# Baby Danios!! SURPRISE!



## Tex Gal

About 2 weeks ago I put a gravid red glo light in my 29g plant grow out tank with 2 male long-finned leopard danios. I left them in for a couple days. When it was time for me to rescape my 125g I figured they just didn't lay eggs so put them back in the big tank and figured I'd try later. I've been preoccupied with my big tank due to the rescape. 

Tonight when I looked in the tank I found lots of fry! They had fat little tummies. I haven't fed them a thing. They must be eating the insuforia from around all the plants. (I changed out 5g of the water and I bet I siphoned out tons of them. I didn't know.) I can see that they have a pink hue. I learned from doing this before in a breeder tank that the red color is dominant and the long fin is dominate. SO ... I will have long finned red danios. How cool is that?!!


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## voiceofid

pics please!


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## Tex Gal

I will try. They are so minute I don't know if I can. I will pick up a magnifying glass and see what I can do.


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## Jessie

Congrats!! Now you have oodles of crazy little fishies!


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## Tex Gal

Their first baby pxs. Some of them are pink and some of them are tan. I think some will be leopard and some red glowlight, longfinned all.
BTW, thanks Jessie! Krib babies, livebearer babies, and danio babies... just waiting for the shrimp!


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## treefish

Cool,
what are you going to do with them?


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## Tex Gal

Well I don't know.  With my krib babies I took them to a local LFS. I only have about 15 of these. I will put the parents in again soon and let them lay more eggs before these get to big. Then I should have tons of them. I am anxious to see if they make it to a decent size. If I have a green or orange gravid female I'll use them this time. Might as well have several long-finned colors arty:

When I did this before I started with about 2 inches of water in a 10g tank and filled some each day until I got it about 1/2 full. I only had a little bubble sponge filter in there. Then changed some water out each day. In this tank since it's my plant tank, I have an HOB, CO2, high light- I can't do all that. It's also the tank I put my new CRS in. So I am going to keep this for my plants and CRS. I do think some will survive. We'll just have to see how it goes. *I am having fun!!!:mrgreen:*


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## bratyboy2

how do you know they will be long finned? and the red is dominate? if i do this with my two female glo lights and my zebra danios that are long finned will i get the same results?


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## Tex Gal

Long-finned is dominate. I thought the pink was also dominate but the color seems to be up for grabs. When I used gold long-finned males I believe the pink was dominate, but I can't be sure so don't quote me on that. Yes on the finnage, you will get the same result. You will get long-finned. I think that you may need to get either gold or leopard to cross them with as zebra is always dominate. There was a chart on the net that told about the dominance of zebra/leopard/golds. If you crossed anything with zebra it came out zebra, if I remember correctly. It doesn't matter who is the female and who is the male. Sure wish I could find that chart again.....


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## Zippin

Wow, you must be very happy i know i would be. My Danios never breed which is propaly a good thing as my corys and snails are always breeding. 

I will have to see what i can do though as it would be good to know if i could be as successful as you in breeding as you have been.

Thanks for the pics aswell


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## Tex Gal

Zippin said:


> Wow, you must be very happy i know i would be. My Danios never breed which is probably a good thing as my corys and snails are always breeding. I will have to see what i can do though as it would be good to know if i could be as successful as you in breeding as you have been.
> Thanks for the pics aswell


Yeah, I get all excited whenever I find babies, especially when they are egg layers. My hubby says, "What's the big deal?"

When my danios were in my big tank I noticed them "playing" around in the Java Fern. I thought it looked a lot like spawning behavior. So I went to the internet and found out. They were probably laying eggs the whole time in my big tank. It's just that without separating them from the eggs, I would never have babies. Everyone just eats the eggs. If perchance some eggs would survive the babies would be tasty morsels for just about everybody. I bet your danios are laying and you just don't know it. They are very easy to breed. About the only thing you have to do is separate them from their eggs. You can use screening to separate them. I just stuck mine in my heavily planted grow out tank and they did their thing. Stick them in in the evening and take them out in the morning. :mrgreen:


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## Zippin

Thanks for reply i might give it a go soon


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## Tex Gal

PX UPDATE - Danio fry at 1 month old. I have ended up with about 15 fry. I believe I have 2 or 3 that are Zebra and the rest are red. Don't know about their fins yet as they are still small. You can actually see their stripes. They have grown fast. Mostly they eat the crud from the plants. They are so cute. They zip around and play just like the adults. They are about 1/4" long.


