Danios as feeder fish

Picked up some zebra danios sold as feeder fish to feed to my longnose gar but I was wondering if anyone has bred them as feeders?

I know they are non native fish but I figure since they are sold as feeders, they could be bred for live food.

I've kept 5 of the larger ones for breeding purposes (which I think are 2 female and 3 male)

I've never bred Danios, but I have bred platys. They can reproduce like crazy and would probably make good feeders.

Yeah I've tried the feeder platy thing too but not much success there and I haven't run into any lately- just danios and fatheads.

Zebras are easy to breed. Labs breed them by the thousands for research. Fry not picky about food, just has to be small enough. I've gone through multiple generations on nothing but cheap flake food [when I was a kid]. Probably not too nutritious raised on flake but cheap and easy.

Having said that, I'm convinced unless you have ponds, it's not efficient to rely on breeding feeders. A big reason I gave up keeping anything requiring feeders. I hate buying them but raising them takes more room and effort than I'm willing to give.

Zebra danios will eat their young, so it's necessary to separate them from their offspring after they've spawned. Mesh screen is an easy way to do that because the eggs will fall through the holes but the parents can't fit. Try floating the parents in a box with a mesh bottom. Eggs from the parents will drop through the holes, giving the fry the whole tank to hatch and swim in.

Here's a lot more information: http://badmanstropic.../profile54.html

As to whether or not raising your own feeder fish is a good idea, well, it has pros and cons.
Pros: You see the feeders that you're going to be feeding to your prize fish. If they're grody you can choose to cull them. If they're diseased you know about it in advance.
Cons: You have to actually raise them. This involves feeding them, housing them, cleaning their tank, et cetera. If you're limited on space or time or if yours won't spawn, then that can be an issue. Baby zebra danios are really small, and they won't all survive unless you use really tiny food. Crushed flake food alone can result in a poor fry survival rate.

If it were me, I'd choose a different fish species than zebra danios. I've tried to spawn them in the past and have failed. Versus livebearers like guppies, who have no spawning trigger and whose young are born larger, more developed, and can immediately eat crushed flake food. All you'd need is a tank to house them and a mortar and pestle to grind the flake food. In all honesty if I needed feeder fish, I'd have a giant 100+ gallon tank for a breeding program for a livebearer. I'd keep the pretty ones and cull the ugly ones by feeding them to my big hungry fish.

The advantage with danios of any sort is that if you get them breeding, you can get LOTS of them in a short period of time. Or, same with convict firemouth cichlids, depending on what you're trying to do.

A LFS that specializes in fresh water rays and large fish uses white cloud mountain minows as feeders. They have them by the zillions. I have 4 in my darter tank, some are really fat. They be dropping eggs that I never see. But, I'm sure the darters do. Neat little cold water fish.

I was just a kid when I bred them but I just used a small tank I estimate was about five gal [it was some kind of antique glass thing my parents had] a corner box filter and about 3 inches of glass marbles. I'd net 2 or 3 fat females and a couple of the best looking males from my Dad's community tank, toss 'em in, wait a week or so when the females didn't look so fat, then take 'em out.
I ground up flake, mixed it with water and squeezed through a cloth. Used an eye dropper to disperse the clouds of food around the tank. The food made the water skanky eventually and no doubt I didn't maximize my yield, but the fry that survived were very hardy and would go on to breed.

We also used the same exact set ups for white clouds with equal success.

It would probably be worthwhile to look into how the labs raise them and on what food. They use them by the thousands so they must have a technique developed that gives high yeild in small space.

Edited by mikez, 13 January 2011 - 07:58 AM.

Labs use glass marbles, too, as it happens. This way, when the female drops her eggs, they sink beyond her reach. You just have to be careful to get the females into the laying tank before they drop, and back out before swim-up. There is a geneticist at my school who breeds these guys, I'll see if I can get some more info from her. I know she has an elaborate setup with flow-through reconstituted water, which is probably a lot more trouble and expense than anyone wants to go to for feeders.

Yeah, Danio zebrafish are currently the Drosophila of vertebrate genetics (easy to breed and large amount of young). They're finding out a wealth of evo-devo information, but all would be off topic here. Anyways, you should have no trouble finding a surplus of breeding information.

Good luck!

Blake

Edited by blakemarkwell, 13 January 2011 - 12:09 PM.

Thanks for the info

I will look into it