The Fish Room Project

Update #6 

Well, they'e done it again! My discus fish are in full parenting mode. I wasn't going to raise this new generation of discus yet, but my curiosity got the best of me, so I'm going to give it a shot. I really want to see what this new generation will look like. I'm hoping for solid- to near-solid cobalt blue. They have good genes, so it is very possible to get some really nice fish from this batch of wrigglers.

Here's a video of the proud parents and their brood. They moved the babies to the sponge filter elbow. This is a much better spot than the canister filter intake tube where they laid the eggs. Now I can cover that intake with a piece of filter floss.

I am planning to automate many of the functions that I will need to perform. It should be easier to maintain the tank this time, but I'm also going to make a couple of changes to accommodate the babies I might eventually raise from this brood.

I made a couple of changes in the 4-tank system too. I added a bag of Seachem® Purigen to the sump. I also cut out a couple layers of flat filter material I had used once in a failed attempt at a divider and put it over the bio balls in the trickle tower portion of the filter. I had it lying around for a while and finally figured I'd give it a try.

Let's see what happens.

Bonus! My Visit to Jack Wattley Discus Hatchery

Bonus!

A Visit to the Jack Wattley Discus Hatchery in Miami, Florida!

Before I begin, I have to say that this is one of my absolute favorite fish-nerd places to geek out at in Miami. If you know about discus fish, you will easily recognize the name, Jack Wattley. Mr. Wattley is one of the best-known authorities in the field of discus breeding around the world. In fact, he is one of the principal founders of discus breeding culture in the United States, having published several articles and books, and lecturing at national and international conferences over the last several decades, ever since discus-keeping took off in the United States beginning in the 1960's. Needless to say, I really wanted to write about this hatchery for a long time.

Last March (2016), I decided to visit the world-renowned Jack Wattley discus hatchery in Miami, Florida (https://wattleydiscus.com). Unfortunately, Mr. Wattley does not run the hatchery himself anymore, having retired and delegated that responsibility to one of the hands-down coolest and most knowledgeable fish-breeders you will ever meet, Gabe Posada, who is doing an outstanding job of running the hatchery for Mr. Wattley nowadays. Luckily, the hatchery is in very good hands. Gabe is extremely knowledgeable about discus-keeping, and I find him to be a very open and friendly guy with everyone who stops by, not just me. That's a character trait I admire in the people I meet, and I am happy to see that the legacy of Wattley Discus is in such capable hands. Gabe is always happy to share all sorts of valuable information for both novice and experienced discus hobbyists, so I'd strongly recommend you pay him a visit there whenever you're in town. Just call ahead of time to make sure he knows!

Here are some pictures of my visit last March. As you can see, there are many outstanding, high-quality specimens of several different varieties of discus.

The wild discus fish shown below are the biggest I have ever seen! They are about as large, maybe larger, than my fully open hand!

I found these albinos to be particularly eye-catching. This picture does not do them justice, but I'll post it anyway.

Here are some Heckel discus (some "wilds" too, I think)...

Again, the albinos...

This is me, showing one aisle of the hatchery, from about the middle.  I strongly recommend you visit and support this valuable contributor to the development of the discus raising hobby if you are interested. It's worth the detour on your way to the beach!

See you next time!

The Fish Room Project: Update 5

The Fish Room Project

Update #5

There you go! Another year come and gone, and my fish room has been purring along beautifully for several months.

I'm about a week late in posting this (I meant to post something on New Year's Day), but I am so glad that 2016 is finally over! It was an action-packed roller-coaster of a year for me in so many ways, and 2017 is promising to be every bit as crazy too. At least I've got my fish room though! It's been up and running now for several months, after having worked out the plumbing, lighting, filtration, electrical connections and cycling the tanks for several months. 

I know I didn't have to cycle the tanks so long - a month would have been enough, probably - but I was too busy with my job during the spring and early summer to be able to dedicate much time to the system, and when I did finally have enough time on my hands, we had to tent the house for termites. This meant removing all of my fish, unplugging and covering my tanks, and removing the water. They said that the poison gas would not penetrate the water, and the foggers that my wife and I set around the house afterward (to kill the ants and everything else that would eventually return) are not supposed to penetrate water either, but that doesn't mean it would not affect the water quality would be unaffected by the temperature and lack of water circulation for a few days. The dead bacteria in my canister filters alone could have killed everything in a tank, so I took the opportunity to clean the filters thoroughly, replace most of the water in all of my tanks, and begin the cycling process again.  Unfortunately, I went a little too far with the planted tank in my living room, making an almost 100% water change, using water straight from the hose, on a day with record high heat for South Florida. Needless to say, this was a mistake (aka "learning experience") that I do not intend to repeat. I wound up killing most of the plants, but a few Amazon swords did survive and a few valisneria spiralis melted down badly but not completely. I let that tank cycle again before replanting it, and I am happy to report that everything in that tank is thriving now. 

Here's a picture of the planted tank in my living room. It's not technically part of my "fish room" per se, but I have been moving plants over to the fish room tanks as this tank becomes crowded and overgrown with plants and I occasionally have to thin it out.

I'm glad to see that all of my tanks are doing great lately. They have reasonable bio-loads, about 20 gallons per fish on average, and I've recently increased my water changes too because I am bulking up my fish a little. I want to see them as healthy as possible, and it looks like things are going well overall.  In fact, some of the young discus that I raised last year have paired up and begun to spawn lately, which is incredibly cool because it is the second generation of discus that I have bred. I'm not really looking to raise these babies right now - though I would love to - because I would have to move the three other adult discuses the rest to the tank below them, but I am currently using that tank as a quarantine tank (QT) for four longfin albino bristlenose plecos that I plan to introduce to my other tanks as soon as I can be reasonably sure that they won't contaminate my "native" population with any foreign disease or parasite, etc.

I learned my lesson about the value of a QT tank last October. I bought two of those same plecos as well as a koi angelfish, two snowflake discuses, a blue diamond discus, and a red melon discus from Wattley Discus in Miami and did not bother to quarantine them before introducing them to my general population. It's really not the hatchery's fault. The blame is on me, but the result was a disaster on a magnitude that I have never had to deal with before, simply because nothing seemed to be working for a long time, and it was costing me a small fortune to medicate so many tanks. I have over 350 gallons in total from my 7 tanks, and medication is not cheap! It was a depressing few weeks, and I lost many discuses (thankfully, none that I had paid for, since I had raised these myself), including some of my best babies, but I was lucky enough that some of them pulled through and now they are even spawning new broods. On a side note, the red melon has quickly become my favorite discus. It has such strong, dramatic colors, especially against the light blue background of the tank. I'll post a picture of it below, just for kicks, even though it really doesn't do this fish's colors much justice.

To be honest, I do want to raise one of these new broods. The pair that is currently spawning lay an incredible amount of eggs each time they do so, and they seem to be good parents, taking great care of these eggs while beating the crud out of any fish that gets near them. I'm really just dying to see what the babies will look like, since the parents have a lot of blue themselves, and their father was a blue diamond (the mother is a turquoise), meaning that I can expect at least 25% of these babies to be solid blue like their grandfather. That's really what I am aiming for with that particular breeding line. I'd like to see if my 25% theory pans out.  Here is another picture (last one, I promise!) of one of the parents with the first batch of eggs. See you next time!