance are going tolay their eggs wherever they want i've seen them lay them on the frontpanel side panel back panel bottom panel i've seen land on heaters filter intakes whatever they want to lay it on they will however if you have one ofthese in the tanks most of the time they will lay theireggs on this and again comes in really handy after every time they bring yourlegs and fri of hatched i'll remove it from the tank and cleanit completely when i'm ready to get them back into breeding i simply put it backin and they know exactly what this is

this only cost you about three dollarsto make anyway so something like this is exactly how iwould have a breeding set up just like that although obviously the sides and theback need to be painted but you get the idea ok so let's move onto filtration now this is typically done in a few waysand i prefer in two ways one i'll use a sponge filter if i only haveone breeding pair i would just use a sponge filter because it's really easyto do sponge filter and heater in the tank and that's pretty much it keptkeeping it really simple

however having a heater in the tankgives the disc is something the spawn on which is sometimes cannot be good forthe eggs the sponge filter is typically black which would attract the fry awayfrom their parents at times which again is it good so what i like to do what i've done mostof the time is run the breeding tanks on sups meaning that the back of the tankis drilled and it leads down to a sump where the water is filtered mechanicallyas well as biologically it's also heated and then return to the tank i do this for a number of reasons one itadds extra water volume to the tank

- it makes water changes a lot easierthree it keeps all equipment out of the tank the only thing that i really need to dois make sure that the intake is covered with a fine sponge this is just so that the spry don'tactually get sucked into it for water circulation and the return i focus onkeeping the water almost still so i would have my drain over here and thereturn on one end just to make sure the water is well circulated however i always . my drains downstraight down and not blowing around

this make sure that the fryer not beingblown all around and the parents are being blown around i have found that even a slight amountof flow can disrupt the fry from their parents so i have had the most success wassimply pointing the return down now when you have a few breeding tanks what i didwas put them on iraq and the top tanks would rain down to the bottom tank thebottom tank but then drain down to the sump the subwould return back to the two top tanks and that would complete the cycle

i would also have all of the growthtanks tied into that same filter the way i had this setup is what in my opinionis why i had the most success with the fry as i move the fright of their growtanks absolutely everything was identical thetemperature the perimeters the quality everything all i had to do is scoop them up fromone tank and put them in the other there are everything was identicalbecause everything was connected at the same sub again i kept it simple but focused onconsistency

you might also be thinking aboutlighting and does the tank need lighting i guess the short answer is yes itshould have some sort of lighting after all the discs need to see eachother and the fry need to be able to see their parents i don't suggest you do this in completedarkness a lot of the times though if your room is bright enough that will do however what i do is have subduedlighting over the tank and at nighttime when these lights would go off i haveambient light somewheres in the room so that the tanks did not go pitch black

i found that when the tanks would gopitch black the fry would lose their parents and i lose some by the morningtime when you'll find you'll have to do is try to find the right lightingbalance for your situation so ensure that you can turn lights outat night yet have some sort of an ambient light available what i did wasactually have a plug-in nightlight really close to the tank on an extensioncord that worked really well for a night light so that's it for the tank setup nowlet's move into water parameters water quality maintenance diet conditioningthat pairs and triggering them and then

raising the fry with the idea of whatyou need for breeding set up now let's talk about water parameters what shouldyou be aiming for this might cause some controversy and quite frankly i don'tcare because this is a method and a philosophy that i apply to my entirehobby and every fish that i keep the water in my aquariums matches theparameters of the water coming out of my tap meaning that they are the same p.m. h and the same hardness which istypically two parameters that most people chase when it comes to discus for example my ph ranges from sevenpoint four to seven . six depending on

the time of the year and i have reallyhard water but you see i provide my aquarium inhabitants with consistentwater parameters you see i actually did an entire videotalking about this in the past and it's called my aquarium philosophy and highlysuggest you watch it because i go into this in more detail the fact of the matter is this i findthat when it comes to disk is keeping too many hobbyists are chasing ideal asopposed to consistency i'll explain further what that meansideal meaning they read a book that was written 20 years ago where they went ona forum and somebody said that they need

a low ph and very soft water you're notgoing to be successful yet the person asking the question has really hard tapwater and are different definitely a higher ph so they're constantlyadjusting it and changing it and struggling with it and chasing thatideal perimeter but you got to ask yourself what would be really betterconsistency or chasing that ideal perimeter that is constantly fluctuatingif i can successfully keep a fish in water that is similar to my tap waterthen i don't want to keep it at all because in the long run i'm just goingto stress it out make my hobby a lot of work and it's not going to be any funanymore