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## SimplyOrange

lucky. and fry are always cute.

i've never tried breeding any egg layers but my 55g is empty w/plants and i'd like to try it out with my white clouds.


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## Tex Gal

SimplyOrange said:


> lucky. and fry are always cute.
> 
> i've never tried breeding any egg layers but my 55g is empty w/plants and i'd like to try it out with my white clouds.


You should go for it! From what I understand you can breed white clouds the same way as the zebra danios. They are supposed to be very easy. It's been so much fun to watch the whole process. After trying it in a 10 with just a bare bottom tank and a few inches of water, etc. verses just throwing the parents in a planted tank over night and then removing them - I definitely vote for the 2nd method. Just remember to throw a screen over your filter intake so the fry can't get sucked up.


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## Tex Gal

UPDATE DANIO PX. Finally I got some pxs of the long-finned red danios that I my fish spawned. As you can see the stripes are dark like a regular zebra but the color is red. The Glo-light red zebras have white stripes.


















Here is a px of a regular glo light - see the light stripes. In front of him is one of the babies I got with the dark stripes. Interesting huh?!









I just put another female long-finned gold zebra in my plant tank with 2 male glo-lights. She did drop her eggs. We'll see if I get any fry.

Next I'm gonna try a leopard glo-light with leopard long-finned and see what I get. I am waiting for the leopard glo-light to grow up. The LFS says there is always one or 2 in the shipment of red glo-lights. It's so much fun to see what happens.


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## cs_gardener

Those look so cool! The dark stripes really set them off. I find the striped tail fascinating, don't quite know why, maybe it's just different than what I'm used to seeing. Thanks for posting the pics!


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## ranchwest

Tex Gal said:


> Tonight when I looked in the tank I found lots of fry! They had fat little tummies. I haven't fed them a thing. They must be eating the insuforia from around all the plants.


Congrats!

I have gotten cherry barbs to adult size in my community tank several times without feeding them directly. They seem to find plenty to eat -- the problem is in them not getting eaten! I put in 5 cherry barbs about a month ago and now I have at least 5 fry that are big enough to be starting to venture out into open water. They had to have spawned almost immediately.


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## Tex Gal

Ranchwest I know what you mean. I just gave away a breeding pair of Kribensis because they had 3 sets of babies and they protected them all. Each set had about 40-50 babies in them. That was in my 125g fully planted tank! Try catching those!  These danios I have in my 29g plant grow-out tank. They are the only fish in there besides ottos. I'm constantly taking plants in and out of there so it's not a big problem to catch them. :mrgreen:

I, also didn't feed these until they got a little bigger. They just ate the insuforia that is naturally in the tank.


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## Tex Gal

NEW BABIES!! SO COOL! I have new fry. They have just hatched. The mom is a long-finned gold and the dads are red glo-lights. The mom was sold to me as a long finned red, but I don't believe it. They are so T-I-N-Y! I see some color on some of them already. We'll see if my hubby can get some pxs of them. His camera and skills are better than mine.

EDIT: No pxs. He says they are way to small for him to shot them... To bad I don't have you macro lens people close. You could even get their nose hairs!


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## Tex Gal

DANIO FRY PX. They are horrid quality but you can see that I have 2 colors from this spawn. There is the red and the gold. I'm sure they will be long-finned as that is dominant. I have many swimming all around. They are not done hatching as I can see more and more clinging to the sides of the tank. They do that for the first day or so and then begin free swimming. I believe I have daphnia in the tank so they will have fresh food. Can't wait to see how many I have from this spawn.


