The dream of getting your first aquarium is an amazing feeling, full of anticipation. But when it comes to choosing fish, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the variety. You immediately want the brightest and most unusual ones, but for starters, it's better to choose the most unpretentious and hardy pets. This will ensure that your first experience is joyful and successful.
Properly selected fish do not require overly complex care, calmly adapt to minor mistakes in maintenance, and will delight you with their beauty for a long time. They will help you gain experience, understand the basics of caring for the aquatic world, and simply enjoy watching their lives.
Let's take a look at the species that will be ideal neighbors for a beginner aquarist. These fish have long earned a reputation as patient and beautiful inhabitants, capable of turning your first aquarium into a small but stable miracle.
Choosing fish
One of the main problems for all novice aquarists is choosing the wrong fish for their aquarium. When they visit a pet store or market, beginners are simply overwhelmed by the variety of species, colors, bizarre shapes, and sizes. They want the red ones, the blue ones, the ones that crawl on the glass with suction cups, the catfish with huge whiskers, and, of course, the traditional goldfish. All of this is solemnly purchased, rushed home, and… Sometimes everything they bought turns out to be dead on the way home. If all the fish arrive safely, surprises appear later—the catfish immediately hide and only appear at night, the cute neon tetras disappear without a trace, all the angelfish swim with torn fins, and the goldfish begin to turn upside down and swim on their sides. Poor aquarist, it seems like he did everything by the book, set up the aquarium, planted the plants, and let the water stand for ten days before buying the fish—but again, something goes wrong. And now I will tell you how to do everything “right,” but first I will say a few words about transportation.
Most often, freshly purchased fish are transported in glass jars. This is absolutely wrong, primarily because jars are often dropped, and the fish end up on the asphalt in a puddle of water among broken glass shards. This sad picture can be observed regularly; it is enough to stand for a few hours at the Bird Market to witness several such cases. Therefore, it is better and more convenient to immediately place the fish in a plastic bag when purchasing them (such bags are sold both at the Bird Market and in pet stores) and then transport them in it. If the journey home will take more than an hour, or in the summer heat, it is highly desirable to fill the bag with oxygen. Fish can be transported in such packaging for up to three days without any problems. I myself have repeatedly transported several hundred fish in bags for several days, and during a two-day journey, not a single one of the 300 neon tetras in the bag died. If you plan to transport them by plane, you should inform the seller, so that the bag is not filled with oxygen too tightly and will not burst during sudden pressure changes during takeoff or landing.
Another important factor when transporting fish is temperature. The vast majority of aquarium fish are native to hot tropical regions and cannot tolerate temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius. But here, as soon as the weather turns bad, a breeze blows, and the temperature can drop to 15 degrees or even lower, even in summer. In such weather, carry the bag with fish in your hand for half an hour and that's it — half of them will die for no apparent reason by the next weekend. What can we say about winter, when the bag cools down by several degrees in just 2-3 minutes? Therefore, in winter, and in general in any cool weather, it is advisable to hide the bag with fish under your coat and carry it, warming it with your own body heat. In addition, it is very convenient to transport fish for short distances in an unbreakable thermos. The main thing to remember is that, despite all its convenience, a thermos is not suitable for long-term transportation of fish, and if there are a lot of them, the oxygen in the water will only last for an hour and a half at most.
Under no circumstances should you immediately dump the fish you have brought home into the aquarium. First, you need to equalize the temperature of the water in the bag with the temperature in the aquarium. To do this, float the bag on the surface of the aquarium. After 30-40 minutes, open the bag (for convenience, you can transfer the fish to a glass jar) and slowly add water from the aquarium, literally gram by gram. There is no need to rush; add a little, wait a few minutes, then add some more. This is done to equalize the chemical parameters of the water, otherwise the fish may go into shock and even die. Only after replacing at least half of the volume with water from the aquarium can the fish be carefully released into their new home.
Cold water or warm water?
