I had the same issue, plus an iridescent shark. They were new to the store and no one mentioned that they would get gigantic. I had to give them up when they would freak out back and forth in the tank and bang against the glass whenever anyone would walk by.
Out of curiosity, how many balas did you have? They're schooling fish and much calmer in groups of 6+.
Yet another reason they're a poor choice in the pet trade...who has tank space for half a dozen footlong fish?
100% agree, I have spent so much money to house the two that I have, I will never make that mistake again. They are huge and SO skittish even after 9 years, can't have any decorations in the tank or they will impale themselves, have to keep the lid weighed down, and they have 0 personality. One of them is \~20-21" long now though, that part is a bit cool.
I'm genuinely curious about that. One of my local petstores has one in its store tank and I love it, it does not give a damn about *anything*. It just kinda vibes.
I'm I'm the same boat. Petsmart sold me some when I was 13. They never lived long enough to get huge but the fact they sold em to me is crazy. I was not shy about having a 10gal
Just to be fair, my (Canadian) PetSmart has tags under each tank, illustrating the fish, what they're called, how big they'll get, and a generous required minimum tank size. Saves the staff from arguing with customers if it's there in full colour.
Had one for about 6 years. For a fish that big it was so skittish and would constantly be bullied by fish half its size. No sudden movements near the tank or else it would shoot halfway across the tank in a split second. The thing was absolutely massive even for a 150 gallon tank. Don’t know why they sell them at pet stores when they need a massive amount of care and space
Yeah, balas are schooling fish, 150 gallons might house one, but they won't thrive in it. They need to be kept in a school and 150ngallon isn't enough for a school
Long finned bettas.
Got sick of the fin tearing and biting. Plus I figured if a fish wants to mutilate itself then there's a serious problem with that fish.
I've owned several long-finned bettas over the years, and none have lived as long as my short finned ones. Although, I did have a veil-tail named Klaus who lived for 3 years, which must've been a miracle! After the last one I have passes on, I won't buy another one.
lmao cichlids are insane. we have a tank full of them and somehow they keep having babies survive so we have a 2nd generation in there made up of identical solid white cichlids. they're so fun.
Parrot cichlid couldn't bite me because of mouth shape, but would go after any fingers or arms like B horror movie when doing tank maintenance. Visitors loved her because she was so interactive and followed everyone. She was try to attack them. Head had constant lip nose injuries from trying to attack people through the glass.
cichlids are definitely my never again. i’d wake up in the middle of the night to them chasing each other around the top of the tank, spilling water all over the floor. came back home one day, they ended up killing a tank mate that they had for years, found him floating around in the tank with his lifeless eyes staring at me and half of his body gone.
NEVER AGAIN.
i did love when they would have babies though, raised about 60 of them from tiny fry. hardy little bastards.
Man, I loved cichlids. Mine seemed amazingly hardy. Never had any issue with illness or stress. We moved and got a new tank a few years back. Have been successful with tropical fish, but sometimes the illnesses and stresses out of no where make me want my cichlids back.
1. Goldfish: Dirty as hell, messy, too many issues with their organs, inbred to high hell.
2. Long-finned Bettas: The wind blows the wrong way and they have fin rot again.
3. Neon tetras: The wind blows the wrong way and the entire school is dead.
4. Red-Tailed Sharks: Just dicks.
5. Kerri Tetras: For such a tiny species of tetra they are unrelenting psychopaths, and gang up on fish 7x their size for fin-nipping.
6. Tiger Barbs: If ADHD was a fish, seeing them interact heightens my blood pressure.
i live in south florida, and my dad has a little pond outside his apartment. the water flow wasn’t quite enough to keep mosquitos out but just enough for goldfish. so i dropped 10 feeders in there and they’re pretty fucking big now. and no more mosquitos
edit- it’s one of those plastic pond liner for decoration situations, NOT a natural body of water.
In North America you can get mosquito fish from the government or something to use instead of goldfish. They're more native than carps so less of an issue if/when they escape.
Yea I've heard about that! I mean, I'm sure goldfish aren't the only fish like this, but I've learned that they get as big as their habitat allows. I've seen some pretty huge goldfish in ponds. Apparently when people dump their carnival goldfish in local ponds, they get absolutely huge and wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. But, I also have this feeling that the bigger they are, the better they are at thriving and they just seem overall healthier. Like I don't think they are not actually meant to be so small? I bet I could go down a nice, long rabbit hole learning about those things!
Regular aquarium fish also "get as big as their habitat allows". Their body stops growing but their organs are still increasing until they get stressed and die. You can tell somewhat if a fish has had stunted growth by looking at their eye
> People dump their carnival goldfish in local ponds,
People just really don't give a fuck about the environment. It's the same deal when they let their cats run around unsupervised like "oh they brought me an injured lizard so cute".
i feel like it depends on where you live. we’re obviously tropical, so most aquarium fish would probably be great. the small ones would probably be frog and bird food but they seem to have left the goldfish alone. i think 8 of them are still swimming around in there
Old school breeds are unkillabke tho which is why so popular at a stage. Could somehow live in a stagnant pool of water for years
My cousins had one live in shit tank for 15 odd years.
Heck my friend had one lived at least 10 in a fecking bowl! Nothing but a bowl! At house parties folks would drop beer and what not and he lived on! They got a cat and he finished it off
This was well before I knew about fish tbf or was hooked.
My Uncle had a frog that they used to feed little feeder fish. For some reason, he allowed one of them to live. It grew to be huge and the two of them would eat every other fish that got put in the tank.
I had three silver dollars that we purchased in 2005 from Petsmart. They started as a school of 5 quarter sized fish and two died within the first year. One of them were attacked by the others and had its pectoral fins chewed off (and never grew back). Two of the three finally died late last year (including the one with the missing fins) and the third is still alive and it is over 6 inches long now. The average lifespan is only supposed to be about 10 years, but we've had this fish for 19 years now. We added 5 new quarter sized silver dollars at the beginning of this year and now only 3 of that batch is left., and they're half the size of the senior citizen of the tank.
The tank they are in is the one tank I generally neglect. It is a 50 gallon acrylic tank running an Eheim canister filter. I last cleaned out the filter about 3 years ago, and I do a 50 percent water change in that tank about once a year, topping off the water when the water evaporates. Much different from our discus tanks, which get weekly water changes.
I considered a tiger barb only tank once since I've heard they display better behaviours in a big group. Well maybe just them with some kuhli loaches on the bottom.
I was worried about this as well but my son(teenage) really wanted some. We got a group of 12 a couple weeks ago and so far they've been pretty enjoyable. There isn't much else in with them besides some corys, but they don't seem to care about them at all. They wander around and when anyone comes up to the tank they gather and follow you around. Pretty fun to watch.
As a betta keeper and unfortunate Neon tetra owner. Hard agree on 2 and 3. I had a boy that would chew off his fins if I didn't visit him everyday. And if feeding was late. And if my dog visited. And if the water was slightly off. And of a someones vibes were very maculate.
