Zebra Danio

[SparKy697]

Has anybody had these fish spawn in their tank? I have 6 and I believe that at least two are females. Both of them have a quite fat abdomen. I would love to submit a photo but it seems that I would need a high speed camera to capture these crazy little guys. The two "females" are relentlessly chasing the other thinner and presumably male fish.

In your experience, are these fish as prolific as some articles say?

 

[Mosaic]

Oh yes. The trick is saving the eggs. Most won't even hit the bottom.

 

[SparKy697]

Oh yes. The trick is saving the eggs. Most won't even hit the bottom.

Is this due to the other fish in the tank? Or will the actual parents eat the eggs?

 

[SparKy697]

This morning my biggest fattest zebra is no longer fat! I tried to watch as the sun came up and lit up the room to see if I could see anything happening as I read that this is their favored time to lay eggs.

I saw nothing. I presume that they all were breakfast, but am really hoping that a few made it. It would be really cool to see a couple babies in the tank.

 

[Mosaic]

The parents are pretty bad at eating their own eggs. If you really want to spare some babies, you need a large substrate where eggs can fall through and be protected from the fish. Marbles are often recommended for a breeding tank. I doubt you'll be able to get any fry to survive in a community tank.

 

[zenkatydid]

my danios have had about half a dozen spawns. the only babies which have survived are those that got sucked up in a gravel vac as eggs, and hatched in the big bucket that the water change sat in for a few days because i was too lazy to tip it out! we saved them all and put them in a tank with nothing that would eat them, and currently have about 20 1cm long miniature danios, adorable!

even in a heavily planted tank, i doubt any eggs would survive to hatching, or babies survive to adulthood with their parents gobbling them up!

 

[SparKy697]

I'm thinking about maybe trying to do a little fry tank and see if I can get some little survivors.

What about a tank with a coarse screen on the bottom that would allow the eggs to fall through but not the adults?

 

[BrianNY]

Marbles work well, but not as good as a bottom covered with Java Moss. The trick is to seperate the males from females and introduce them to the breeding tank in the morning. The breeding tank should contain no more than 6 inches of water depth. This prevents them from eating the eggs during spawning.

 

[SparKy697]

Ok, Java moss sounds very nice.
At the risk of sounding naive, if the male and female are separated when do the eggs get fertilized?

 

[gu2high]

It is so easy to me. I bought a pair of zebra danios. Now I have as many as fry as I want.

I put them in a 10 gal tank with platy, molly, etc. Use pea-sized gravel as substrate, just cover one layer is enough. Vaccume the gravel every 2-3 days, save the vac water in a bucket. Check the bucket water under the sun or well-lighted place. You can see tiny fry in the bucket easily. I can also spot the egg as it look like a round dot with half dark color. Use a small net to pick them up to a breeding net. Sometimes when I pick up the egg, it becomes a fry in the process.

The female spawned every 2-3 weeks, give 100 egss (maybe), but most of them be eaten by the danios. The eggs become fry in about 1-3 days. The fry stay under the graval for about 1-2 days. When they come to swim, they usually swim up and stick to side of glass, which make them easily be eaten.

Feed the fry first-bite or you can gound mix of food (flake, freeze-dried bloodworm, brine shrimp, etc.) to fine particles to feed them. They grow pretty fast.

 

[BrianNY]

Spawns do occur in community tanks gu2high. If you're satisfied with that, that's fine.

IMO breeding any species means being in control of the spawning process. There's a great deal of satisfaction in setting out to spawn a species and having it actually happen.

Not naive at all Sparky. When you condition the males and females seperately you're in control of when the spawn will occur. When a female gets nice and plump with eggs, I add her and two males to the spawning tank. Two males assures more eggs will be fertilized. When spawning is over I remove the trio. The fry can then be raised to a reasonable size in the spawning tank.

Zebra Danios are usually the first egg laying fish that people try and breed. They're hardy, prolific, and fun.

 

[SparKy697]

This does sound like something I might take a stab at. What size tank do you suggest for a spawning tank? Would a 5 gallon be too small?

 

[BrianNY]

5 gal is too small. I would use at least a 10g. This can really be done on the cheap. All you need is a sponge filter and heater.

 

[SparKy697]

I would expect that this tank would need to be cycled like any other tank that fish are kept in. Or would the moss take care of the ammonia in the beginning?

 

[gu2high]

The key point is how to collect fry/eggs. You can have a spwaning tank, but you have to know when you should remove the parents and it is not so easy. Besides, my fish continues spwan for weeks. When I vac every other day, I found 4-10 fry/eggs every time.

As I said, the best way is to vac the gravel and collect the fry/eggs from the vac water and then put them in breeding net. The other fish will not eat as many fry/eggs as zebra danio parents if in a community tank.

 

[BrianNY]

In a spawning tank there's no need to collect the eggs. If you place the trio in the tank in the morning, you can watch them spawn and remove them when they're finished. Or, you can condition one sex in the spawning tank and add the other when they are ready.

The good thing about a sponge filter Sparky is it's easy to seed. Let it run for ten days in your current tank to build a nitrifying bacteria colony. Then move it to the spawning tank. Sponge filters have so much surface area that they will continue to grow the bacteria colony as your fry grow.

 

[SparKy697]

This all seems so easy. A shopping I will go!

Thanks for all the info. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. I'm not sure what I will do if this experiment actually works but I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.