My Danio, Is This Normal Behaviour?

[Bugsvile]

Hi, Been a while since I last posted here, things are going great with my tank at the moment, I was hoping someone here could tell me if this is normal for zebra danio's. Just this evening my danio female seems to be moving sand from between some rock crevices and spitting it out, she then goes back and does the same again. Is she building a nesting site? She has been fat like this before, but I have never seen here apparently building a nest like this. I have searched the internet and from what I can tell it seems that they mainly just scatter their eggs randomly. Please someone if you have seen this behaviour before can you tell me what the outcome was in your tank.

 

[waterdrop]

Many fish will play with their surroundings, looking for food, danios are no exception. A fish busy doing something is usually a fish that's healthy. You are correct that danios are egg scatterers. The classic breeding scenerio in the old books was a small tank with big marbles as substrate and the zebras dashing about above!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[flix_cw]

One of my kyathits i had for the first 4 days or so was doing something similar, but i think it was more stress-induced having googled that behaviour.

It was literally moving pebbles out of the way and BURROWING under a rock then staying there for a good few hours. First day after i got them i thought it had died and been eaten overnight, only for it to pop up when my lights came on in the afternoon!

Rather odd, but it's stopped doing it now and shoals with the rest.

 

[Bugsvile]

Thanks to you both for the replies, the corries i have in the tank kept on going to the spot she was going to between the rocks and when they moved she would go in and start again. I tried to make a roof of stones to stop the corries going in but after doing that she stopped going in and out. Anyway she seems fine all the same, still a bit chubby but i guess she will release when she is ready. Think she is looking for a bit of atttention from the males at the minute

 

[rebrn]

Hello, my Zebra Danio "play" in the sand all the time. My other fish do this as well but not as frequently as the Zebras. It is just as you say they pick up sand then spit it out somewhere else. I find mine do it mostly after a water change and sand stir. It's almost like they didn't like where the sand settled after the stir and the all feverishly swim around moving it