zebra danio spawning questions???

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miiah is da bomb

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
28
Location
i live in Glendale, Arizona
i recently got 3 zebra danios. i am suspecting that i have 2 female and 1 male. the 2 that i think are female are looking plumper than when i first got them and the other one is as slim as can be. i was wondering what some spawning activies were. i think it would be cool to breed my danios?! i was also wondering what danio eggs look like??
thx.
 
Mine bred shortly after I got them, and then never did again. I kept some of the eggs though, and managed to grow a few young ones. Here's what I found.

These are egg scatterers, and when they spawn the eggs go everywhere, but most down to the gravel (they don't stick to anything); if you have a magnifying glass, look around the edge of the tank at the top of the gravel for eggs. After a day or two, the eggs will hatch into tiny, splinter-like fry, which hang out on the glass for some time, then start moving in small jumps. As they move around like this they often get eaten. So if you have a tank pump or siphon (I used a turkey baster which is only for fish use), suck up the eggs or the hatched fry along the edge where the gravel meets the glass; in a pinch you might use a net if it's all you have. Deposit them in another small tank with some tank water from the big one (water should be slow-moving if at all, these fry WILL get sucked up by a tank filter).

After that it's a matter of feeding them. I had OK luck with the Hikari First Bites stuff, but the fry tank I was using had some greenish water which probably had other 'food' in it.
 
i had a pair that spawned twice but then the female died. it was in a community tank so i didnt get any fry. it was just a delicious snack for the other fish. the cool part was the courtship dance they did before spawning. i have no idea what triggered their spawning.
 
I have bread them as well, very difficult to raise the young though, thats the tricky part...
 
yeah well, depends on how much work someone wants to put into it, crushing flake food is pretty simple...but fry sometimes need more than that
 
But Danio fry can be fed on powdered pellets/flakes(No crushed, that's the trick)
You won't get big yields but you'll still get some for your personal usage :)
 
Can I just place some java moss in the spawning tank for the fry?

My LF ZDs spawned today morning:)king:), and I want to save all the 4-5 dozen eggs, if possible.

What other care do I need to take while rearing them? All tips, big and small, new and repeated, are welcome. :)
 
Java moss will not have a population of infusoria big enough to support all the fry. Get some riccia if you can.
Or use my magic secret :p
GREEN WATER
 
to spawn mine i removed all 5 from the community and put them in a 10 gallon, changed water levels and temp, opened the window in the morning to let the morning sun in and just before i left for school saw them going around in circles around eachother really fast. i removed the parents that afternoon but could not find any egss so i just left the tank alone and about 2 weeks later saw TONS of small fry swimming around. i fed them boiled egg yolk( the tank had lots of "green" water:)) and raised them up. four got to be about as big as new molly fry, the rest did not make it. i kept them for awhile then made the mistake of putting them in the community too early, such was my excitement, and 3 got eaten, so i kept the lone survivor (dubbed trooper) separate until he grew and now i cant tell him apart from the rest :) they are about to spawn again( fat fem. territorial males) but the 10 gal. is occupied by a bowfin and warmouth, so ill just let them spawn and feed the other fish:)
 
well i can tell you the crushed flake food doesn't get good results...I had about 5 fry survive...out of 60+ who knows
 
Easy foods are boiled egg or green water. Crushed flakes can be used too, but you should avoid overfeeding. Its quite difficult to assess the amount of food though.. Perform daily water changes.. That should be fine..
 
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