My discus pair, Fierce Husband and Headband's first breeding experience...

Male - Headband
>>Strain - Unknown
Female - Fierce Husband
>>Strain - Turquiose

1st July 2001 - I created a brine shrimp hatchery today. I took a 1.5L Coke bottle and created a brine shrimp hatchery. More on that on my articles next time perhaps.

4th - Enjoying my birthday and preparing brine shrimp for my babies ::
I finally got to use my hatchery! It's the 9th day after the fries became free swimming and they needed to be fed brine shrimp on the 10th day. 1 tablespoon of salt to one litre of water was the dosage added to the hatchery. Now the babies are real big. They are around 1cm in length already. A few are slightly bigger. I can see that their tummies are budging and that's good. You can figure out if the fries are feeding on the brime shrimp by looking at their bellies! See if their insides are orange in colour. Brime shrimps have an orange tint to them. Hehe... Little fries like them have to eat more in order to grow faster and bigger. Apparently the parents are starting to be irritated by the constant picking by tiny mouths. Sometimes they would gently shake them off or they would transfer the fries to one another.

>> I caught Headband transferring fries to Fierce Husband.

8th - Parasite attack! :: Unfortunately, my pair was infected with gill fluke all of a sudden. May be stress was starting to get the better of them. The female (Fierce Husband) started to show signs of gill fluke by rubbing it side against the PVC piping. The fries would then scatter, only to gather back onto her body or the male's (Headband). The breathing rate of the parents was going up and I could see the fries under some stress. The parents were not really interested in food, but they still ate.

15th July 2001 - A win-lose situation :: I observe that the fries were scratching against the side of the tank. I was a little desperate in the sense and I decided to add a half dosage of gill fluke medication. It did help, but it took the life of 10 fries.

Headband, happy with his new brood! You can see the young fries developing very fade stress bars. They show it once in a while. Apparantly scared of my flash from my camera.