Zebra Danio Spawn Camping :~?

[Wellxam]

So, I have noticed an odd behavior in one of my danios, and I wanted to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this before, or has any insight on this.

Backstory:
Tank is a 55Gallon approximately, and currently houses 8 zebra danios, 11 cardinal tetras, 2 young (pre-breedable/sexable) bristlenose plecos, 2 nerite snails, and a few snails that probably snuck in on some Co Op plants. Ammonia/Nitrite both have been consistantly 0, nitrates were between 10-20ppm, and have been declining since ich, and feeding has been reduced. Tank has been treated for visible ich for the last 5 days, (caught very early, 3-4 visible spots on a few fish, mostly the cardinals but there were a few on danios, I have no way of knowing if the danio in question was affected.) and today will be the last day, as I've seen no visible signs, unless I see something tomorrow morning.

Danios seem to stress a little when I added the meds, as they went from basically being all over the place, to all of them at once the first time I added it, second day about half of them schooled, the rest were completely oblivious, and remaining days, they might have schooled for a short period, then went back about their lives.

From what I can tell, danio X is a male, please correct me if you know me to be wrong.

The Spawn-Camping:
So the best I can describe the behavior is that he is camping in this one spot, and chasing (almost) all of the other danios away. There was one time I noticed an exception where he and an apparent female, seemed less like they were chasing, and more like what I witnessed in an example egg-scatterer breeding behavior video, where they were moving in more of a dance, circling each other and even touching a few times, though they were away from his "camp," but not super far.

it seems like he may have been either eating something coming up from the rocks, or attempting to, maybe...? (i've been staring at him quite awhile today, I might be making things up in my head.)

From the research I have done, I didn't find anything substantial about danios being territorial, nor any kind of egg-guarding behavior, in fact I presume they will eat their eggs, due to their general derpiness. I have no reason to believe he is ill, or that something is wrong, when I shined a flashlight in to see if I noticed anything in the cracks, he fled pretty quick, and has been very energetic in chasing the trespassers away.

Any insight or theories, or potential experiments to find out more would be greatly appreciated. I am really enjoying danios, and their general crazy derpieness, they may get their own tank when I get my angelfish, as I suspect they will annoy the hell out of my angels!

My theories are:
Guarding terretory
Guarding eggs
Guarding something delicious that is HIS!
Just being VERY committed to being a derpy danio

I shot 2 videos of the behavior, a 5 minute real-time video, as well as a time-lapse over 2-3hours while I was doing other stuff.
Real-time:

Time-lapse:

 

[Odd Duck]

@Wellxam He looks uncomfortable to me.  Holding his fins a bit clamped, some almost flashing type activity even though he didn’t actually rub against anything, and he seems to be defending his space but these guys aren’t territorial that I’ve ever seen or heard.  That did look like a female, but that wasn’t breeding/courting behavior, it looked like straight up defensive behavior, I think.  I don’t blame him, I’m cranky when I’m sick, too.  He just doesn’t look quite right to me.  Keep watching for any Ich for at least another week to 10 days.

[Wellxam]

On 8/23/2021 at 10:57 PM, Odd Duck said:

@Wellxam He looks uncomfortable to me.  Holding his fins a bit clamped, some almost flashing type activity even though he didn’t actually rub against anything, and he seems to be defending his space but these guys aren’t territorial that I’ve ever seen or heard.  That did look like a female, but that wasn’t breeding/courting behavior, it looked like straight up defensive behavior, I think.  I don’t blame him, I’m cranky when I’m sick, too.  He just doesn’t look quite right to me.  Keep watching for any Ich for at least another week to 10 days.

Thanks for the input, yes everything in the videos was chasing, the exception I mentioned was something that I noticed off-camera. 

I should add that last night he did leave his spot when I fed, I’ve yet to look this morning to see if he is still there, but basically all of yesterday he was camping that spot.

[Wellxam]

On 8/24/2021 at 6:27 AM, Tankseeker said:

@Wellxami can’t tell if it’s your camera but your water quality looks cloudy could cause this behaviour 

Likely camera, to my eye water looks pretty clear, this is with the camera cleaned. Front (exterior) glass could probably use a wipe too.

[Wellxam]

So as of this morning, with room lights on, but not aquarium lights, he is no longer in the spot, and headcount says nobody died. I will continue to update, but am still interested if anyone has experienced something like this.

I have found a few other random posts on the internet describing similar behavior possibly, but nothing that leads closer to an actual answer.

[Wellxam]

On 8/24/2021 at 7:23 AM, Tankseeker said:

@Wellxamlooking at your full tank you should add some tall plants like java fern to fill up the higher areas

yes, I have some scattered plants, that I've yet to set, the left side is going to be  a jungle val forest, they are starting to spread out, so I'll be planting them spread out a bit more, and then I'm deciding between the tall guys that are in there, what is going to stay, and what I'll be moving to other tanks, obviously they are stuck in quarantine mode at the moment. I also have red root floaters (they dried out when shipped, looks like some of them may be coming back though, so I'm keeping an eye) and frogbit that will populate the top. The nitrates have been lower due to medicating, but I will fertilize and resume normal feeding assuming I don't see any more ich. There is also a baby java fern (a free stowaway from the jungle val from my LFS! ;~D

P.S. I've got a background coming, the glare on my picture is almost as bad as the camera was 😅