Now that you know how to safely and painlessly transport fish home, let's try to determine who can be placed in the aquarium. First, we will divide all fish into cold-water and warm-water species. Cold-water fish are those for which the optimal water temperature is up to 20 degrees, and warm-water fish are those for which the optimum is in the range from 20 to 30 degrees, sometimes even slightly higher. Among cold-water fish, the most famous and popular are various varieties of goldfish. There are many varieties, including ordinary goldfish, which are like crucian carp but golden-red in color, big-eyed “telescopes,” “shubunkins,” “lionheads,” “red caps,” “pearls,” and other decorative breeds bred over hundreds of years of selection. And although they often bear no resemblance to the original form, the golden crucian carp, they all require the same conditions. In an aquarium, they live best in water with a temperature of 16 to 20 degrees Celsius. Although they can live for a long time at higher temperatures, they begin to feel unwell, develop numerous digestive problems, become obese, and often get sick and die. This is primarily due to the fact that cold-water fish have a slightly different metabolism than warm-water fish, and regular tropical fish food is too high in calories for them. And if we also consider that they never suffer from a lack of appetite… It turns out that by keeping a goldfish in the same aquarium with other, non-cold-water fish and feeding them all the same food, owners unwittingly contribute to its obesity and the development of a host of diseases. Many aquarium companies produce special low-calorie food for goldfish, but then the other fish in the aquarium begin to lose weight and become malnourished.
What conclusion can be drawn from all this? It is not worth trying to keep warm-water and cold-water fish in the same aquarium. This is the most common mistake made by beginners, but goldfish pay for it with their lives. They live for several years, but still die after three or four years, although in other conditions they could live for 15 or even 20 years. And loving owners cannot understand why their pet suddenly started swimming belly-up on the surface, unable to sink, and breathing heavily. After all, the other fish are doing fine. So if you really want to get one of these beauties, keep it separate, with other goldfish like it. They will be much better off together.
There are many more warm-water fish in aquariums than cold-water fish. The reason for this is very simple. First, tropical fish are much brighter, more beautiful, and more diverse in their bizarre shapes and habits than fish from northern rivers. And second, it is always much easier to heat the water in an aquarium than to cool it. As a result, aquariums are predominantly inhabited by creatures from the hot tropics. According to some estimates, aquariums contain between 2,000 and 4,000 species of tropical freshwater fish, although no more than 200 of these are widely distributed.
For beginners, listing all these hundreds of fish and describing their habits is too difficult and unnecessary. Therefore, I will briefly describe the most common and popular groups of fish suitable for beginners. I will start with the most common ones—livebearers, or as they are correctly called, livebearing cyprinodontiformes.
If you are thinking about getting fish for the first time, don't worry, it's easier than it seems. The main thing is to start with undemanding species that easily get along in a home aquarium and do not require complex care. Guppies, mollies, or angelfish are good choices—they are hardy, beautiful, and respond well to basic care. It is important not to overfeed them, to change part of the water once a week, and to make sure that the aquarium is not too small. Start simple, gain experience, and over time you will be able to move on to more complex inhabitants.
Livebearers
It is unlikely that there is a single person who has never seen fish such as guppies, swordtails, or mollies. These are some of the most popular fish in beginner aquariums—they are undemanding in terms of conditions and food, reproduce easily and quickly, and are also very beautiful. As the name suggests, all livebearers do not lay eggs but give birth to live fry immediately. Moreover, compared to other fish species, the fry are very large (5-10 mm) and can be easily fed even with dry food. Livebearers are undemanding in terms of care and feeding and do not have any special requirements for their environment. The optimal water hardness for them is medium to high, and the optimal temperature is 22-26 degrees Celsius. The vast majority of livebearers are peaceful and can live with any other peaceful fish. However, it is not worth keeping purebred long-tailed male guppies with such “rowdy” fish as danios or barbs—they can tear their tails.
In general, livebearers can be safely recommended for beginners. In addition to guppies and mollies, there are also many varieties of colorful barbs and swordtails. Plus, the ease with which they reproduce makes them very attractive pets.
Barbs and danios
Next in popularity and prevalence in aquariums are all kinds of barbs and danios. The most common is the Sumatran barbus, a cute striped fish with a cheerful disposition. The Sumatran barbus has a selective variety – the green mutant barbus. Its body is a very beautiful emerald green color, and in all other respects it does not differ from the natural form, except that it is slightly more delicate. Barbs, like livebearers, thrive in medium-hard water at a temperature of 22-26 degrees Celsius and are omnivorous. These are very fast fish, so they often manage to outrun all the other inhabitants of the aquarium during feeding and eat three times more than the others.
