Breeding Fact Sheet No. 1
Danio kyathit – the 'Orange Finned Zebra'
Fang1 described Danio kyathit in 1998. It is listed as being found at several locations in the Kachin State of Myanmar. The only real information I can trace on this species is that is described as being very similar to the Zebra Danio (Danio rerio) but has orange edged fins. This is indeed the case. The edges of the dorsal, caudal and ventral fins, when in the right tank conditions, are deep orange. On the male fish, the area between the gills and the ventral fin is also orange when in breeding condition. The normal blue/silver stripes have some break- up into 'spots' around the gill area. In less than ideal conditions, i.e. dealers' tanks or sparsely planted tanks, the fish shows no signs of the orange finnage and the stripes can be very 'washed out'. Just recently, it has appeared on importers lists in Europe and I was able to obtain ten specimens. Whether these were wild caught fish or tank bred, I am still trying to find out. I suspect that they are 'wild caught' as the colours are very intense. When they arrived at home, they had been in transit for nearly 24 hours and were obviously somewhat stressed. They were, therefore, immediately placed in a well planted tank, (24x12x15 in) with subdued lighting, and plenty of live food in the form of daphnia, Cyclops, bloodworm etc. Within a few hours, they were charging round the tank and most of the live-food had been consumed. The kyathit are about one and a quarter inches total length and I would expect them to grow to roughly the same size as the Zebra danio (45mm SL).
After just a few days, the females in the group began to show that they were 'roeing up' and they males started to make typical advances to them. Normally, I condition males and females in separate tanks before attempting to breed them. On this occasion however, I decided to see if they would spawn. I transferred them to a breeding net suspended in an 18 x 10 x 10 inch tank. The aged water in the breeding tank was a mixture of tap and rain water. The pH was 7.5 and total hardness around 15 degrees. Tanks in my fish house are not individually heated, the whole is space heated. This tank being at the top of the fish house is around 78°F. Within 36 hours there were about 80-100 eggs all over the bottom of the tank. After 12 hours, one or two had gone milky. They were not removed. At around 60 hours, the eggs were eyed up and after a further 24 hours the eggs started to hatch.
The fry hung on to the tank walls for 24 hours whilst absorbing their yolk sacs. At this stage, there were approximately 60 – 80 fry. When they became free swimming, they were fed on a homemade liquid fry food and finely powdered Tetramin. Within a week, they went on to newly hatched brine shrimp and micro worm. After two weeks, water changes were undertaken on a daily basis. At three weeks of age, they were growing quite steadily and were moved on to a much larger tank.
References
1 Fang F. 1998, ‘Danio kyathit, a new species of cyprinid fish from
Myitkyina, northern Myanmar’, Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters,
8, pp. 273-280.
© Pete Cottle, 2003. This fact sheet may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the author.