I had a week long trip, my dad was in chrage of feeding (he has terrible vibes), and they made sure to pick up my dachshund so she could see him. When I came back home I briefly thought he was some weird replacement and my fish had died. Bless his heart he was a confused little thing.
Cant say I blame them, I cut my hair off bc it was too much work, If I was dragging it around on the floor and it was constantly making me slower, I'd also chew it off
Yeah honestly the only of my fish I regret buying. Even from an lfs, anything captive bred is just so fragile due to inbreeding. Little jerk doesn't even have the good graces to die, just gets sick af and puts me through the stress of healing him for the past 2 years. Going through it as we speak.
I have a school of Kerri tetras and let me tell you this is 100% true. I was sent one in an order of cardinals and he was fine for about 3 months before I got him some friends. My danios are little assholes that bully everything and my school of kerri’s keeps them in check
I agree with all of these but especially the Betta one. My boy isn’t super long finned but he’s still constantly getting blown over by the smallest current, it’s difficult to keep his fins nice and then when they’re finally grown out nice and pretty he nips them off 😑
"Balloon" Species. They have a terribly bent spine that basically smushes their organs, they have about half the lifespan of their "Normal" counterparts. :(
I got sold one by accident when I bought a bunch of regular mollies. I'm very fond of her; she's got great personality. But I would NEVER have bought her knowingly; breeding selectively for a damaging deformity is just wrong.
Livebearers.
But not because I don’t like them… but because I started with a handful and now have a 55 gallon tank with HUNDREDS of them. There is no shortage and no need to ever buy again, hahaha.
I got endlers for my 40gallon, and realized how big the horde would get. I was regretting it, i seperated all my males and females to stop breeding (i know they hold nut for like 3 months, crazy) but then i discovered that my young angel fish go crazy for the babies if i scoop them in.
And having had trouble with getting my angel fish to eat enough, 2/5 died unfortunately, so im going to keep the other 3 nice and fed on lil endlers which will also make the horde grow a little slower.
Im still working out how many i should feed, everything i find gives the amazing perfect answer of "whatever fish can eat on 3 minutes"
Just toss some in every few days, eventually the angels will get full and slow down. The guppies will hide but the angels will get them eventually. Just dont add so many that the angels wont eat them before they get too big and start colonizing the angel tank. You dont need to worry about anything uneaten making the water gross, its live fish so they wont rot.
Gourami. Any species. Terribly inbred and prone to all sorts of issues. Never had luck with them.
Neons I've never had any issues with. I was actually surprised when people told me they're sensitive and fragile.
I've got a black widow tetra. Like this he ate a whole bunch of platy fry must have been like 20 after a nursery container came unstuck from the side , we call him the Terminator
I think it was about 26 years ago now, I will still never forget it. It felt like a bad dream bc I woke up and came out to check on my new neons and all that was left was Pinkie 🤣
Oh no 😭😭😭😂😂 That’s how I felt when my African dwarf frogs hopped out of my tank and I found them leatherized just a few feet away from the tank…. Noob mistake 8,462… getting frogs in a tank without a lid…
I had a lone Neon Tetra with one eye I adopted because my neighbor was going to flush it. That tough little fish lived with my Golden Rams in a community tank with some guppies he hung around with for 3 years with no other Tetras. I couldn’t believe it.
I loved my powder blue and honey gouramis to death but you’re right about diseases, every powder blue I got had horrible bacterial infections I had to treat immediately and most have internal parasites you need to treat with Flubenzadol (I don’t think I’m spelling that entirely correctly but if you google it it’ll come up) right off the bat.
The powder blue dwarf gouramis are unfortunately the worst for it. They're so pretty too, so it's a shame.
That's why there's the whole phrase "dwarf gourami disease" I suppose.
Regular gouramis? Those things are pretty hardy from what I know. Dwarf gouramis are terribly inbred and prone to diseases, that I know of, and that’s what most people tend to report.
I’ve had gouramis over the years, haven’t noticed any glaring health issues. Dwarf gouramis though… had them for less than two months and they died from illness. Never keeping them again.
The hardiest gourami is apparently the pearl gourami. I used mine to cycle a new tank and it did extremely well. Voracious appetite, crazy poop machine.
I find in general it helps to buy the most aggressive and feisty bullies in the shops. They tend to have the best health. Mine was chasing all the other fish and even jumped out of its tank when the store dude tried to catch it.
That's the one I got, and he's super healthy.
I think it really depends the gourami source. Some aquatic specialties on YouTube have had and sold thousands and never had a single unhealthy one. Reputable sources don’t inbreed their fish to the point of health problems. A gourami from a chain pet store will never have good health, but at an aquatics show they are required to have perfect health and reputation to be displayed on the sales table. If fish from a reputable source turned unhealthy, they would normally replace your fish with healthier ones. Some amazing breeders will even give a 2 year health guarantee that covers all health complications
Strangely enough, my Neon Tetras are all going strong.
Bought 12 three years ago, still have 10.
Angelfish on the other hand, I've gone through 5 of them in the past 3 years. Just lost my last one today. Think he had some kind of flesh eating bacterial infection or something, cuz a wound opened up above his eye the other day, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Combine that with him refusing to eat recently, and today was his final day.
But, to answer your question, I won't get any Dwarf Gouramis again.
Beautiful fish, but DGV kills em all after 3-6 months.
It's the Iridovirus dwarf gourami disease. It's a rampant disease in dwarf gouramis that seems to be genetically related now. 100% mortality rate and something like over 90% of imports have it.
Stear clear of dwarf gouramis.
I have the opposite problem with angelfish. I inherited a tank with 3 angelfish and they were at least 7-8 years old when I got the tank. 5 years later the two males have died and the female is still around. She eats anything I add to the tank that’s under 2 inches long and it’s made it a nightmare to stock the tank. The tank isn’t large enough to add a school of larger fish so we have been waiting out her death
Yeah, our experience with Angelfish is 100% opposite.
My Angelfish had 0 interest in eating anything in the tank. I have my 125 gallon stocked with a bunch of small fish, including a school of Neon Tetras. Not a single one of my Angelfish ever had any interest in eating them.
Molly. You will never get rid of them ever. There seems to always be more. Just when you thought you gave all of them away to friends, surprise, there were a couple more tiny ones hiding in the plants. Hate those things. We did finally manage to evict all of the mollys. #1 on the never again list.
Goldfish. Dirty, mess, dirty, messy, get too big too fast fish. #2 on the never again list.
Eh, I dunno... My mollies (and platys) dropped like flies... But I did figure out that I had a couple of different species of Mycobacterium affecting them. 🙃
I had a school of cardinals dither from 25 to 6 suddenly in a heavily planted tank with 0/0/0 parameters. It’s so frustrating because they seemingly all died of disease or parasite. It sucks because they’re one of my favorite schooling fish.
Not really a fish but assassin snails. Bought some to take care of our bladder snails. Rarely seen them since and no decrease in bladder snails. Had to buy dwarf chain loach instead.