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## dawntwister

So what has happened with the danio fry?

How do you remove the parents from the tank? I had to empty my 29 gallon tank to get my longfinned danios out, which cased me other problems.

Soon I am getting some zebra danios that have spawned in the past. I would like to breed them to trade with LFS. Read that females are to be kept seperate from the male until you wish to breed them? Do you do that? 
If not what do you do? For I only have enough stands to set up 2 - 10 gallon tanks and 1 - 29 gallon tank, which has live plants.


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## Tex Gal

I keep all the fish together in my 125g tank. When I see a gravid female, I choose 2 males to go with her and put them in my 29 plant tank. Since they are top swimmers it's not hard to catch them. I do this before dusk. Then by morning they have spawned.

I remove them and that's it.. I just catch them with a net. The eggs hatch in about 3-4 days. I just leave them in the plant tank until they are big enough. Since it's my plant grow out tank I really have no plant order in there. The danios aren't that hard to catch. Any plants that I unplant I just plant back.

The hardest thing it to change water in there and not suck out babies.

Babies are still there and growing. I do have many many less. I think some may have gotten trapped in my filter. I should put a sponge on the inlet instead of netting, but I didn't. I have something going on in that tank here recently and I can't figure it out. Cloudy water and no reason for it. I have done water changes, can't see anything dead. Just can't figure it out. I will keep working on it. I might loose the babies. If I do I will stick some more in to breed after I solve this problem.


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## ranchwest

I've been leaving my cherry barbs in my 100 gal. and I've now got about 7 or 8 fry, all under 5 weeks old. Of course, Thursday I added 29 fish, so I don't know whether the eggs will continue to survive or not, but I've seen fry that are very small (under a week free swimming) moving through the plants without a problem.


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## Tex Gal

ranchwest said:


> I've been leaving my cherry barbs in my 100 gal. and I've now got about 7 or 8 fry, all under 5 weeks old. Of course, Thursday I added 29 fish, so I don't know whether the eggs will continue to survive or not, but I've seen fry that are very small (under a week free swimming) moving through the plants without a problem.


How about a px? I'd love to see your little guys!  Isn't it so exciting! In my big tank, I have seen the danios playing in the Java, probably laying eggs, but I have never seen the fry survive. I have only gotten them to survive when I have them in a separate tank.


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## ranchwest

I'll try to take some pictures tonight. Warning, the tank was a mess two months ago and is not aquascaped at all.


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## Tex Gal

ranchwest said:


> I'll try to take some pictures tonight. Warning, the tank was a mess two months ago and is not aquascaped at all.


Not to worry, my plant grow out tank is just a holding area. That's where my babies are.

Just stuck another gravid female with 2 males, last night. We'll see if they spawned.


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## ranchwest

Here's some pics of my cherry barb fry. The parents went in the 100 gallon tank 37 days ago.

Picture 1 is the whole tank. As I said, not aquascaped yet, but it shows that there are quite a few plants. That's a big wisteria in the middle rear. There's about 100 Crypt Walkeri. There's about 50 fish in the tank.

Picture 2 shows one of the cherry barb fry in front of a dwarf lily.

Picture 3 shows a cherry barb fry under a good sized pearl gourami.

Picture 4 shows two of the fry.


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## Tex Gal

Ranchwest, thanks for the pxs!! Wish I could see a bigger px of the tank.:-s Your plants look so healthy!  I love the wisteria plants. They have such great color and beautiful leaf structure. Such a clean tank too! You do have tons of Crypt Walkeris. I see you have downoi!!! I am jealous!!! [smilie=b: I keep trying to grow that plant. I'm not going to give up yet. I have one in my tank that is actually branching so I may actually get that one to live. [-o< I just bought a few more plants. I think this will be my 4th try to get them to grow. I have been cutting down on phosphates thinking maybe that's the problem. My water comes out of the tap high in phosphates. We'll see.

What cute little babies you have! I'm amazed that the gouramis didn't eat the fry![smilie=p: What are the 35 fish you added?

