Maintenance and breeding of zebrafish, with some ethological and ecological considerations in mind

Abstract The popularity of zebrafish is exponentially increasing. Unlike in the past, the zebrafish now is a subject of investigation by scientists of practically every subfield of biology, including psychopharmacology and behavior genetics. Simply put, the zebrafish is no longer considered a simple egg-producing tube for efficient delivery of thousands of embryos to be studied only by developmental biologists. With the broadening interest, come numerous challenges. One of the most fundamental of which is how to maintain and breed zebrafish. Here we consider some questions of zebrafish maintenance and breeding, and provide a few examples of what we argue would be important issues where some change may be required. We emphasize that systematic parametric analyses of environmental factors are needed to optimize the laboratory environment for the zebrafish. Last, we argue that understanding the ecology and ethology of the zebrafish is important for establishing proper maintenance and breeding of this species.