! Mutant Danio !

[The-Wolf]

this is my mutant Bengal danio Devario devario.
She is around a year old now and still going strong, in fact she is the boss, (arn't all women ),
of the danios she shares the tank with.
I think she looks like a Beluga whale in body shape.

this is what a normal shaped Bengal looks like

 

[GuppyDude]

is it possible that she is some kind of cross breed wolf? i think i like her better than the normal ones

 

[The-Wolf]

possible, yes; probable doubtfull
I'm going with the inbreed mutant as the most likely scenario

 

[mikev]

Very cute fish indeed.

Obviously, you are talking about shape, but her *colors* are identical to by GD's. Which color pattern is typical for the Bengals?

APPEND. Hmmm.... Checking your web site, I see something interesting:

Very similar to the Giant Danio only more arrowhead shaped & a lot more yellow on the tailfins. These are often sold as Giants.

Makes me wonder what I have here... My alleged Giants after almost six months in the tank remain under 3".... I thought Danios should grow faster....

 

[The-Wolf]

mikeV
if you post a pic of yours I will try and give you a difinative answer

 

[Soaup]

I once had a Danio similar to that.. Mine had some sort of spine disease i would imagine.. The Danio had a curved Spine kinda like a C except the bend wasnt that extreme.. The fish also had a collapsed stomach that went with the bend in the spine it was like a swimming Arch.. She ended up dying in the summer on a 100+ degree day im tank reached 104 as my mother turned the heater UP! She cooked, poor fish.. It was a beginner mistake... Oh Well.. Very nice fish.

 

[mikev]

mikeV
if you post a pic of yours I will try and give you a difinative answer

Wolf,

Thanks a lot for the offer -- The problem is that my camera does not do Danios...It converts them to blurs.... I will try again over the weekend.

 

[mikev]

TheWolf,

OK, below is the best I can do. I probably will need to get another camera. The larger pictures below unfortunately have a false shadow, so it looks like the tails are broken -- they are not.

The fishes shown are with me from early September, almost doubled in size since then, so they are probably about 8 mo old. None of them exceeds 3.5" (probably 3.25" is the largest). I cannot net them any longer to measure. I think they are healthy, and they have enough room, so it is not likely that their growth has been stunned.

They were sold as Giants, but this was the only time ever I saw a batch of Giants with this great yellow/orange fin tint, so I went for them.

Are they Giants or Bengals or something else?

(My hope is that they are Bengals indeed; they are in a 3 ft tank, and I know that it is not good enough for fully grown Giants. But if these guys are actually fully grown, they surely have more than enough space.)

Your opinion will be greatly appreciated.

PS. The fish on the left in the bottom pic is a bit like yours.

 

[The-Wolf]

the first pic is a giant
the second is a bengal
the third is 2 bengals and 1 giant
looking at the last picture you have 3 bengal danios and 1 giant

HTH

 

[mikev]

the first pic is a giant
the second is a bengal
the third is 2 bengals and 1 giant
looking at the last picture you have 3 bengal danios and 1 giant

HTH

Thanks a lot, but this is imho quite unlikely. I got all of them together (there are seven), and they looked like one species, they scoaled together (until they figured out that they own the top of the tank -- no more scoaling), they grew at the same rate. I think that what you labelled as a giant is simply a male, and the bigger ones are females, of whatever species they belong too; males were originally smaller, and remain so now.

OK, if I may ask just one more question: Danios I believe are relatively short-live fish (5years?); at what age do they reach full size? Would giants be at only 3in at eight months?

 

[The-Wolf]

Hmm
Growth rates depend on a lot of X-factors, like temperature,
how often food is available, how much is available etc.
It would be hard to say how old a GD is by size.
they reach sexual maturity at around 6 months and the have a lifespan of upto 8 years,
although 6 seems to be std in aquariums.

The only true way to sex GDs is when the female is eggladen.

I have pm'ed a link to this topic to kerripaul, who has had 20+years experiance with danios,
hopefully he can add his expert opinion too.

 

[mikev]

Wolf, thanks a lot.

For what it is worth, a couple more details: I'm sure these guys are more than 6 mo old (they were with me since Sept, and they were already at 1.5"-2" when I got them), and I don't seem much of a growth for the last couple of months.

(incidentally, the temp is kept at 78F, and they are probably overfed -- I feed twice a day because of loaches, and they steal loach food too.)

Now, on sexing: before getting these guys, I was looking at a lot of GD's in lfs' and one reason I was not getting them is that I could not see the sex differences clearly. Then I saw these fellows, and not only they were much prettier, half the original batch at lfs were "big-chested" and half were "torpedo-like", so I was certain I'm getting a healthy mix.

I don't know if they are sexually mature---I see no spawning behavior. The alleged females (what you classified as Bengals) do chase the alleged males (giants?), that's it.

---

Whatever they are, I like them a lot.

And if they turn out to be (mutant, variant) Bengals as I now think, thanks a lot for your gift of 14 gallons of space!!!

----------

Append. BTW, from your great site:

To sex most danios is very easy, males tend to be slim and females are more rounded.
This is not the case with Giants, Bengals & Moustached, they can only be sexed when the female is egg-laden.

Either I'm insane, or something is wrong: these guys do have obvious sexual differences.

One more thing possibly helpful for identification: all of mine have a small darker spot on top, just behind the head.

 

[KerriPaul]

this is my mutant Bengal danio Devario devario.
She is around a year old now and still going strong, in fact she is the boss, (arn't all women ),
of the danios she shares the tank with.
I think she looks like a Beluga whale in body shape.

this is what a normal shaped Bengal looks like

She is clearly somewhat "Alpha" and has strong colouring. Devario Devario is the deepest bodied of the danios so it is not entirely surprising that she has such a deep body.

With all the different danios coming in it is quite possible that it may be from a different locality and has regional variations, or it could just be within the normal range for this fish, which as above is known for being deep bodied.

One of the problems we have with devarios is that there are about 35 species, of which we have photos of about 10. Also several are very similar and are deemed giant danio by importers, although I have never seen devario so misnamed owing to its body depth. Devario could be described as a pregnant short giant danio.

It could be possible that you have a colour morph- not entirely unknown with danios, but you couldnt really tell unless you spawned it.



Regards

Paul