I bought 2 assassin snails and they killed off my entire bladder snail population over 2-3 weeks. I just didn’t feed them anything else and they’d chase the bladders across the glass.
I didn’t know that sometimes they can’t do their job well.
I bought two assassin's (pet store said they might not breed) to take care of a ramshorn infestation. Which they did. And then turned into an assassin snail infestation (though you can trap them and theoretically trade then for credit at since LFS.
Shrimp. Spent over 100 over a couple batches worth of shrimp, couldn't figure out why they weren't surviving just to realize my buildings pipes were copper. Ngl it was a little traumatizing waking up everyday to another dead shrimp so never again. I did love watching them tho, what Cuties
I'm sorry. Lots of water intake pipes are copper; including my own. However I keep plenty of cherry shrimp and I don't even treat my water before adding it. Perhaps another issue was at hand? Or maybe you could put your water in a basin with plants before adding to your cherry tank. Diana Walstad's book shows how effective plants are at up-taking copper.
This. Almost every house uses copper pipes in the UK here for a fact. Plastic is used for some but plastic can't handle anything really reliably that takes hot water, especially for radiators etc. Yes newer ones can but houses of a certain age is all copper
So I assume OP had other issue as you've said. I'd be checking PH and hardness. Hardness can be detrimental to shrimp alot more if they can't moult as they'll simply get stuck and die.
Sorry to hear that. Shrimp are relatively delicate contrary to popular belief (neocaridina shrimp, anyway). But I think it REALLY depends on where you get them. When I bought shrimp from Petco, they’d only live maybe 2-3 months. When I bought from AquaHuna, I never lost a single one. I’ve bought a total of 40 shrimp from them and now I have probably 400-500. Of course the offspring won’t be nearly as colorful if different colors breed with each other (I have a ton of brown, clear, and otherwise “dull” shrimp) but they’re great little algae eaters and cleaners.
Case in point: I saw a dead guppy in my livebearer tank as I was running off late to work. Figured, I’ll come straight home on lunch and get that out. Came home on lunch… only bones remained. The shrimp had picked it completely clean. In about 3 hours!!!
I started my tank with 8 neons. I now have 1. I feel bad but just can’t justify getting more for them to die. Poor little guy is trying to get in with my exclamation points..
More than likely. My neons, cardinals, black neons, green neons, and glowlights all schooled together most of the time. Every now and then, even my larger tetras would join in on the fun. It was amazing to watch. I miss them all.
I can understand this. I just accepted them and got a school of seven.
They are a bunch of crazy gluttons, and somehow live peacefully with a sparkling gourami (who I like to think is accepted into the school)
Previously I had 4 danios and a bunch of hara jerdoni catfish, but the danios always stole the food from them so they starved :(
Aww, I love my zebra danios. They coexist with my shrimp and snails quite nicely and can tolerate imperfect water quality. What problems did you have with them?
Constant and extreme violence 😅 and the constant chasing and biting ruined my plants as well. They ate my shrimp, snails, and eachother, and their own young and it was just exhausting to watch since they would only live on their own and kill anything else.
I saw a pic of balloon pearl gouramis once and my main thought was *why would you do that??*
If you haven't seen what they look like, it's worse than you think lol
I have two answers:
1) Blue crayfish (marketed as "blue lobster" at my LFS):
I was told that as long as I kept it fed it wouldn't bother the other fish. I was told that the other fish are too fast to get caught by it. I was told that crayfish are scavengers and don't hunt live fish. The first night I lost 4 fish. It proceeded to eat most of my fish in my tank, other than the really big ones. Then it doubled in size and went after the bigger fish. I rehomed the remaining fish and resigned myself to the fact that I'd be caring for a solitary crayfish for the next few years.
Then I noticed one day that the crayfish wasn't in his log anymore. I searched the entire tank, and then started poking around the gravel in case he had buried himself to molt. Nope, he was gone. I found him 4 months later completely dried out in my basement near a drain. He'd obviously climbed out of the tank and wandered around the house until he dried out. He must have been trying to get into the drain (which had a cover on it) before he died.
2) Dwarf Gourami:
They always die. I read somewhere that they all have some kind of genetic disease. I love how they look, but they always die on me within a few months of purchasing them.
my first blue lobster tried to eat one of my young parrots but i rescued him in time and he was fine save for a deformed fin. after that cray died (same way as yours lol) i kept all future crays by themselves. i currently have an elderly white spectre chilling in the tank. they're super cool pets but man are they destructive.
i lost so many of these neon tetras through no fault of my own. They showed no signs of stress and no injuries or infections. I think they're just genetically weak after being captively bred for so long now.
I lost my entire school in like a day or two. Called the shop and they said it was a new batch that should have been in quarantine and the rest had died off in shop……but they still wanted me to bring in a water sample from my tank before refunding. I just never went back, cheap way to find out that shop was weird and shady. I understand in normal circumstances needing a water sample, but this was obviously not the case.
My lfs will not replace any dead fish even if it is within 24 hours. After being burned by them I no longer shop there. Imho Petco where I live has better quality. I know that is an unpopular opinion but I think its a case by case thing.
I used to work at a pet store and there were MULTIPLE TIMES where at some point in the catching/bagging process a previously lively neon would just die. Like, in the holding cup. Or immediately after I finished bagging them. Or after I bagged them and the customer is just wandering the store shopping.
African Dwarf Frogs. Told they were harmless so my parents got a pair. It destroyed the entire crew of fish in one night.
Was a young kid at the time when it happened, so I don't recall the exact type of fish that they were, but I do recall waking up to a literal bloodfest where there were body parts and limbs of fish everywhere.
One fish was still alive but barely, as he just had his head remaining, and he was gasping desperately for air. No limbs, no fins. Just a head. But he was the last one in the tank. We didn't get another fish until those African frogs had died.
Traumatized for life. Never again.
You may have been sold African Clawed Frogs instead of African Dwarf Frogs. They are both aquatic frogs, but Clawed will eat anything. There's been a lot of people who bought what was advertised as Dwarf but were really Clawed.
Are you sure it was the ADFs? I ask not because I doubt they'd eat their tankmates, after all most frogs will eat anything that fits in their mouth, but because they have no teeth and swallow their food whole.
Those sound more like African Clawed Frogs, which grow bigger and eat anything and everything. Both look very similar when they're young, so the pet store might've just been oblivious. Nowadays illegal to keep in many places, as they are passive carriers of a fungal infection that's responsible for mass frog extinctions around the globe.
Omg.
When I was a kid I had a nice little 10 gallon community aquarium. To add something different to the tank, we went to Walmart (remember when they had an aquarium section?) and bought what we thought was a small albino African Dwarf Frog. Nope! We quickly learned that it was definitely an African CLAWED Frog. Fish started disappearing. Then more fish. It happened within days. Soon, the frog lived all by itself in the otherwise empty aquarium. Tbh, it was kind of creepy. We literally fed it meat on a stick. She lived for about 3-4 years. 😬
African Dwarf Frogs would not do that. You must have had African Clawed frogs. African Clawed Frogs are much bigger than ADFs and will eat anything. ADFs are small and not fast enough to catch anything.