now i'm not saying all your desk need tobe kept at ph 7.4 7.6 and hard water i'm just saying that you have to becomemore comfortable with what you have you see disqus are extremelydomesticated these days and the disc is that are being raised and sold are beingbred in large numbers and water that's already very similar to yours they'vealready adapted to common tank water parameters now of course this doesn't apply to wilddisqus as they would definitely not be able to adjust as easily again thoughwhen i first got into disk as i chased ideal parameters and had horriblehorrible results as soon as i became

more comfortable with what i had andfocused on providing consistent water quality and consistent parameters basedon the parameters that are coming out of my tap i had huge success so i'll ask you this put ph and hardness out of your head fornow unless you have the extremes extremely high or extremely low being below 6 or above eight anything inthat range in my opinion is most likely going to be acceptable focus on keepingit consistent the next thing you want to kind of lookat is temperature will get to quality in

a minute but this is the last parameterthat i look at in fact i'll be honest and it's the onlyperimeter that i care about again though this is just all my opinionand how i keep discus and how i had successful this is not how everybodydoes it when it comes to temperature i keep thatsimple as well 28 degrees celsius or 82 degrees fahrenheit anything around thereis fine with me 27 28 29 degrees celsius for example i'mtotally comfortable with this case do like warmer water now i've heard peoplehaving success with much warmer and much cooler water but again this is what i do

and in fact i keep all of my tanks atthat temperature there is not an aquarium in my house that you couldn'ttest the water for ph hardness temperature ammonia nitrite nitrate andthey will all match ok so let's move on to water quality andmaintenance so there's two ways that you can maintain your water quality for themost part which is your involvement and that is through water changes or a dripsystem i have done both now when it comes todiscus people like to change a lot of water a lot of the time and discus dowell with lots of water changes but it could be argued that all fish will be doreally well with lots of water changes

of course better the quality the betterthe fish will be drip systems allow you to meet maintain quality for a lotlonger though so when it came to fry tanks i did likerunning drip systems and if you have not seen a drip system before i have twovideos on how to set one up and i explained them thoroughly when it comes to water changes thoughi've seen people do ninety percent water changes once to twice a day personally the tanks that i did do waterchanges on i get away with thirty to fifty percent every three days i didn'tdo daily mass of water changes

i just focused on keeping the tank cleanfree of algae and detritus so on a daily basis i would inspect thetank and remove any uneaten food perhaps give the tank a scrub on the inside ifit needed it and that was pretty much it it didn't take that much work now basedon my opinion on water parameters water quality and maintenance you'reprobably surprised right now and you should be i'm glad that i can expose youto something different most of what you read would tell you thepolar opposite and that's okay to go with what suits your situation the best there's no real right or wrong way to dothis ok so when it comes to food and

feeding these breeding discs what do ido i stick to do with yourself food and i have a couple videos or three or fourvideos on do it yourself food at this point but my favorite one is the discusfood which involves turning beef her tilapia shrimp spirulina paprika factsthen and a few other ingredients into a puree and then freezing it i feed this food for a few reasons ithas proven results for me it's easy and cost effective to make i can i canadjust it and manipulate it to what i needed to do and it goes a long way like i said i had about a thousand discson my hand at one point which requires a

lot of food the biggest reason why i use do ityourself food is because the parents would eat it and when the fry we'reready they would eat it as well so there wasno transition and me trying to get them onto new foods or anything like that i can continuously feed the same food toeverybody and feeding this type of food is what helped me be really successful so if i were to tell you to do anythingout of this entire video i would probably say to make your own food andthis will make even more sense in a few

minutes the parents since they were adults andif they had fri or eggs i would still feed them once a day how much i would feed the fry and howoften will get to in a minute so you know how to get your pairs youknow how to set up the tank you know what they need you know the parametersthat you know you're going to kno the maintenance and the water quality youneed to provide now water changes are definitely going to vary based on yoursituation my advice here is just to keep your night rates as low as absolutepossible

in fact i don't even want to be able toread them on any test kit so let your readings depict how much water changesyou need to do so we've talked about pairs we've talked about setting up thetank we've talked about water parameters and water quality as well as maintenanceand we've talked about food now let's talk about triggering and conditioning these pairs so youmight have a pair now when you're wondering why they're not breedingyou're feeding them or do keeping what great water quality but they're stillnot laying eggs or there's just no sign of breeding at all

here's what i found always worked for mechange desk is like change when it comes to breeding now that change can come ina number of methods i've changed tanks i've moved the tanksto different locations i change their diet slightly feeling alittle less are feeling a little more i change the amount or frequency ofwater changes i change the temperature of the water changes even just skippingfood for a couple days and then feeding them a good healthy amount but sometimestrigger them to start breeding any change in general is going to be goodespecially if you have had pairs for a long time and they're not doing anything

