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Well I learned something new this week. Not all zebras hide all the time.

Several weeks back, as reported in another post, I did a fry collection and fish rearranging in order to sell a batch. One of the things I finally did was to seperate out some of my largest youngsters to keep and growout for myself- I have 7-8 fish 1.75 in. to 2 in. parked in a 10 gal tank. They were given wood, rock and slate cover and even some plants to be sure cycling would not be an issue.

The tank sits on a stand at the far end of the living room and the fish have been in this tank for several weeks. Several days ago, late one afternoon, I happened to glance at the tank from a distance and noticed a lot of movement. There were a number of fish zooming around the tank and not just on the bottom.

My first reaction at seeing this was a mini-panic. After all a happy zeb is a hiding zeb and til now mine had always remained under cover, especially during daylight hours. I am conditioned to think that zebs in the open = problems. So I stealthily moved towards the tank so as not to panic them. I managed to get a few feet away from where i could see the fish and look for any signs of illness etc. At that distance I was able to see that most of the fish were in and out of hiding and swimming all over the tank.

None of them appeared to show any signs of distress nor any symptoms of disease. Food was being eaten and healthy poop being produced. Over the next few days I noticed this same extroverted behavior in the tank. My only conclusion is that juvenile zebras, in their own space may be more inclined to come out and play than either fry or adults.

Hopefully over the coming weeks I will out enough bn to free up a 20B into which I can move the 7-8 juvies along with the two adults I have parked in with a discus duo.

Normally one would expect the juveniles to hide more than the adults - this behaviour is observed in other L-code cats. Having said that, we had the same experience as you with a group of our adult zebras who will happily go out in open spaces, eat, explore and play with lights on.
We have also seen this in other people's tanks and were impressed particularly with one tank shared by discus and a breeding colony of zebras. The tank was planted with Vallisnerias which provided sufficient shade.
Can't tell for sure that was a "critical" factor as in one of our tanks the adults will readily come out and stay out. The main difference of this tank with the others is that there are more "caves" and hiding places. Maybe it depends on the particular colony, i.e. if they have sorted between them who resides where and there is no competition for hiding places they feel more secure to leave these places knowing they can return to them without finding them taken over.


Caesars and Polleni

my lone male is almost always out of his cave. I am not sure why this is. But also have some plants although most anubias and ferns in there, however there are some dwarf cichlids in there with him and I think that helps.