Your own experience is actually your best teacher. The differences in viewpoint between TTA and myself should be taken as evaluation considerations as we both applied from our own experience. I am also learning from TTA as I am writing this and i can assure u that not every colonies behave the same ...

Change your male, old bull doesn't really breed well. Go introduce another 2 males between 8.5cm to 9cm as your females are 8cm.

Finally, the number of caves should equal to the number of males. In your current case, u need only one cave so as to force the ladies to visit him in the only cave ...

From the look of it, these 6 zebras are relatively young fishes, which is about 2 inches +. Most of us will rated them as "unsexable" at this stage.

Now back to your objective,

1) If you hope that they can breed for you in less than 6 months, this group is not possible as they are not fully ...

Hi Jerry,

The point that Jo brought up is valid, but i think that your zebra pair will probably breed better if you choose to take out the non participating pair. Do note that every zebra pair act differently :) . Some need a week trapping to get eggs, some just need days or hours and some don't ...

It depends, there is no one answer that fits all. Let us check PROs and CONs of removing fry and keeping fry in the tank.

Option a) Remove fries from caves
PROs
1) You can count exactly how many fries you have. And I bet it will exceed your estimate of 8 :)
2) If there are more than 1 gravid female ...

That zebra look male to me, so i shall answer using the male approach.

I agree with dconners that this is an injury due to aggressiveness. Just a couple of questions:

1) How many caves do you have in the tank? If less caves than males, then you will see such injuries more frequently in a ...

My guess is 1, 2, 6 and 8 are female. And 1 being a gravid female.

However, if 8 is NOT a female, then it will be better. But if 8 is also a female, then you may have problem breeding this group.

Why so? The biggest male I see so far is 7 (at 7.8cm). This male will have difficulties to trap ...

Hi Hitch,

Do a PROs and CONs list and you will feel better about your decision

In my case, I will go for a 30g

PROs
1) Trust me, you won't stop at 2 zebras. The number will grow :), and if you decided to get more in future, there is no need to change tank.
2) Bigger tank will means more stable ...

IMHO, based on head shape since the picture provided is TOP VIEW, 1 is likely to be a female and the rest are males.

Hi Ken,

Sorry about your MALE fish. But it is part and parcel of our hobby to experience such situation. Think positive, maybe this is the "bully" male that is obstructing your female to spawn, and the charm may works for you. And be glad that it is NOT the female.

On the other hand, since you ...

My personal opinion is to stay clear from live feeds, unless you are cultivating them yourself. Frozen Bloodworms should be an good alternative for live feeds.

On the topic of medication, i wouldn't advise you to try any medication without knowing the actually sickness of the zebras. Very often, by providing clean water and good care, the zebras can recover themselves over a period of time. And more often I had witness hobbists kill fishes by medication as ...

As the saying goes, a hiding zebra is a happy zebra. Given the look that they are not hiding and stay in the open already spell a disaster in the tank. At the same time, the best zebra are often those that you cannot catch. And yet you are able to handpick him up from that tank shown that their ...

Hi Drake

My thoughts on your tank as below

1) If the plants are not doing well and rotting away, it will be better to remove them since the condition in your tank are not suitable for those plants.

2) You may want to try moses which survive well and do well despite little lights.

3) Add a few ...

Just ring a bell in my head. Why not take this opportunity to remove all the baby zebras to another tank? Reasons being

1) the baby zebra will eat better with lesser competition from the adult.
2) U get to know how many zebra u actually have at this point of time
3) Prevent the breeding tank from ...