One of the biggest “tricks” of getting Discus fish or angelfish to spawn is the quality of the food and the amount of food they receive.

Discus fish need more incoming nutrition than their growth needs require to produce eggs. So give them lots of food up to 5 times a day… I have read many a breeders report that they only feed their adult discus fish 2 times a day… We have found that to get the female discus fish to produce the large volumes of eggs (200+) they need not only lots of high protein food (45%+)) but the addition of insects in their diet such as bloodworms, live blackworms, red worms or mosquito larvae. Without these foods the female discus spawing rates goes way down. Another factor in geting Discus fish to spawn of course is the age… Generally female discus fish start spawning at around ten months of age or around 4-5 inches in size. Keeping them in high stocking numbers per gallon can delay spawing until they reach a larger size. The advantage to this is that the female discus fish generally produces more eggs the larger they are.

Once you have conditioned your discus fish with a diet rich in these foods, gotten them to the size/age of sexual maturity (Discus reach full size at around 2-3 years of age) inducing them into spawning can be done by a number of methods: Delay water changes (making sure to not let the nitrate cycle get to dangerous levels) for around five thru seven days. When you do your water change(30%), try and coincide it with a thunderstorm (the barometric pressure drop seems to work wonders) On the water that you use on the replacement water, have the temperature be around 8-12 degrees cooler, and a bit more acidic than the tank water… this almost always will encourage the discus fish into spawning. All of these same principals apply to raising and breeding angelfish also…

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We are often asked: How many Discus fish or angelfish can be kept per gallon of aquarium?

The rule that we go by for a standard home aquarium is one Discus fish or angelfish per 8 gallons of water. This number can vary quite a bit depending on the filtration used on the discus/angelfish tank and the size of the discus/angelfish in the tank. In most of our 55 gallon grow out tanks in our hatchery, we keep up to 24, 3-4 inch discus fish or angelfish in each tank!. . that is one per two gallons.. This may seem extreme, but there is a continual flow of water in and out of the discus tanks at a rate of five gallons a minute. This water is filter by 8 foot fluidized bed sand filters along with a wet dry biological bed.

Along with this we do water changes of 30% every other day to keep up with the huge bio load. Keep in mind that Discus fish are great jumpers so make sure to keep there tanks well covered… The Discus fish are all fed 4-5 times a day making sure that they all get a full bellies worth at each meal. We feed the younger discus fish a diet of HBH discus pellet food, frozen bloodworms, chiclid delight, several different types of HBH flake food, enriched frozen brineshrimp, mysis shrimp, live blackworms and frozen daphnia.

The reasons for these high stocking densities is that it cuts the Discus fishes territorial fighting behavior down to nothing. Discus kept in numbers lower than one per eight gallons can be prone to this territorial bickering, making them spend more time defending there territories than putting energy into growth. Once we begin to pair our discus or angelfish off we will cut there tank numbers down to one per 10 gallons… Once they have paired off we remove them to one pair per 29 gallon aquarium.

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