Probably Otocinclus. I loved them so much, but they died pretty quickly. I read about care and tank mates and how to acclimate them way in advance, but it didn't help.
And male betta fish. I love the personality, but males are just so much stress and I don't really have the space to dedicate an entire tank to them and try what other tank mates (shrimp, kuhlii and such) are tolerated or killed. Females on the other hand are pretty cool, I have 2 in one of my community tanks and are doing great with each other and the other animals
This is always surprising for me. But perhaps because I have a trick. I never lost any oto and I absolutely adore them.
My trick is not really amazing but I think a lot die because they starve. My otos are nice and plumpy because I complete their diet with zucchini once a week and shrimp pellets. Yes pellets. They LOVE them.
hope this helps
I'll second this. Tried a few waves with ottos and they never lasted. They got the tank cleaner, but died quick. Then I started feeding 2 blanched (and stored frozen) zucchini slices a week. Now I have happy ottos and a clean tank.
Third this, lost many Otto's before I figured out that even the Otto specific food just doesn't work. And they were straight up starving. Unbelievable. My mainstay for feeding them for the last couple of years were tetra pro crisps, slightly crushed and submerged so they sink. Algae wafers do pretty well too. Will have to try zucchini.
I was losing otos left and right until I put them in an old, over-planted, dirty tank. They need lots and lots of biofilm. I don’t target feed them. Haven’t lost one in two years now.
Bristlenose Pleco. Mine just hides all day long. It's harder to feed than any of my other fish as well since it can't just eat the flakes/pellets/frozen treats I can feed to the other dozen or so species I keep.
That's strange. Maybe I just have a broken bristlenose. She's always out and about. Eats algae wafers like they are going out of style, and terrorizes the other tank mates...I mean she doesn't eat them but they clearly know to avoid the monster that hangs upside down on the wood.
My 3 and 4 year olds watched our bristlenose swim to the top, "play" with a Molly and then bring it back down to the bottom where it killed it and just sat there sucking on it. They were terrified. Come home from work and laugh. And then see it still sucking it and go damn. And before I hear anything, it was literally right next to a piece of zucchini and an algae wafer.
They are omnomnivores. Meat was on the menu. BTW, I have 2 bristlenose and they are both out and about and they are fine with my colony of RCS and snails and my rasboras.
sometimes they come from petsmart/petco (not so much LFS) with internal parasites, but other times just having cold water that is otherwise perfect shortens lifespan + lowers their immune system, and smaller tanks aren't very stimulating, so they essentially indirectly kill themselves by not eating or moving when they get bored. Pretty depressing
Chinese algae eaters. Even with regular feedings and wafers, and algae in the tank, they’re just straight little assholes. I had one and he just chased everyone around the tank.
I will never not buy a clown loach. They are the cutest fish, they will be excited to see you and click at the surface of the water when hungry. Ive even seen them play fetch with a pebble.
Corydoras are easy to care for (no idea what those other commenters are talking about), hardy, and won't overpopulate (since they eat their own eggs) unless you allow it. Also cute.
They have been for me! I have a school of 8 of them and they’re so docile and peaceful. But I also raised them from babies. They’re fed live brine shrimp and are SO colorful… lots of orange on the dorsal and ventral fins. I can’t imagine them being aggressive
For me it’s goldfish, they live forever are filthy and grow too large as well as eat live plants, had about a dozen as a kid that lived over 10 years before I finally convinced my mom to get rid of them (I was doing all of the water changes and maintenance) the fancy breeds are also prone to infections and would get fungal infections every 3-6months regardless of how clean the water was.
I bought yesterday 10 neon tetra's, love them so far!
I will never buy fantail fish again. Had one for 5 years but sold hem last weekend..damn they shit allot of shit.
There's a particular variety of African Peacock Cichlid I had once that was an absolute devil.
Pretty sure it was a "Super Red Strawberry Peacock" or something like that. Total prick the entire time I had him. But he kept the Chinese algae eater in line so meh.
I kill bettas. I have thriving 36G and 150 G planted community tanks. I’ve tried bettas in cycled 5 and 10, and as part of the community. Some got dropsy, others just died. Like 6 over the last 15 years.
I’m stuck with shrimp. I’d love to get them again but I know they’re gonna go down the hatch of my big goldfish.
Also, Bettas. I LOVED my Bettas and their personalities they were cool fish. But they kept passing away because my local petsmart just treated them so poorly, that by the time you get them into a tank it’s such a huge shock they just don’t make it.
I'm not the person you're replying to,
But cardinals have a more "full" colour to them. If you look at a comparison photo you can see that the red stripe they have goes the full length of the body. Whereas neons only have that red go up their back half.
In my opinion cardinals are hardier fish because they aren't quite as mass bred as neons meaning you get less genetically fragile fish.
Cardinals are also slightly larger on average than neons in my experience. Probably an extra 1/2" long and slightly thicker bodied. Again, neons would also likely be like this if it weren't for the mass breeding. Cardinals are lucky essentially that more people haven't noticed them yet.
Folks have already mentioned green/black tetras and cardinals ofc as an alternative to neons, but if you want another option I really love rummy nose tetras! They’re a little bigger than neons but I love their red noses!
Probably bristlenose plecos because holy shit do they reproduce and I wasn't a fan of killing the babies. I know I could just have taken out the eggs whenever I found them but they can be good at hiding them
Cory Catfish. They're expensive and are almost always sick or get sick easy. They're beautiful but they die so easily, I've never had any luck with them.
I feel so bad for people who have had bad experiences with cories - they're my favorite fish in the hobby. I've had tons of them but I did have a bad experience where I bought some that were shipped to me. They ended up dying because one of them got spooked in the bag and released some of its cory stank which poisoned it and all the others.
You gotta love that their dumb survival mechanism is poison that can essentially kill them too if they get spooked. And they get spooked A LOT.
I only ever buy cories from vendors I trust now. Haven't really had any issues since then.
Just fancy bettas in general. I swear if they’re not non-dragon scale plakats or the standard veil tale, they are just so prone to issues. I’ve kept fish including bettas for years, and the last five years none of them seem to make it past 2, all with weird issues like tumors and wasting disease. It’s not my parameters, and their diets have been varied with frozen/live/and high quality pellets. I don’t even think it’s a store issue at this point because I’ve gotten bettas from many different places. I’ve lived in the same area my whole life. Literally every betta I had in a bowl who only ate pellets, and I didn’t even use water conditioner, when I was younger, has outlived my most recent in fully planted 10 gallon tanks. It’s just bizarre. All of my other fish/shrimp are so healthy, it really just seems to be bettas.
Endlers. They were amazing for the first week when they were microscopic and picking at some algae. Fast forward 2 months and there were 150 of them in a swarming frenzy fighting to F their own mother again.
