How to Trigger your discus to breed in treated Tap water

[Eagle Eyes]

alright so the back story is 337 gall fresh water aquarium. been using tap water from my city my water is around 6.5 to 8 ph water hardness is less then 100. I use pond declorinator to treat my water.

I have 2 royal blue discus and 1 pidgon discus.

I noticed the 2 blue discus had paired because they always chased the other one away. ( had these fish from december 2015) the tank is less then 6 months old.)

at my local fish store I saw some baby 2" royal blue discus for $25 and couldn't help myself and bought 2.

Well the interesting part was then i placed them in the bag in my tank to acclimate them to the temp. My large female Discus was intreged and hypnotized by them. ( figured that out my using the geometry method)

I did my weekly large water change that night and I noticed them doing this weird shake that rolled down there body to later relize that was there mating ritual and they then layed eggs.

This was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I highly recommend paying attention to your fish because you never know what you might see.

I believe that the baby Discus being added to the tank Triggered the females urge to have babies of her own .... please let me know what you guys think I really appreciate all your feed back

 

[lksdrinker]

I doubt the fish had a maternal instinct and wanted a baby because she saw a juvenile! Discus, like any other fish, will eat their own young without skipping a beat! While discus do have more of a parenting instinct than other fish I really doubt they desire to be parents in the same way a human might.

Whats more likely is that the change triggered a spawning instinct. When discus wont breed any sort of change is often recommended. Big water change at a cooler temp; different TDS, different conductivity, slight ph change, new foods, live foods, no foods, more foods. Basically anything to provide a change can do it and more often than not that comes from a large water change at a slightly different temperature.

I would be concerned about source water that varies in ph value from 6.5 to 8 though! Those are essentially two opposite ends of the acceptable spectrum there!