Zebra Danio Query

[Spishkey]

i recently bought what i thought were 4 zebra danios (but turns out one is a leopard danio!)
three are the long finned variety and one is a normal one. the normal one, i suspect, is female as her belly is 'bigger/rounder' and her stripes are different to the others.

now some days she looks huge, really really big!!! then within a few hours she looks slim again, then by the next day or so her stomach looks big again. do they bloat up after feeding or does she have a problem? i thought perhaps she was pregnant, but as her stomach goes big and small at such a fast rate im kinda not thinking that anymore!


any ideas?

 

[Spishkey]

bump up fpr any ideas?

i would post in the tropical 'emergencies' but i dont think its any emergency, she doesnt seem bothered by this!

 

[oszy77]

Hi!

Try to not feed them, for a couple of days, and you can find out if it's the food or not!
If it's not the food maybe you can worry

 

[Spishkey]

well i havent fed them since yesterday morning (thats another story, think i was over feeding and water very murky!)

she looks much rounder than 'normal' though. am going to feed them in a minute, will try and get before and after pics!


if it is caused by the food, should i change the food or something? at the moment they get blood worms twice a day and my son drops in a few flakes before bedtime usually.

 

[Corleone]

Blood worm could be it. Too much of it can cause bloating in some fish. Not sure about danios specifically, but you should really only use it once or twice a week. Use plain old flake as a staple for danios, just throw in other stuff two or three times a week as a treat.

 

[rhostog]

My zebra danios are complete pigs, and the 3 females are far worse than the male. They are visibly much fatter after feeding, and will stuff themselves until they can't swallow another speck, and still grab bits and spit them out again because they're too full to swallow anything else. The male doesn't get anything like as fat as the females, and while he's greedy, he doesn't seem to have the same urge to stuff himself until his skin won't stretch any tighter. It's hard to avoid this in a community tank, as the danios always get to the food first, but I've found that smaller meals and a mixture of sinking and floating foods helps to spread things out a little more fairly. Mine will eat pretty well anything, and are just as happy with flake or sinking pellets, so I'd keep the bloodworm for a treat.

 

[Gilli]

Totally agree with the above poster! My female dannios are exactly the same! They are as fat as hell and then on some days slim down but are still really well padded - makes no difference what they are fed on! The males are slim and streamlined and never get bloated. I think they tend to stay slim when youngsters but when they get to be sexually mature they get this bloated thing going on! - dont worry about it - its just a lady dannio thing!!

 

[B13]

I'm so glad I found this thread!

My female zebra danios are total and utter piglets!! ANYTHING that comes into the tank (food, the water siphon, a new rock, phials to test the water, my hand, etc, etc, etc) is greedily inspected for it's edible-ness.



Even the sinking food that put in for my plecs ends up inside a fat danio or three. Yesterday, I saw a female try and swallow a bit of pellet that was almost the size of her head. If she was human, she'd be trying to swallow something the size of a small roast chicken...

I usually watch them looking something like this:


Hee hee hee!!


(I think I was a danio in my last life BTW... Food and I get along very very well!!)