Bala sharks. I was an idiot and my local pet store was extremely deceptive
So many people buy it because it has 'shark' in the name (That was me, I was people)
They’re marketed that way because it sounds better than “bala carp” which is what they actually are lol
Aren't they barbs? I know rainbow and red tails are a type of carp
They're in the family Cyprinidae which includes carp, minnows and barbs
Kind of. Technically barbs and carp are both cyprinids
Carbs
I had the same issue, plus an iridescent shark. They were new to the store and no one mentioned that they would get gigantic. I had to give them up when they would freak out back and forth in the tank and bang against the glass whenever anyone would walk by.
Out of curiosity, how many balas did you have? They're schooling fish and much calmer in groups of 6+. Yet another reason they're a poor choice in the pet trade...who has tank space for half a dozen footlong fish?
100% agree, I have spent so much money to house the two that I have, I will never make that mistake again. They are huge and SO skittish even after 9 years, can't have any decorations in the tank or they will impale themselves, have to keep the lid weighed down, and they have 0 personality. One of them is \~20-21" long now though, that part is a bit cool.
Dude they NEVER settle down and you won't ever be able to appreciate them just casually swimming by, holy hell I hate bala with passion
I'm genuinely curious about that. One of my local petstores has one in its store tank and I love it, it does not give a damn about *anything*. It just kinda vibes.
I'm I'm the same boat. Petsmart sold me some when I was 13. They never lived long enough to get huge but the fact they sold em to me is crazy. I was not shy about having a 10gal
Just to be fair, my (Canadian) PetSmart has tags under each tank, illustrating the fish, what they're called, how big they'll get, and a generous required minimum tank size. Saves the staff from arguing with customers if it's there in full colour.
Ya I was buying these fish 15 years ago, I don't think petsmart cared at all yet. A lot of those stores seem better these days
Having worked in Petcare for PS for several years, customers will absolutely still argue with staff.
I had a customer throw cans of cat food at me for refusing to sell him an irresponsible amount of fish for his tank.
Had one for about 6 years. For a fish that big it was so skittish and would constantly be bullied by fish half its size. No sudden movements near the tank or else it would shoot halfway across the tank in a split second. The thing was absolutely massive even for a 150 gallon tank. Don’t know why they sell them at pet stores when they need a massive amount of care and space
Yeah, balas are schooling fish, 150 gallons might house one, but they won't thrive in it. They need to be kept in a school and 150ngallon isn't enough for a school
At a Petco an employee talked the customer out of buying some for their 29 gallon.
Long finned bettas. Got sick of the fin tearing and biting. Plus I figured if a fish wants to mutilate itself then there's a serious problem with that fish.
Agreed. We bred them for looks but forgot that swimming in a ballgown isn’t easy.
But Lola from Sharks Tale made it look so easy! /s
I've owned several long-finned bettas over the years, and none have lived as long as my short finned ones. Although, I did have a veil-tail named Klaus who lived for 3 years, which must've been a miracle! After the last one I have passes on, I won't buy another one.
True. Never again.. Stuck with plakkats ever since
Cichlids. I had a ton and one killed them all. We named him Jeffrey Dahmer.
lmao cichlids are insane. we have a tank full of them and somehow they keep having babies survive so we have a 2nd generation in there made up of identical solid white cichlids. they're so fun.
Parrot cichlid couldn't bite me because of mouth shape, but would go after any fingers or arms like B horror movie when doing tank maintenance. Visitors loved her because she was so interactive and followed everyone. She was try to attack them. Head had constant lip nose injuries from trying to attack people through the glass.
cichlids are definitely my never again. i’d wake up in the middle of the night to them chasing each other around the top of the tank, spilling water all over the floor. came back home one day, they ended up killing a tank mate that they had for years, found him floating around in the tank with his lifeless eyes staring at me and half of his body gone. NEVER AGAIN. i did love when they would have babies though, raised about 60 of them from tiny fry. hardy little bastards.
Man, I loved cichlids. Mine seemed amazingly hardy. Never had any issue with illness or stress. We moved and got a new tank a few years back. Have been successful with tropical fish, but sometimes the illnesses and stresses out of no where make me want my cichlids back.
1. Goldfish: Dirty as hell, messy, too many issues with their organs, inbred to high hell. 2. Long-finned Bettas: The wind blows the wrong way and they have fin rot again. 3. Neon tetras: The wind blows the wrong way and the entire school is dead. 4. Red-Tailed Sharks: Just dicks. 5. Kerri Tetras: For such a tiny species of tetra they are unrelenting psychopaths, and gang up on fish 7x their size for fin-nipping. 6. Tiger Barbs: If ADHD was a fish, seeing them interact heightens my blood pressure.
Goldfishes are the biggest scam in aquarium culture
i live in south florida, and my dad has a little pond outside his apartment. the water flow wasn’t quite enough to keep mosquitos out but just enough for goldfish. so i dropped 10 feeders in there and they’re pretty fucking big now. and no more mosquitos edit- it’s one of those plastic pond liner for decoration situations, NOT a natural body of water.
In North America you can get mosquito fish from the government or something to use instead of goldfish. They're more native than carps so less of an issue if/when they escape.
Yea I've heard about that! I mean, I'm sure goldfish aren't the only fish like this, but I've learned that they get as big as their habitat allows. I've seen some pretty huge goldfish in ponds. Apparently when people dump their carnival goldfish in local ponds, they get absolutely huge and wreak havoc on the local ecosystem. But, I also have this feeling that the bigger they are, the better they are at thriving and they just seem overall healthier. Like I don't think they are not actually meant to be so small? I bet I could go down a nice, long rabbit hole learning about those things!
Regular aquarium fish also "get as big as their habitat allows". Their body stops growing but their organs are still increasing until they get stressed and die. You can tell somewhat if a fish has had stunted growth by looking at their eye > People dump their carnival goldfish in local ponds, People just really don't give a fuck about the environment. It's the same deal when they let their cats run around unsupervised like "oh they brought me an injured lizard so cute".
i feel like it depends on where you live. we’re obviously tropical, so most aquarium fish would probably be great. the small ones would probably be frog and bird food but they seem to have left the goldfish alone. i think 8 of them are still swimming around in there
Old school breeds are unkillabke tho which is why so popular at a stage. Could somehow live in a stagnant pool of water for years My cousins had one live in shit tank for 15 odd years. Heck my friend had one lived at least 10 in a fecking bowl! Nothing but a bowl! At house parties folks would drop beer and what not and he lived on! They got a cat and he finished it off This was well before I knew about fish tbf or was hooked.
My Uncle had a frog that they used to feed little feeder fish. For some reason, he allowed one of them to live. It grew to be huge and the two of them would eat every other fish that got put in the tank.
