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Hi, I recently had a pair of discus that were spawning once a week but the male was to protective over the eggs so i replace him with another male but on the first spawn this time the new male didnt fertilize the eggs is this common for new discus to spawning?

I think a bit of a tactical error was made there, youve taken a protective male, most likely the father of the batch of eggs and replaced him with a less aggressive male , the female might not accept him, and the eggs will remain unfertilised.

Discus feed their young by allowing the fry to browse an a secretion produced from their flanks, and you only need one parent to raise at least some fry, and a very protective male is a fair bet to do the job, even if the pairing fails. Youve exchanged a 20-30% fry failure rate for a no fry produced at all situation.

Probably should have removed the female. There is no difference in the responsibilities of parental care between the sexes in discus, and single parent fathers often do an excellent job of raising fry, in fact its not uncommon for males, who may only have a limited chance to breed before they are outcompeted by another male, to take fry raising with utter seriousness and commitment. Often the male will kick the female off the nest if there is any potential threat from her to eat the eggs, and lets face it, should eggs and fry be eaten, its often the females that do the eating.

Single male parental care is the most common circumstance after successful pair bonds, and it may be that you just sabotaged a chance to have some healthy well raised fry. It happens in nature and it happens in the aquarium, and the fry may well be very healthy, and their father an excellent warden. Id run with the aggressive male, he seems to have much more potential than your second male. He may have kicked the female off the nest to protect his bloodline, and he may have spotted her behavior towards the young way before you ever would have.

With cichlids and discus, if you side with the fish most committed to the young, you'll not go far wrong. Pacifist fish often dont protect the fry very well. Your male may have been doing an excellent job before you moved him. Its too easy to take sides , the male may be a paranoid, but even so, its often better to trust him with the fry than any other fish. Its nearly always better to remove the fish thats been kicked off the nest, whatever the sex.

Ive seen shellies, all the way through to large acaras show certain behaviour, and it runs along the lines of this.If your partner isnt much of a defensive warden, or much of a fighter with little knowledge of strategic protective positioning, the tougher of a pair may eject the weaker from the vicinity. This may be because the more useless of the partners spends little time in active defense, and actually blocks the view of the more defensively gifted fish, the result is a compromisation of defensive ability.The more defensive fish is often quite prepared to take on sole responsibility, and may in fact do a better job than if the pair stayed together.

I think in captive circumstances where there is a limited choice of partner selection, and the better fish is simply accepting whatever opportunity to breed turns up rather than exercising true partner selection from hundreds of potential candidates, its possible that the fish more likely to be a liability in fry rearing and egg protection is simply removed. Their genes are required, and often little else.

Raising cichlids is not always about perfect pairs. Sure, its nice if you can get it, but ultimately its the fish that choose, and most times its better to roll with their instinctive decisions rather than our abstract expectations.Should pair bondings fail, its often better for the most aggressively protective fish to raise the young. Some things are settled for the better by aggression, and this is one of them.

Even a much abused female , kicked off the nest by her partner may prefer to stay with that partner for the next breeding effort. She will feel instinctively if he has the best genetic potential for her offspring, even if he is a mite tetchy.The newer male my never be accepted, unless of course he is young and may yet blossom into a superior fish, but you cant expect her to accept inferior goods, when as far as she is concerned her big beautiful aggressive male may return any day. Some just get on with it, some wait, and thats life.

Breeding behaviour may also change according to circumstances. Take for example cichlidae breeding in a community situation, you will find they become extremely aggressive to other species in the vicinity. If the tank is huge and other species numerous you may find fish like acaras and heros actually creching young, with more than one female having accepted the same male, and the three adults keep the fry tightly contained and defend them with a nihilistic vengeance, thats fighting for survival. You often find when large numbers of a single species are present that pairs will turn against other pairs, with the keen intention that only the young of one pair will live to inherit the earth. Thats basic competition. Then you may find that a segregated pair with young might break up with one partner dominating the responsibility, which is either a good defense of the young, or a paranoia brought about by the fact that almost never to fish ever naturally raise their young in absolute seclusion with no outside threat.Its displacement behaviour. Some fish however are more chilled out, and much as with my acaras, the segregated pair may simply chill out , let the fry roam freely throughout the expanse of water and watch for only one threat- namely me, by attacking the glass whenever im near, something that ive never seen them do in community. Sometimes it can be quite amusing at around weeks 6 -8 when the young come up to me , recognising me as the keeper for the first time and eager to partake in the food im about to give them, only to have a large parent swim directly between myself and the neonate fish, with a face like an angry bullock, , block my view of the fry and herd it back to a rock." stay away from that long- haired weirdo "

Fish have a behaviour for every eventuality, and reading it correctly will help you to help them raise their fry.

Hope all this waffle helps in some way

well the female does like this male cause she and the male were fighting off the other male. and this male was beating the poop out of the other. so i figered the female left her old partner for this new one.

Well, that might work out for the best, now it just remains to be seen if she has genuinely accepted him as a partner or if they were just defensively shoaling against the aggressive fish. I guess time will tell if he's fertile.Pacifist males often do well with females socially, but that lack of extra oomph in the hormones that often shows through as aggression can have a real bearing on the fertility level of the fish. You might find if he doesnt put up the goods after a breeding attempt or two, she may go back to her old bad tempered partner.It might even be the presence of male number two thats making male number one hyperaggressive. Cichlids can get a bit dippy about who they threaten if there is competition around especially if the shoal has uneven numbers of the sexes.