View Full Version : one eyed danio & depth perception
beckyrau
02-11-2003, 7:23 AM
About a week and a half ago one of my four giant danios had an injured eye and it just fell out yesterday. The area around the eye socket seems to be completely healed. My question is this. Will my danio be able to compete with the other danios for food? I know humans perception of depth is distorted if we only see out of one eye. This danio tries his best to get the food, but seems to "miss" it every time he goes for it. Will the danio eventually learn to compensate for the lost eye?
carpguy
02-11-2003, 8:01 AM
One of my dwarf barbs is one-eyed and does alright for himself. Not at the front of the chowline, but he gets his. When I was a kid we had a one-eyed fish who lived for several years, longer than most of the other fish. We eventually nicknamed him "ol' one eye" (a clever lot we were).
Your fish should be fine.
Fix a little patch for him and teach him to say, "AAARRR, matey!!!" :D He should be fine as is. As long as he doesn't appear to be stressed or in some kind of pain, he'll function okay.
VoodooChild
02-11-2003, 4:02 PM
Orandas often have their skin caps grow over their eyes, and they find food just fine. Of course, that is a goldfish, which has a sense of smell like a vulture. Just watch him and make sure he gets food.
Spider
02-11-2003, 5:49 PM
I have a one eyed sail fin molly. He gets along great, although he does bump into my angel fish sometimes. He does get his food though. Your fish should adapt fine.
NJ Devils Fan
02-11-2003, 8:55 PM
I second the eye patch idea.;)
beckyrau
02-12-2003, 9:16 AM
Thank you all for contributing. I have been watching him off and on and it seems the biggest danio picks on him a bit. He tends to stay away from the other fish most of the day. Hopefully he is just trying to adjust. He looks pretty healthy, however. All I can really do is monitor him, I guess.
VoodooChild
02-12-2003, 10:32 AM
What do you have them with? I know of alot of people that use the giants as target fish for cichlids. If can see only in one direction, he's much more apt to taking a blow that he could normally dart away from.
beckyrau
02-14-2003, 8:54 AM
I don't have anything else in the tank except a pleco. Some plants and fake coral too. He seems to swim to the right when he wants to make a turn (he lost is left eye). When they are at rest, which is quite often :-), he seems to stay near the outside of the tank (left eye towards glass). I guess he can see everything that way.
BluEyes
02-14-2003, 12:23 PM
I don't think it'll disrupt depth-perception much - fish don't have a very large area of stereoscopic vision - mostly the left eye looks left, the right eye looks right, small overlap right ahead.
Your Danio will have a blind side, but he ought to get along just fine in the tank. (Of course, he'd be toast in the wild, but...)
I'd keep an eye on how much the big (and therefore most dominant) Danio picks on him. Instinct may drive him to try and get rid of an injured member of the school so that the other, fully intact fishes can get more food... (think from an "in the wild" perspective)
OrionGirl
02-14-2003, 12:48 PM
I disagree...If the dominant danio (which would be female, not male) picks on this one more than on the others, she's not trying to herd the fish off.
Schools have no desire to remove ailing members unless food is in very poor supply/quantity (which also reduces the fishes desire to school). One or two weaker members increase the odds of other fish surviving predation.