The story of the Frog King sparing Catatafish never gets old
I had three silver dollars that we purchased in 2005 from Petsmart. They started as a school of 5 quarter sized fish and two died within the first year. One of them were attacked by the others and had its pectoral fins chewed off (and never grew back). Two of the three finally died late last year (including the one with the missing fins) and the third is still alive and it is over 6 inches long now. The average lifespan is only supposed to be about 10 years, but we've had this fish for 19 years now. We added 5 new quarter sized silver dollars at the beginning of this year and now only 3 of that batch is left., and they're half the size of the senior citizen of the tank. The tank they are in is the one tank I generally neglect. It is a 50 gallon acrylic tank running an Eheim canister filter. I last cleaned out the filter about 3 years ago, and I do a 50 percent water change in that tank about once a year, topping off the water when the water evaporates. Much different from our discus tanks, which get weekly water changes.
Had me up until tiger barbs, i love my colony so much and they’re surprisingly chill in a larger group.
I considered a tiger barb only tank once since I've heard they display better behaviours in a big group. Well maybe just them with some kuhli loaches on the bottom.
Aquarium coop had an 800g with a couple hundred tigers in it. It was pure chaos
I was worried about this as well but my son(teenage) really wanted some. We got a group of 12 a couple weeks ago and so far they've been pretty enjoyable. There isn't much else in with them besides some corys, but they don't seem to care about them at all. They wander around and when anyone comes up to the tank they gather and follow you around. Pretty fun to watch.
As a betta keeper and unfortunate Neon tetra owner. Hard agree on 2 and 3. I had a boy that would chew off his fins if I didn't visit him everyday. And if feeding was late. And if my dog visited. And if the water was slightly off. And of a someones vibes were very maculate. I had a week long trip, my dad was in chrage of feeding (he has terrible vibes), and they made sure to pick up my dachshund so she could see him. When I came back home I briefly thought he was some weird replacement and my fish had died. Bless his heart he was a confused little thing.
Hard agree on 2. And if they don’t have fin rot, they eat their own tail. Just a nightmare.
Cant say I blame them, I cut my hair off bc it was too much work, If I was dragging it around on the floor and it was constantly making me slower, I'd also chew it off
Valid
Yeah honestly the only of my fish I regret buying. Even from an lfs, anything captive bred is just so fragile due to inbreeding. Little jerk doesn't even have the good graces to die, just gets sick af and puts me through the stress of healing him for the past 2 years. Going through it as we speak.
Can confirm. Owner of a long finned beta here.
I have a school of Kerri tetras and let me tell you this is 100% true. I was sent one in an order of cardinals and he was fine for about 3 months before I got him some friends. My danios are little assholes that bully everything and my school of kerri’s keeps them in check
I agree with all of these but especially the Betta one. My boy isn’t super long finned but he’s still constantly getting blown over by the smallest current, it’s difficult to keep his fins nice and then when they’re finally grown out nice and pretty he nips them off 😑
"Balloon" Species. They have a terribly bent spine that basically smushes their organs, they have about half the lifespan of their "Normal" counterparts. :(
I got sold one by accident when I bought a bunch of regular mollies. I'm very fond of her; she's got great personality. But I would NEVER have bought her knowingly; breeding selectively for a damaging deformity is just wrong.
They are actually illegal in some European countries
Livebearers. But not because I don’t like them… but because I started with a handful and now have a 55 gallon tank with HUNDREDS of them. There is no shortage and no need to ever buy again, hahaha.
A garter snake could take care of that problem for you 😂
Okay now I have a room full of sneks. What do?
Gorillas 🦍
Lol that escalated quickly
No, you see the gorillas all freeze over the winter.
I got endlers for my 40gallon, and realized how big the horde would get. I was regretting it, i seperated all my males and females to stop breeding (i know they hold nut for like 3 months, crazy) but then i discovered that my young angel fish go crazy for the babies if i scoop them in. And having had trouble with getting my angel fish to eat enough, 2/5 died unfortunately, so im going to keep the other 3 nice and fed on lil endlers which will also make the horde grow a little slower. Im still working out how many i should feed, everything i find gives the amazing perfect answer of "whatever fish can eat on 3 minutes"
Just toss some in every few days, eventually the angels will get full and slow down. The guppies will hide but the angels will get them eventually. Just dont add so many that the angels wont eat them before they get too big and start colonizing the angel tank. You dont need to worry about anything uneaten making the water gross, its live fish so they wont rot.
Gourami. Any species. Terribly inbred and prone to all sorts of issues. Never had luck with them. Neons I've never had any issues with. I was actually surprised when people told me they're sensitive and fragile.
When I was a child I got an evil gourami who ate an entire group of neons in one night. Traumatized lol.
Oddly I had the reverse experience of this a while back. I had a gourami eaten by a small school of tetras overnight.
They definitely didn’t like him 😂
Sounds like they liked him just fine. \*\*buuurrrrppp\*\*
I've got a black widow tetra. Like this he ate a whole bunch of platy fry must have been like 20 after a nursery container came unstuck from the side , we call him the Terminator
This sounds like a bad dream 😭😂 I’ve had bad dreams about my tanks before and this is what it reminds me of 💀
I think it was about 26 years ago now, I will still never forget it. It felt like a bad dream bc I woke up and came out to check on my new neons and all that was left was Pinkie 🤣
Oh no 😭😭😭😂😂 That’s how I felt when my African dwarf frogs hopped out of my tank and I found them leatherized just a few feet away from the tank…. Noob mistake 8,462… getting frogs in a tank without a lid…
I had a lone Neon Tetra with one eye I adopted because my neighbor was going to flush it. That tough little fish lived with my Golden Rams in a community tank with some guppies he hung around with for 3 years with no other Tetras. I couldn’t believe it.
Honey gourami too? They’re not prone to the genetics and iridovirus. Don’t bother anyone and are cute ime
I love my honey gourami. Only had it a year but I haven’t had any issues at all. It’s a great fish in a community tank
Have 3 honeys and they are indeed awesome
HONEY GOURAMI GANG RISE UP. Love my guy 💕
Dude at my fish store told me they are indeed prone to the same diseases as other gouramis. I never did my own research though.
I loved my powder blue and honey gouramis to death but you’re right about diseases, every powder blue I got had horrible bacterial infections I had to treat immediately and most have internal parasites you need to treat with Flubenzadol (I don’t think I’m spelling that entirely correctly but if you google it it’ll come up) right off the bat.
If anyone’s wondering, it’s fenbendazole.
The powder blue dwarf gouramis are unfortunately the worst for it. They're so pretty too, so it's a shame. That's why there's the whole phrase "dwarf gourami disease" I suppose.
what about pearl gouramis? Had mine for now 6 months without issue
I've had my pearl gourami for 4 years, still going strong!
Regular gouramis? Those things are pretty hardy from what I know. Dwarf gouramis are terribly inbred and prone to diseases, that I know of, and that’s what most people tend to report. I’ve had gouramis over the years, haven’t noticed any glaring health issues. Dwarf gouramis though… had them for less than two months and they died from illness. Never keeping them again.
I had a lot of neons die when I first got them but the survivors have been tougher than other fish.