i food that i found that helped triggerthem a lot was live black worms and that's a common thing to feed tocondition breeding pairs so in the long run though you just can't force disqusto breed you can do everything in your power to accommodate them but reallyit's going to be up to that all you can do is make sure that you can providethem with what they need and focus on maintaining water quality as you can seethere is no magic trick that i can tell you where there's no there's no secretthat i can tell you that you're going to be able to apply and your disqus aregoing to magically breed these things take time and they take a lot of workbut once you get them started

they typically are bonded pair and willcontinuously always breed which brings up the fact that you're going to need alot of patience when i mentioned i bought six to eight this is to raisethem up into breeding pairs at the time frame that that actually took wasbetween 18 and 24 months this is going to happen overnight or ina few months this takes a long time and a tremendous amount of commitment i'vealso bought a dolt this guess which it kinda looks like a mix of male andfemales and nothing happened for a year and then i bought a proven pair that wasguaranteed and it took them almost two years to start breeding in my tanks

sometimes no matter what you do or whattype of pairs you have or what guarantee you have it just might not happen at all now before we move on to the fry the eggs and what happens during thattime and what i did let's first talk about people that have problem withtheir discs that are already laying eggs so i get this question a lot by disquslaid eggs but they're not hatching what's the problem could be a number ofthings first thing that comes to my mind is there just a young pair and they'reeating them i've had pairs that takes seven eightnine times just to get it right until

the eggs will actually hatch and thenthey'll probably eat the fry which are called wigglers that that's at thatstage and it'll take them another two or three times to get them to free swimmingwhich they will eat them eventually you just wake up one morning and they're allgone it just happens you see disqus just likeanybody else they need practice and for some they get it right away for others it could take severalattempts the other thing is the mail might not be fertile now this isactually quite rare to happen but it does happen

finally you might have two females justlaying eggs together that is actually pretty common in fish like disqus anangel fish and it is extremely frustrating so i would say that everything up untilthe point where the eggs are laid hey is really the easy part it's mainlyjust a game of patience now the real work comes into play butthe reward as well breeding discus and going through theentire process that they have is an extremely rewarding process and i don'tmean monetary i mean as a hobbyist breeding disqus is probably one of themost rewarding experiences you can go

through all of that hard work andpatience finally gets to pay off and you can witness one of the most interestinglife cycles in the aquarium hobby happen right in your own aquarium so once theeggs are laid they can take two to three days to hatch depending on the tankstemperature just leave it be and let them hatch naturally don't raise yourtemperature or lower it or anything like that let them be alone at this pointthough some people like to artificially raise the eggs i don't do that i've never done that andi don't suggest that you do that as a new breeder

i suggest that you let the parents do itfor you after two to three days the eggs willhatch and the fry will not be free swimming it they will attach themselvesto a surface usually the surface in which the eggs were laid however the parents sometimes we'll movethem around locations depending on where they want them to be now the fry will stay attached towhatever surface they put them on for a couple of days and then one day theybecome free swimming and swarm around the parents at this point you're stillfeeding the parents once a day like you

were previously the fry will continue toswarm around the parents feeding off of the mucous exerted by the parents skin now the biggest reason why you werefeeding this do-it-yourself food is this it sinks to the bottom and the parentswill eat it and they're down there they're actually bringing the fry withthem eventually end the fry grow bigger and bigger the fry will also find that food andit's easy for fri to eat as well because it's a puree usually this happens around the two tothree-week mark after the eggs were late

now depending on the size of the fry atthis point i might move them to their own bro tank or i might just wait a fewmore days until i see all of them actively going after the food instead ofstaying around the parents as soon as that happens i move them to their owntank as soon as you move the fry out of that tank and do some water changes andclean up the the breeding tank the parents usually within 24 to 48 hourswe'll go right back to playing more eggs and the cycle continues but let's go back to the fry withinabout six weeks of the eggs be laid the fry will begin to take brine shrimp

whether it's live or frozen personally iprefer to stick to my homemade food but i always had a little bit of frozenbrine shrimp in the freezer in case i ran out of my homemade food and didn'twant to make any that day now when it comes to the growth of thefry the more you feed and the cleaner the water the faster they will grow you can't justkeep dumping food in the tank though they obviously have to eat it i found myself feeding the disc is frianywhere between four and six times a day

water changes were done at fifty percentevery day as well unless i was running drip systems now depending on have disciplined i wasto the water changes and feeding i could have two and three inch disqus one of acouple months or it could take a few months and all came down to how well i cared for thosefry once the fry got to the three to four inch range though they were readyto sell and if you're wondering what i did atthat point watch the video on how i made twenty thousand dollars from sellingdisqus in one month that video tells

this story from an entirely differentperspective again i highly suggest you watch that oneanyways hope you guys enjoyed today's video i also want to thank you forwatching and i'll see you guys next week for a new do-it-yourself project