In addition to Sumatran barbs, beginners may be advised to consider the fire barb, scarlet barb, cherry barb, as well as black and five-striped barbs. Other species are less common, although technically they are no more difficult to keep than the species listed above. The quietest and most timid of them is the cherry barb, while all the others are cheerful and slightly mischievous in nature. For them, there is no better entertainment than chasing other fish and tugging at their fins or whiskers. Male guppies with their huge tails suffer particularly from such neighbors, as do angelfish, whose long thread-like fins are regularly tugged at by barbs, probably mistaking them for tasty worms.
Danios are close relatives of barbs. These fish have a more elongated body than barbs and are excellent and very nimble swimmers. They are very fast in an aquarium, so it is often possible to keep them even with very predatory fish—the latter simply cannot keep up with them. However, no amount of speed can save them from nocturnal predators, and a single catfish can eat all the sleeping danios in the aquarium overnight. Therefore, it is still better to keep them together with peaceful neighbors, such as barbs or swordtails.
Barbs and danios are very easy to breed in aquariums and are often recommended for those who want to try their hand at breeding fish for the first time.
Neons and their relatives
The next group of very popular fish is the characins. These include the ever-popular neon tetras—common, red, blue, black, all kinds of erythrozones, lanternfish, minnows, and many other very beautiful and interesting fish. Most of them are very calm and peaceful fish, even a little shy (such as neons), some are closer in character to cheerful and reckless barbs (minors), but there are also real scary predators among characins – piranhas! By the way, contrary to legend, piranhas do not bite off their owners' fingers and do not pounce with bared teeth on a hand lowered into the aquarium. They are very timid, I would even say hysterical fish. If you put your hand in the aquarium, they panic, rush to the corners, fall to the bottom, and frantically thrash their whole bodies against the ground. In the Amazon, where they live, the Indians calmly bathe in the river teeming with piranhas and are not afraid of them at all. This is because they know that it is enough to slap the water with your palm a few times for all the piranhas within a 20-meter radius to flee in panic and hide under snags and in thickets of plants. However, a hungry pack of piranhas, sensing the smell of blood in the water, becomes ferocious and attacks swiftly and fearlessly. Researchers say that in 90 seconds, a pack of piranhas can completely devour a young bullhead, leaving only its skeleton. Keep this in mind, and if you decide to get some piranhas, never put your hand with fresh cuts or scratches in the aquarium. Otherwise, piranhas are not difficult to keep, the main thing is to feed them on time, otherwise they may start tearing each other apart.
However, piranhas are rather an exception among characins, and neon tetras themselves usually become food for their larger neighbors. This happens especially often when angelfish are kept as neighbors for neon tetras. For the first six months, they live together peacefully and amicably, but then the angelfish begin to grow, becoming larger and larger, and the number of neon tetras in the aquarium begins to decrease rapidly. So, as much as you might want to keep neon tetras and angelfish together, it is not a good idea. As soon as the angelfish's mouth becomes large enough, the neon tetras turn from neighbors into a delicacy.
Popular and widespread species of characins are usually undemanding in terms of living conditions. They live quite well even in relatively hard water, the only caveat being that it is desirable to keep the temperature at 20-24 degrees Celsius; at higher temperatures, they age faster and die (they usually live for about 5 years). However, breeding most characins is quite difficult and requires a lot of experience from the aquarist.