So what are you going to do with the babies?... That's the next question....


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## ranchwest

For now, I'm keeping the Cherry Barb fry. There's 5 adults and 5-7 fry.

Thursday I added 20 Harlequin Rasboras (1 died), 6 Honey Dwarf Gouramis (1 died) and 5 Clown Loaches.

There's also 2 Borneo Suckers, 1 Otocinclus, 1 Niger Otocinclus, 3 Pearl Gouramis, 2 Neon Rosey Barbs, 3 amano shrimp.

I got the Downoi at a recent DFWAPC meeting. So far, I like it a lot.

The gouramis didn't eat the fry because of all of the plants. The fry usually start in the Wisteria and then hide under the Crypt leaves. They dart through the Crypts as if it is their own little world. The other fish can get under the Crypt leaves, but they can't navigate through.

The Crypts are great, but I'll never be able to aquascape the tank with 100 Crypts, so I'll probably get it down to about 20.

The tank isn't in all that good of shape yet. I had really let it go and about 2 months ago started it back up. I'm still struggling with algae and the plants are just starting to really settle in.


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## Tex Gal

ranchwest said:


> I got the Downoi at a recent DFWAPC meeting. So far, I like it a lot.


I just joined DFWAPC. I would love to come to the meetings but they are usually on Sat. and that day it out for me. I keep an eye out for their next scheduled meetings. I was able to meet some of the members when True Percula opened. That was nice! I'm out in Joshua, TX. Where are you?


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## ranchwest

Tex Gal said:


> I just joined DFWAPC. I would love to come to the meetings but they are usually on Sat. and that day it out for me. I keep an eye out for their next scheduled meetings. I was able to meet some of the members when True Percula opened. That was nice! I'm out in Joshua, TX. Where are you?


You have a PM.


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## mudboots

Okay, so now I get it (from the post on the other forum). Man, the cross of the glo lights with the regular strains and leopard strains looks very nice. I really like that the strips are dark against the colored body. I don't really have a tank that I can do this in, but it sure makes me want to rescape one of the picos and let a few of my zebra danios lay in there. They lay eggs all the time, but I have so many fish in the big tank that they'll never have a chance at survival. All I can hope for at this point is for my Apistos to fend a brood from the angels next spring.

Beautiful fish TexGal; you must be one happy Mama!


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## wicca27

Any new pics of babys or older fish would love to see what they look like bigger


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## Tex Gal

They look like this:


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## shark1505

Wow, what are the water perameters? I've tried doing that but was never able to pull it off, great job and congrats!


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## wicca27

Thats awsome they r pretty


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## Tex Gal

Both tanks are high tech with EI ferts. The parents actually reside in my 125g. I feed them frozen daphnia and flake food. They spawn all the time in my big tank but others eat the eggs. Once I see a gravid female I just relocate her to my plant grow out tank with 2 males. I have made a net out of figerglass screen, about the same size as the tank and put floating plant in it. I put them in around dusk. They usually lay that night. You can leave them in up to 3 nights. Then remove them back to the other tank. Eggs will fall through the screen to bottom tank. They will hatch in about 4-7 days.


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## wicca27

Thanks for the tips im going to try it i have never tried egg layers. I picked up what i hope will be at least 1 pair od danios


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## Tidus

WOW!!! Tex Gal, you are my local hero. It would be awesome to see your plants and fish someday.
:rofl:

I got hooked on plants and aquascaping last year. Then someone recently told me about Glofish! I worked with the GFP gene expression in bacteria in Biochem lab before but never realized they were put into Zebra danios!!! Now I'm hooked on Glofish too. Your Glofish "hybrid" babies look amazing. I like that Glofish looks awesome with and without blacklight. I'd say aquascaping and fluorescent fish beat saltwater any day.


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## jessezm

Wow, those are beautiful!


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## Tex Gal

It was fun to do. It's been a while. Yes they really are pretty fish.


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## erick200811

thanks for the info


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