zebra danios

[ana]

i read that someone was putting zebra danios in with her betta so they sounded nice and small, i called my favourite pet store and ordered 2. they said theyre really cute and zippy

i was wondering if anyone knows if they need a filter, i didnt think of it til later, i can put them in my large aquarium if so. i could air stone but i have one and i really dont like it, but its for a gourami who was a bad boy and tried to eat his friend so he needed his own tank, he needed oxygenated water. i really dont like air stones much and id hate to put one in with a betta

[Rae]

Yep, they need a filter. They get to be about 2 or 3 inches in length, just a heads-up.

[BettaBabe]

I put 3 danios in our 2gal Explorer filtered aquarium. It's been 48 hours and so far everything looks great. Bob seems to be much more active than before.

I chose this fish be/c it's care seem exactly like betta care.

Zebra Danios usually stay in the middle range of their enclosures. The temperature should be kept between 64 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit (18 to 24 degrees Celsius). The pH level should remain between six and a half and seven, and water hardness should be between 5 and 12 dGH. Usually, an aquarium decorated with wood, rocks, and edible live plants can provide good hiding places. Zebra Danios usually do best when kept in community enclosures or in same species groups. Although Zebra Danios will accept freeze-dried food or flake foods, they do best on fresh food. Blood worms, tubifex worms, glass worms, brine shrimp, bits of beef heart, daphnia, plankton, frozen vegetable mixes, fresh spinach, lettuce, peas, and zucchini are all nutritious and acceptable foods.

No mention of filtered or non-filtered here. My aquarium is and they seem to be thriving. I'll research this more today.

BB

[ana]

thanks rae and bb

maybe ill try to split one pump between two airstones and leave them in with a couple til theyve grown a bit, then i can always move them into the aquarium. its missing 4 inches of buddy eating gourami right now and 3 inches of cory, i put them in with my bad boy to keep him company, and to eat his poo and left over food

im a bit nervous of snails and shrimps so i havent found anything to put in with them and i would like to try it temporarily, more to see how my babies react than anything i guess, i think they might like it

now what to feed them, i cant do flakes as suggested when i researched, maybe the tiny cichlid pellets would catch their eyes. i guess i find out tomorrow

[Weishaupt]

I've had two zebra danios (without Bettas) in my regular aquarium for about a year now. They're very active fish, swimming around, chasing each other. I recommend using a filter/aeration since they're water breathers not air breathers. They don't get very big, but their fins will grow a little bit, at least mine did!

Mine eat the flake food just fine. My gourami tends to hog the blood worms though.....the danios are fast...but not that fast!

[ana]

i was reading what they eat and i was amazed, i mean they adore veggies like i do i have freeze dried bloodworms but i tried my gouramis on them and they just stuck up their noses and said let the corys have em, so i guess there wouldnt be a battle in the aquarium if i gave them that once in a while, in fact my bettas arent even crazy about them so i just stopped using them at all, i was gonna give them as a weekly treat, they prefer their pellets

well, i meet my new danios this week sometime, i hear theyre very cute and playful

[nwhysel]

In my experience, zebras are quite active and can be rather aggressive. I have a zebra danio that ate the fins off of a goldfish and a big silver fish (can't remember the species), both which ultimately died, and (I didn't see it so I can't confirm it) I believe he may have attacked another zebra, that died of a torn gil last year.

Not that zebras are terror fish, but they do tend to be very active and nippy. Right now he fights occasionally with our guppy, but the guppy has learned to fight back. The zebra ignores the catfish and, thankfully, won't go near the betta.

[ana]

hopefully they'll be okay with gouramis then, being much like bettas, eventually or maybe immediately they'll go in my gourami tank. as long as they dont bug my corys, theyre my favourites in that tank but so tiny and they dont bite back i dont imagine

thanks

[Weishaupt]

My gourami doesn't take crap from anybody. He rules my tank.

My danios have never nipped at anyone except each other, but I could seem them getting "aggresive" with other fish.

They're so fast they could nip and then get away, but then they'd be chicken danios. Ok, stupid joke.

[Crystal]

do those "chicken danios" have a yellow stripe?
hehehe

[ana]

heh

thanks, i know my gouramis usually take care of themselves but i have one who's very timid, he has a bodyguard among his buddies though so he should be okay

[Weishaupt]

Ana:[glow=red,2,300]Enforcer fish. Very cool.[/glow]

My old roommate had a tank which was dubbed "the hostile environment." It was 55 gallon tank with Cichlids(Bumble Bee and Livingstons) a striped eel, a needlefish and a lionfish. (No, they weren't all put in at the same time.) A very bizarre community tank. I thought the fish would kill each other, but they all seemed to leave each other alone. Very strange.

Anyway, the fish would eat Cichlid pellets, but the real fun would begin when he'd feed them live fish every week. Once a fish was dropped in, if it wasn't quick enough, it would get eaten by either the needlefish or the lion fish near the top of the tank. If it was a smarter fish, it would head towards the middle of the tank and get nabbed by one of the Cichlids. If it was a REALLY smart fish, it would make its way to the bottom and hide in the rocks, but the eel would always find them quickly. *GULP*.

It got to the point where very few fish would make it to the bottom. So, my roommate trained the eel to be hand-fed. The eel would wiggle up to the top and stick his head out above the water where my roommate would dangle a fish and he'd grab it. "There's nothing like a hand fed eel," he always said.

Eventually the needlefish started killing cichlids. So he traded him to a pet store for a few more cichlids. I'll never forget the day we tried to get the needlefish out of the tank. The lionfish just sort of died one day. The cichlids are alive and well and the eel is about 10 inches long now. He's added a Chocolate Albino Pleco and he's a big (7") orange fish with red eyes who only comes out at night.

I don't know why I'm telling this story, but thanks for reading.

[ana]

heh

now i have to tell mine and you have to read it

i have 5 gouramis, they were all brought home at the same time and were the exact same size. cept the kissing one, he was bigger

one has grown so large, he's at least 5 times the size of the others and ruled the tank, and not so nicely. he bit the tiniest one, bubbles, i mean he made lunch out of him

so i moved bubbles and honey, the other small one to a hospital tank with my lazy pair of corys. he had such terrible chunks out of him, i didnt know if he'd live, but melafix and time healed him, now there are just scars

i decided that he couldnt be put back into the aquarium with the guy who tried to eat him, so i took bad fishie out and put him in the other tank and put honey and bubbles back into the aquarium

well, oats decided he was gonna be the new boss and started harassing bubbles. honey went wild, actually tore oats tail fin. bubbles is very passive and doesnt defend himself, but it seems he has a bodyguard now, no one messes with him, its so cute

so tiny honey is now the tank boss, and bubbles doesnt have to live in fear. aint life great?

wow, thats long, but i had to

[Weishaupt]

[glow=red,2,300]A fine story indeed. It took my mind off the the "religious" discussion here at work. By "religious" I mean computer folks discussing open source software. [/glow]

[ana]

[shadow=purple,left,300][glow=teal,2,300]way more fun though than os arguments[/glow][/shadow]