Catfish and catfish
All kinds of catfish are very popular in aquariums. Catfish come in a wide variety of shapes. Some are even difficult to recognize as fish—what kind of fish doesn't swim, moves along the glass with suction cups, and has branched horns on its nose? However, there are some catfish like this (they are called ancistrus). There are cute sausages with long whiskers (toracatums), big-eyed modest synodontis, orange platydoras with black stripes, and a great many other interesting species. Many catfish are nocturnal fish (for example, synodontis or platydoras), among them are voracious predators (mantis shrimp) or vegetarians tirelessly scraping algae growths from the walls of the aquarium (ancistrus). In general, there is something for every taste, color, and size. For all beginners, we recommend getting a couple of Ancistrus in your aquarium. These funny fish with suction cups are very helpful in keeping the aquarium clean, diligently cleaning not only the glass, but also other, often very hard-to-reach areas of the aquarium from all kinds of algae. Adult male ancistrus acquire magnificent decorations in the form of bushy horns and, thanks to their amusing behavior, quickly become everyone's favorites. Ancistrus reproduce easily in a community aquarium, laying large orange eggs in shelters, which are then vigilantly guarded by the male.
Spotted catfish are small, completely peaceful fish with short whiskers and a habit of scurrying around in the ground in search of food scraps or tasty worms hidden among the rocks. These extremely unpretentious fish are perhaps the only ones that can easily tolerate temperatures ranging from 2 to 35 degrees Celsius, live in any water, eat any food, and, thanks to their armor, do not risk being eaten by their more toothy neighbors. Spotted catfish, like many other catfish, are interesting in that they can breathe atmospheric air. When there is a lack of oxygen in the water, they float to the surface, swallow a bubble of air, and then absorb it in their intestines. In nature, this method of breathing allows them to survive periods of drought when water bodies dry up and turn into dirty puddles with murky water. Spotted catfish are easy to breed and can be recommended to all beginners.
Numerous varieties of African synodont catfish are very popular. They are famous for their ability to assume any position—standing on their tails, hanging upside down near the surface, or thinking about something while standing on their heads. Synodontids are mainly nocturnal fish and in the first few months rarely show themselves during the day, preferring to hide behind snags or somewhere under the filter. However, over time, they get used to the fact that tasty food falls mainly during the day and begin to watch for this momentous event, lying on their sides almost at the front glass. Many synodonts are implicit predators and small fish (such as guppies or neons) can suffer from them, as they eat them at night.
In general, almost all catfish are extremely undemanding in terms of care, but they only eat food from the bottom, which must be taken into account when feeding them. They can live in virtually any water, and their neighbors rarely harm them, except for very small catfish and some large fish.
Labyrinth fish
To keep the aquarium peaceful, it is important to choose fish that get along with each other. Some species are peaceful and swim in schools, while others do not like sharing territory and start fights. Large fish may perceive small fish as food, and active fish may disturb quieter ones. It is better to keep together those that are similar in behavior, size, and living conditions. Before buying, it is worth reading up or asking who gets along with whom and who does not. Then your aquarium will be harmonious rather than chaotic. Zoning involves dividing the aquarium into zones of influence. For example, to prevent angelfish from fighting each other, it is recommended to zone the aquarium with plants (Vallisneria) for each individual. Always remember that “We are responsible for those we have tamed.” Improper fish care leads to devastating consequences. In poor conditions, fish begin to fight for survival, fight, and die. By the way, labyrinth fish themselves usually suffer greatly from Sumatran barbs, which try to tug at their long thread-like pectoral fins.
All labyrinth fish have a very interesting way of reproducing: the male builds a nest of foam bubbles on the surface of the water (pieces of plants or fallen leaves are often used as a frame), and the female lays her eggs in this nest. The male then guards the nest vigilantly for several days, chasing away all curious creatures (including the female), tidying it up, collecting any eggs that have fallen out, and generally taking great care of it. The male's parental instinct disappears only when the fry hatch, after which he loses interest in the nest and fry and starts building a new nest.
It is always very interesting to watch them build their nests, and if you manage to catch the moment of mating and spawning, and even film it, you are sure to cause a sensation among all your friends on Instagram!
We hope this article has helped you navigate the vast world of aquarium keeping. Starting with undemanding fish is the right way to gain experience and avoid disappointment. The main thing is not to rush and to do everything thoughtfully.
Remember that even the most resilient pets are living creatures that depend on your care. Pay attention to preparing the aquarium, learn the basics of care, and then your new hobby will bring you nothing but joy.
Good luck! An aquarium with cheerful fish will be a wonderful corner of tranquility in your home. It is a fascinating hobby in which there is always something to learn and admire.
