Danio Zebra Golden | Brachydanio rerio

The Zebra Danio , also known as the Striped Danio or Zebrafish, is a small freshwater fish. They are one of the most popular freshwater fish species among ornamental fish hobbyists. Zebra Danio have been selectively bred and genetically modified to change their appearance.

Zebra Danio

Danio is a very hardy and social species making it perfect for beginners to keep. They can be a great addition to your home aquarium. They come in a variety of beautiful colors.

Zebra Danio has a calm temperament and measures about 5 cm. This omnivorous fish can live between 3.5 to 5.5 years. They love an aquarium environment filled with live plants. Maintenance is also relatively easy. Let’s dig deeper into this beautiful little fish.

The Zebra Danio ( Danio rerio ) belongs to the family Cyprinidae. They are widespread from India to Nepal. This species is one of the most commonly kept freshwater aquarium fish for a variety of reasons. They are peaceful, social, and relatively easy to care for as they are very hardy. This species can be purchased at most local fish shops at an affordable price.

Apart from being a popular aquarium fish, the Zebra Danio is also used as a test subject for various scientific studies. They are researched and studied as a model vertebrate species. Surprisingly, humans and Zebra Danio turned out to have 70% of the same genes!

Behavior

The Zebra Danio is a relatively sociable species and exhibits shoaling behavior. This herd can have a hierarchical dominance system built up through pleasurable non-aggressive behavior.

Although Zebra Danio are social and peaceful fish, they can catch up with each other in the aquarium. They can exhibit aggressive behavior towards slow-moving long-finned fish species and Danio can bite their fins.

Since they are community fish, they are not suitable to be kept alone as this can cause them to become stressed which in turn triggers disease. Living alone can also make them less active and choose to spend their time in hiding.

Keeping several Zebra Danio at once can have a drastic effect on their behavior causing these fish to become hyperactive in the aquarium. They will dominate the entire depth of the aquarium, but most like to inhabit the middle to upper depths of the aquarium.

Appearance

In the wild, these tiny fish can grow to a length of 5 cm. They have a silver or gold color with 5 blue stripes running from the head to the caudal fin. This species has some form of sexual dimorphism, where the males are more golden in color while the females are silvery white in color. Males also tend to be leaner than females, which are fuller and rounder.

There is another variation of this species, namely the Longfin Zebra Danio. As their name implies, they were selectively bred to have longer fins than their wild counterparts.

Zebra Danio can be found in a variety of colors in the ornamental fish industry . The naturally occurring mutation of this species is the albino. It is rare in the wild, but quite common in the ornamental fish industry. In the wild, individuals that have this coloration will quickly fall prey to other fish.

In addition to natural color variations, you can also find Zebra Danio with a gold color mutation. The blue stripes of the natural Danio variety have been completely removed from breeding so this fish now has only a yellowish gold color with silvery white stripes.

Genetic modification has led to an increase in the color variation of this species. By transplanting a jellyfish gene, scientists have created a Zebra Danio that can glow in the dark under black light (Glo Morph) and comes in neon red, blue, green, orange-yellow, and purple. Glo Morphs will not survive in the wild due to increased predation.

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