A group of six Zebra Danios (Danio rerio) have been living in the Tropical Greenhouse pond for several months. Two weeks ago we added some new waterlilies to the pond and top dressed their pots with coarse gravel. This seems to have provided the ideal breeding ground for our fish as we found young in the pond about one week later. Now, two weeks on, they have grown just about big enough to be photographed.
One of the young Zebra Danios that have appeared in the tropical pond. The red circle is around the fish!
The pond has a volume of around 2500litres and is filled with rainwater so our fish have plenty of space. It is also planted with a large papyrus, waterlilies, water lettuce, water hyacinth and water fern.
You can read more about this species on many web pages as it is a popular hobbyists fish. There is a lot of detail at Seriously Fish and a very detailed document on their housing in laboratories produced by the RSPCA. This fish is one of the select group of species for which it’s entire genome has been sequenced. You can find out about its classification and the huge range of common names at Catalogue of Life and in FishBase.
These fish form part of our IPM strategy as they eat mosquito eggs and larvae, preventing mosquitos breeding in the pond. They have been proposed as a biological control for malaria carrying mosquitos by Chandra et al. 2006.
Reference
Chandra, G., Bhattacharjee, I., Chatterjee, S. N., & Ghosh, a. (2008). Mosquito control by larvivorous fish. The Indian Journal of Medical Research, 127(1), 13–27. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18316849