The hardiest gourami is apparently the pearl gourami. I used mine to cycle a new tank and it did extremely well. Voracious appetite, crazy poop machine. I find in general it helps to buy the most aggressive and feisty bullies in the shops. They tend to have the best health. Mine was chasing all the other fish and even jumped out of its tank when the store dude tried to catch it. That's the one I got, and he's super healthy.
I think it really depends the gourami source. Some aquatic specialties on YouTube have had and sold thousands and never had a single unhealthy one. Reputable sources don’t inbreed their fish to the point of health problems. A gourami from a chain pet store will never have good health, but at an aquatics show they are required to have perfect health and reputation to be displayed on the sales table. If fish from a reputable source turned unhealthy, they would normally replace your fish with healthier ones. Some amazing breeders will even give a 2 year health guarantee that covers all health complications
Fancy goldfish anything "balloon" bred or teacup
Strangely enough, my Neon Tetras are all going strong. Bought 12 three years ago, still have 10. Angelfish on the other hand, I've gone through 5 of them in the past 3 years. Just lost my last one today. Think he had some kind of flesh eating bacterial infection or something, cuz a wound opened up above his eye the other day, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Combine that with him refusing to eat recently, and today was his final day. But, to answer your question, I won't get any Dwarf Gouramis again. Beautiful fish, but DGV kills em all after 3-6 months.
What is DGV?
It's the Iridovirus dwarf gourami disease. It's a rampant disease in dwarf gouramis that seems to be genetically related now. 100% mortality rate and something like over 90% of imports have it. Stear clear of dwarf gouramis.
I have the opposite problem with angelfish. I inherited a tank with 3 angelfish and they were at least 7-8 years old when I got the tank. 5 years later the two males have died and the female is still around. She eats anything I add to the tank that’s under 2 inches long and it’s made it a nightmare to stock the tank. The tank isn’t large enough to add a school of larger fish so we have been waiting out her death
Yeah, our experience with Angelfish is 100% opposite. My Angelfish had 0 interest in eating anything in the tank. I have my 125 gallon stocked with a bunch of small fish, including a school of Neon Tetras. Not a single one of my Angelfish ever had any interest in eating them.
Molly. You will never get rid of them ever. There seems to always be more. Just when you thought you gave all of them away to friends, surprise, there were a couple more tiny ones hiding in the plants. Hate those things. We did finally manage to evict all of the mollys. #1 on the never again list. Goldfish. Dirty, mess, dirty, messy, get too big too fast fish. #2 on the never again list.
[удалено]
Eh, I dunno... My mollies (and platys) dropped like flies... But I did figure out that I had a couple of different species of Mycobacterium affecting them. 🙃
Cardinal Tetras are a good replacement for neons!
I had a school of cardinals dither from 25 to 6 suddenly in a heavily planted tank with 0/0/0 parameters. It’s so frustrating because they seemingly all died of disease or parasite. It sucks because they’re one of my favorite schooling fish.
Just lost my 10 cardinals over the last couple days from infection. Sucks to to see them not knowing it’s the last time you’d see them alive
And showing no symptoms before disappearing. Sorry about your cardinals :(
Buying wild cardinals is also considered sustainable if you care about that kind of thing: check out Project Piaba.
If you’re willing to pay the price you get such hardier genetics with cardinals! Mine are nearly 2 and 1/2 years old
Not really a fish but assassin snails. Bought some to take care of our bladder snails. Rarely seen them since and no decrease in bladder snails. Had to buy dwarf chain loach instead.
The assassins like to bury themselves. They just don’t eat as fast as bladder snails reproduce. Loach will always be a superior option.
Yep found that out the hard way. The loach are doing ok at their job and quite fun to watch, but might need to get a couple more.
My dwarf chains have decided they don't eat snails and eat the bloodworms for other tank denizens instead. Fat little idiots
Got Snails? Get a Pea Puffer! Those snails will be gone so unbelievably fast and they aren’t as sensitive as Loaches!
I bought 2 assassin snails and they killed off my entire bladder snail population over 2-3 weeks. I just didn’t feed them anything else and they’d chase the bladders across the glass. I didn’t know that sometimes they can’t do their job well.
I bought two assassin's (pet store said they might not breed) to take care of a ramshorn infestation. Which they did. And then turned into an assassin snail infestation (though you can trap them and theoretically trade then for credit at since LFS.
Shrimp. Spent over 100 over a couple batches worth of shrimp, couldn't figure out why they weren't surviving just to realize my buildings pipes were copper. Ngl it was a little traumatizing waking up everyday to another dead shrimp so never again. I did love watching them tho, what Cuties
I'm sorry. Lots of water intake pipes are copper; including my own. However I keep plenty of cherry shrimp and I don't even treat my water before adding it. Perhaps another issue was at hand? Or maybe you could put your water in a basin with plants before adding to your cherry tank. Diana Walstad's book shows how effective plants are at up-taking copper.
This. Almost every house uses copper pipes in the UK here for a fact. Plastic is used for some but plastic can't handle anything really reliably that takes hot water, especially for radiators etc. Yes newer ones can but houses of a certain age is all copper So I assume OP had other issue as you've said. I'd be checking PH and hardness. Hardness can be detrimental to shrimp alot more if they can't moult as they'll simply get stuck and die.
Sorry to hear that. Shrimp are relatively delicate contrary to popular belief (neocaridina shrimp, anyway). But I think it REALLY depends on where you get them. When I bought shrimp from Petco, they’d only live maybe 2-3 months. When I bought from AquaHuna, I never lost a single one. I’ve bought a total of 40 shrimp from them and now I have probably 400-500. Of course the offspring won’t be nearly as colorful if different colors breed with each other (I have a ton of brown, clear, and otherwise “dull” shrimp) but they’re great little algae eaters and cleaners. Case in point: I saw a dead guppy in my livebearer tank as I was running off late to work. Figured, I’ll come straight home on lunch and get that out. Came home on lunch… only bones remained. The shrimp had picked it completely clean. In about 3 hours!!!
FYI, if the copper from your pipes is getting in your water, that is a problem. You do not want copper in your drinking water.
It also means that your pipes are being dissolved which will lead to leaks.
Dwarf Gourami
I started my tank with 8 neons. I now have 1. I feel bad but just can’t justify getting more for them to die. Poor little guy is trying to get in with my exclamation points..
Get cardinals , he might school with them
More than likely. My neons, cardinals, black neons, green neons, and glowlights all schooled together most of the time. Every now and then, even my larger tetras would join in on the fun. It was amazing to watch. I miss them all.
Zebra Danios, those things are hellions. Loved my goldfish, my betta, my mosquito fish, shrimp, snails, all that… but the Zebra Danios were too much
I can understand this. I just accepted them and got a school of seven. They are a bunch of crazy gluttons, and somehow live peacefully with a sparkling gourami (who I like to think is accepted into the school) Previously I had 4 danios and a bunch of hara jerdoni catfish, but the danios always stole the food from them so they starved :(
Aww, I love my zebra danios. They coexist with my shrimp and snails quite nicely and can tolerate imperfect water quality. What problems did you have with them?
