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Passport
- Family
- Danios / Whiteclouds / Medakas
- Grows to
- 2.1 cm (0.8")
- Lives
- 3–5 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Intermediate
- Swims
- Mid-water
- Keep
- In a group of 6 or more
- Water
- 20–26 °C (68–79 °F)
Myanmar
Care requirements
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On record for Celestial Pearl Danio: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 57 L / 15.0 US gal
- pH 6.5–7.5
- Hardness 5–15 dGH
- Diet omnivore
- Tank length 45 cm minimum
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Celestial pearl danios are the most recent genuine sensation in the hobby. They were found in Myanmar less than twenty years ago, and the demand was so violent that collection pressure nearly emptied the handful of ponds they came from within two seasons. Farm breeding rescued them, and almost everything sold now is tank-bred.
They deserved the fuss. A male is deep steel-blue scattered with cream spots like a night sky, with red and black barred fins, on a fish barely longer than a fingernail.
They were originally described as a new genus called Celestichthys — "heavenly fish" — which tells you what the people who first saw them thought.
Tank setup
Plant your celestial pearls densely and give them a dark substrate. They're timid, and broken sightlines are what turn a group of fish hiding at the back into a group behaving naturally out in the open.
Skip the wood and the leaf litter. This is unusual advice in this catalogue and it's specific to them: they come from clear, plant-choked spring-fed grassland pools, not blackwater, and the tannins that suit most small cyprinids aren't part of their world.
Buy as many as you can. Dominant males spar with each other constantly through the day, and in a large group that aggression spreads out harmlessly. In a small one it concentrates on whoever is losing.
Add floating plants for cover overhead. Gentle filtration, and no strong current.
Keep them cool to middling. They come from shallow highland water, not the tropics proper.
Feeding
Celestial pearls need small food and won't come to the surface for it. Floating flake is largely wasted on them.
Feed small live and frozen food daily if you can: daphnia, baby brine shrimp, cyclops, microworm. This is what brings out the colour and puts them into breeding condition.
Newly imported or newly moved fish are often in poor shape and refuse dried food entirely. Start those on live food and introduce prepared foods once they've settled.
Avoid: floating foods as a staple, and avoid a dried-only diet, which produces pale fish that never colour up.
Filtration and flow
A sponge filter and very little flow is what they want. They're tiny, weak swimmers from still, shallow water.
Guard any intake. A fish this small is at real risk from an unprotected pipe.
Keep the water clean and stable. They don't need soft or acidic conditions — their home water is moderately hard and close to neutral — but they do need consistency.
With plants
Celestial pearls are completely safe with plants and their natural pools are thick with them, so a heavily planted tank is the honest reproduction of their habitat.
Fine-leaved plants and moss matter most. They give cover, break sightlines and provide somewhere for eggs to fall.
Floating plants take the edge off the light and make a shy fish far bolder.
Health
They're hardy once settled and fragile on arrival, and most losses happen in the first weeks with fish that were shipped badly.
Watch for nipped fins within the group. That's normal male sparring rather than disease, and the answer is more fish rather than treatment.
A group that stays permanently hidden is under-stocked, under-planted or sharing a tank with something too boisterous. All three are fixable.
Breeding
They spawn continuously in a well-planted tank and need almost no encouragement. Eggs get scattered into moss and fine-leaved plants a few at a time, every day.
The adults eat every egg and fry they find, so a dense mat of moss is what determines whether anything survives. In a tank thick enough, young appear on their own.
For numbers, move a conditioned pair to a small tank with moss or a mesh floor and take them out after a day or two. Fry are minute and need infusoria before they can take microworm or baby brine shrimp.
Tank mates
Avoid9
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Celestial Pearl Danio at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Celestial Pearl Danio at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Kribensis Kribensis grows to 8 cm against Celestial Pearl Danio at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Panda Garra Panda Garra grows to 9 cm against Celestial Pearl Danio at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Pictus Catfish Pictus Catfish grows to 12 cm against Celestial Pearl Danio at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
Only with care16
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Celestial Pearl Danio is peaceful.
- Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid is a risk to Celestial Pearl Danio: danios / whiteclouds / medakas and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Bala Shark Bala Shark is a risk to Celestial Pearl Danio: danios / whiteclouds / medakas and sharks are a pairing to watch.
- Bolivian Ram Bolivian Ram is a risk to Celestial Pearl Danio: danios / whiteclouds / medakas and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Cockatoo Cichlid Cockatoo Cichlid is a risk to Celestial Pearl Danio: danios / whiteclouds / medakas and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 81 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 2 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.