Objective Using zebrafish to analyze the effect of water temperature on the recovery of spinal cord injury. To detect the cell proliferation and changes of gene expression at the injury site during the process of recovery. Methods Surgical operation was performed to induce spinal cord injury (SCI) on adult fish. Water at a series of temperature was applied to culture the fish. Swimming ability was adopted to observe the recovery of spinal cord injury following surgery. Vibration sections and immunohistochemistry were performed to observe the cell number post SCI at different stages. The changes of gdnf and nos gene expression were determined by real-time PCR. Results The water temperature changes from 28℃ to 32℃ did not affect the swimming ability of non-injured and sham-injured fish (P>0.05). The swimming ability recovered mostly in 8 weeks post spinal cord injury. At 32℃, the swimming ability recovered faster than at 28℃ or at 30℃ (P<0.05). The cell proliferation increased obviously following spinal cord injury (P<0.05). The proliferation of cells surrounding the spinal cord in jury was more extensive in SCI fishes incubated in 32℃ water than in 28℃ or 30℃ water (P<0.05). Real-time PCR assay showed that gdnf was up-regulated in all groups post SCI at 24 h, and 7 and 14 days (P<0.05). The nos expression was up-regulated in all groups following SCI in 24 h (P<0.05) and 7 days. There was no significant difference between the SCI group and sham-injury group (P<0.05), while after 14 days, the expression of nos was reduced in the SCI group compared with the sham-injury group (P<0.05). Conclusions A slight increase of incubating water temperature can accelerate the recovery of spinal cord injury in zebrafish.