Glofish Danio Bloated? Eggs?

[ChadThyJuggla]

Today I noticed that my Glofish Danio was quite chubby in the belly. I thought it might be that she is carrying eggs. I am quite new to aquarium keeping so I have a few questions.

If she is in fact full of eggs, she will evenually lay the eggs... I dont plan on breeding, so should i just let the eggs be in the tanks and let the fish eat them or what?

What will happen to my GloFish after she lets the eggs out?

If she isnt pregnant, what other causes can make her so fat? I read up on dropsy, but it doesnt have scales sticking out, just chubby... plus, she still eating and still swimming like always.

THANKS!

 

[Corleone]

Early stages of dropsy don't have scales protruding (in fact, usually, once scales are sticking out, it's organ failure and they often don't make it), but you can look for other symptoms like excess slime coat, red under the skin, or a swolen anus. There's also constipation, which is a pretty common problem, and can be treated with peas. Take frozen peas, boil them, and remove the shells, them mash up the inside and feed it to them. Acts as a strong laxative and cleans the pipes out. I do this every couple weeks anyway, as some of my greedier fish get plugged up routinely.

Female danios are fatter than males, so depending on how fat she is, it may be normal. They also get quite fat when they're carrying eggs. They should eventually release their eggs, though since they're egg scatterers, in small tanks, they might never do this and just stay fat. It can be hard to decide if someting's wrong or not - I did unneccessarily treat my danios a couple times when I first started, thinking they were sick.

Do you have a liquid test kit? Checking for ammonia or nitrite is the first step in diagnosing a problem - often even if you can't figure out exactly what's wrong, you can sometimes find the cause in water stats.

 

[Spishkey]

it could have just eaten too much, my danios quite often swell up terribly after some foods and it takes 24 hrs before it goes down

 

[ChadThyJuggla]

I'm thinking constipation was the issue. I haven't had the chance to feed her peas yet, but I did lay off the feeding a bit this morning. She is looking a little slimmer tonight than yesterday. Still keeping an eye on her though.

 

[Corleone]

If she slimmed down on her own, it's probably just overeating. Danios are one of those greedy fish, and they'll eat too much pretty regularly. It's something I've had to learn to deal with, since it's hard to ensure that slower feeders like angelfish and gouramis get their share without danios, tetras, and livebearers getting more than theirs.