Keeping Discus Fish - Tips on keeping discus fish

Many manuals have been written about keeping discus fish than about any other exotic fish. This is mainly due to their popularity among pet owners. They are very sensitive creatures so in order to keep discus fish one has to be aware of their ideal living conditions, feeding and breeding habits.

Discus is a native of the calm and warm Amazon River Keeping discus fish requires the pet owner to have the right information about what to expect and what to offer them to make these exotic creatures happy. Discus fish keeps changing their behavior according to the environmental factors.

They are shy in general but when keeping discus fish you may notice that they become aggressive to their own kin and others due to breeding territory protection. The weakest discus gets severely bullied and attacked. Therefore, keeping discus fish in groups of minimum six individuals is considered ideal. Keeping discus fish in groups also increases the confidence of the group members and lower the risk of "community" misbehavior. Thus keeping discus fish brings both lots of both challenges and rewards.

Their mating behavior is far different from other species since they select their own partners therefore you have to give respect to their personal choices when keeping discus fish. Arranged matches may not work as they are very independent creatures. A separate tank should be arranged for mating purposes. If you are keeping discus fish in couples together with the rest of your aquatic pets, you risk having some nasty violent behavior because of territorial claims. You can easily notice that discus fish prepares the perimeter were they are going to have their babies by cleaning it first and defending it throughout the whole period.

Once you have fry, you'll be surprised that discus feed their young alone. However, when keeping discus fish of such different ages together, it is good to assist the parents' effort by also giving some special food to the fry too such as baby brine shrimp. It's advisable to separate the fry and adults after three or six weeks at the maximum. The exhausted parents should be kept in a separate tank to recover while the fry grows in a different tank. You can feed the fry three times a day because they eat greedily to grow faster.


Keeping Discus Fish