It is not easy to spot the difference between male and female of discus as their color and patterns ranging from blue, blue-greenish, orange to red.

When I was 15, I have managed to successfully bred them from young fry to adulthood.

What I normally do is that I use 2.5 feet tank, and did some fish pairing, based on trial and error using aquarium partitions supported with suction disc.

The males are often more brightly colored compared to females. You need to spot them closely.

If you get a successful pairing, the fish will lay eggs on hard, cylinder shaped surface, which is placed vertically. A 3 inch to 3.5 inch size PVC pipe placed vertically is good enough. Use white colored PVC pipe so it is easy to spot the egg cluster.

The egg clusters are bright orange colored. Avoid provoking or agitating the fish. If threatened the pair of fish will ate all the eggs.

When the eggs hatches, the fry will feed on the mucus on the parents scales, and both parent take turns in feeding and nurturing the young. The young will swim side by side with the parents to feed. At this point, you might want to switch off the water filter, to prevent some young fry to sucked in. The water must be well air-circulated with tiny air bubbles to maintain constant oxygen level. Some will also die naturally in the growing up process. Again avoid provoking or agitating the fish, the parent will eat the young if it felt life threatened. You can feed the fry with daphnia, a micro-organism, the parent may go on hunger to concentrate on nurturing.

It takes 4 to 5 weeks for the fry will take its adult form, which is the size of 20sen coins. When they reaches the size of 50sen coin the young can be separated from the parent and will grow up healthily.

the information above is obviously a very well kept secret among those who bred the fish commercially. Like the flowerhorn, and blood-red parrot fish, is from the cichlid family and it is a mix-breed. So far I have no idea how the blood-red parrot was bred.

Once you have got the idea of breeding the discus, it is amazingly simple. All it takes is the time you need to wait until you get a pairing and they start mating.

I am now looking at some ways to breed arowanas (sorry a bit off topic), I might consider it as an investment for side business apart from my mainstream income.

FYI I am now working fulltime and don't spend much time on aquariums, breeding discuss was 14 years back. In those years I did it out of a hobby, and discovered it naturally. At that time internet was just starting to get popular, and nothing was documented i don't even have a digital camera and only my memory is the best information that I can count on and share with all of you.

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Added on August 19, 2009, 4:51 pmyes, you can.

But for breeding purpose, do not mix them with other fish.

This post has been edited by blitzboy: Aug 19 2009, 04:51 PM

OH NO !!! I am poisoned!!
I am considering wanna take up the hobby again!!!!
This time in a LARGE SCALE !!!

Breeding and distributing to the local aquarium stores !!!

It's gonna make money....

This post has been edited by blitzboy: Sep 12 2009, 08:27 PM

Thank for being interested but got risk lor.
Same goes for all businesses.

These fishes can breed in 100+ during the fry stage, and out of these numbers probably 40 to 60 will survive to maturity under ideal conditions.
With these breeding numbers, if no one buying te livestocks, then we have to take care of ALL of them just like our own pets.