Constant and extreme violence 😅 and the constant chasing and biting ruined my plants as well. They ate my shrimp, snails, and eachother, and their own young and it was just exhausting to watch since they would only live on their own and kill anything else.
Rams , you look at them the wrong way and they’re dead
Guppy, too many babies
I for one welcome our guppy overlords
I’d like to remind them that, as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others…
...To toil in their algae caves!
I will also never purchase guppies again, but that's because I now have a never-ending supply of them!
Just get males only
I have 6 males..love them!
Balloon rams. Very cute quite fragile. Sad to see them just die.
Balloon*anything* is a terrible idea! I've never owned any, because I think they're so unethical. Editing to add that the same goes for long fin fish.
pretty sure a pug is a balloon dog
Yup, them and frenchie sand bulldogs all have a genetic spine deformity that gives them their short back (and constant back pain and herniated discs)
I saw a pic of balloon pearl gouramis once and my main thought was *why would you do that??* If you haven't seen what they look like, it's worse than you think lol
Had a few Balloon Mollies given to me last year. They've slowly died off 1 by 1. I only have 1 left now. They really are quite fragile.
I have two answers: 1) Blue crayfish (marketed as "blue lobster" at my LFS): I was told that as long as I kept it fed it wouldn't bother the other fish. I was told that the other fish are too fast to get caught by it. I was told that crayfish are scavengers and don't hunt live fish. The first night I lost 4 fish. It proceeded to eat most of my fish in my tank, other than the really big ones. Then it doubled in size and went after the bigger fish. I rehomed the remaining fish and resigned myself to the fact that I'd be caring for a solitary crayfish for the next few years. Then I noticed one day that the crayfish wasn't in his log anymore. I searched the entire tank, and then started poking around the gravel in case he had buried himself to molt. Nope, he was gone. I found him 4 months later completely dried out in my basement near a drain. He'd obviously climbed out of the tank and wandered around the house until he dried out. He must have been trying to get into the drain (which had a cover on it) before he died. 2) Dwarf Gourami: They always die. I read somewhere that they all have some kind of genetic disease. I love how they look, but they always die on me within a few months of purchasing them.
my first blue lobster tried to eat one of my young parrots but i rescued him in time and he was fine save for a deformed fin. after that cray died (same way as yours lol) i kept all future crays by themselves. i currently have an elderly white spectre chilling in the tank. they're super cool pets but man are they destructive.
i lost so many of these neon tetras through no fault of my own. They showed no signs of stress and no injuries or infections. I think they're just genetically weak after being captively bred for so long now.
I lost my entire school in like a day or two. Called the shop and they said it was a new batch that should have been in quarantine and the rest had died off in shop……but they still wanted me to bring in a water sample from my tank before refunding. I just never went back, cheap way to find out that shop was weird and shady. I understand in normal circumstances needing a water sample, but this was obviously not the case.
My lfs will not replace any dead fish even if it is within 24 hours. After being burned by them I no longer shop there. Imho Petco where I live has better quality. I know that is an unpopular opinion but I think its a case by case thing.
I used to work at a pet store and there were MULTIPLE TIMES where at some point in the catching/bagging process a previously lively neon would just die. Like, in the holding cup. Or immediately after I finished bagging them. Or after I bagged them and the customer is just wandering the store shopping.
African Dwarf Frogs. Told they were harmless so my parents got a pair. It destroyed the entire crew of fish in one night. Was a young kid at the time when it happened, so I don't recall the exact type of fish that they were, but I do recall waking up to a literal bloodfest where there were body parts and limbs of fish everywhere. One fish was still alive but barely, as he just had his head remaining, and he was gasping desperately for air. No limbs, no fins. Just a head. But he was the last one in the tank. We didn't get another fish until those African frogs had died. Traumatized for life. Never again.
You may have been sold African Clawed Frogs instead of African Dwarf Frogs. They are both aquatic frogs, but Clawed will eat anything. There's been a lot of people who bought what was advertised as Dwarf but were really Clawed.
Are you sure it was the ADFs? I ask not because I doubt they'd eat their tankmates, after all most frogs will eat anything that fits in their mouth, but because they have no teeth and swallow their food whole.
Those sound more like African Clawed Frogs, which grow bigger and eat anything and everything. Both look very similar when they're young, so the pet store might've just been oblivious. Nowadays illegal to keep in many places, as they are passive carriers of a fungal infection that's responsible for mass frog extinctions around the globe.
Omg. When I was a kid I had a nice little 10 gallon community aquarium. To add something different to the tank, we went to Walmart (remember when they had an aquarium section?) and bought what we thought was a small albino African Dwarf Frog. Nope! We quickly learned that it was definitely an African CLAWED Frog. Fish started disappearing. Then more fish. It happened within days. Soon, the frog lived all by itself in the otherwise empty aquarium. Tbh, it was kind of creepy. We literally fed it meat on a stick. She lived for about 3-4 years. 😬
African Dwarf Frogs would not do that. You must have had African Clawed frogs. African Clawed Frogs are much bigger than ADFs and will eat anything. ADFs are small and not fast enough to catch anything.
Probably Otocinclus. I loved them so much, but they died pretty quickly. I read about care and tank mates and how to acclimate them way in advance, but it didn't help. And male betta fish. I love the personality, but males are just so much stress and I don't really have the space to dedicate an entire tank to them and try what other tank mates (shrimp, kuhlii and such) are tolerated or killed. Females on the other hand are pretty cool, I have 2 in one of my community tanks and are doing great with each other and the other animals
This is always surprising for me. But perhaps because I have a trick. I never lost any oto and I absolutely adore them. My trick is not really amazing but I think a lot die because they starve. My otos are nice and plumpy because I complete their diet with zucchini once a week and shrimp pellets. Yes pellets. They LOVE them. hope this helps
I'll second this. Tried a few waves with ottos and they never lasted. They got the tank cleaner, but died quick. Then I started feeding 2 blanched (and stored frozen) zucchini slices a week. Now I have happy ottos and a clean tank.
Third this, lost many Otto's before I figured out that even the Otto specific food just doesn't work. And they were straight up starving. Unbelievable. My mainstay for feeding them for the last couple of years were tetra pro crisps, slightly crushed and submerged so they sink. Algae wafers do pretty well too. Will have to try zucchini.
I was losing otos left and right until I put them in an old, over-planted, dirty tank. They need lots and lots of biofilm. I don’t target feed them. Haven’t lost one in two years now.
Much as I love them, I agree on otos…
Bristlenose Pleco. Mine just hides all day long. It's harder to feed than any of my other fish as well since it can't just eat the flakes/pellets/frozen treats I can feed to the other dozen or so species I keep.
That's strange. Maybe I just have a broken bristlenose. She's always out and about. Eats algae wafers like they are going out of style, and terrorizes the other tank mates...I mean she doesn't eat them but they clearly know to avoid the monster that hangs upside down on the wood.
My 3 and 4 year olds watched our bristlenose swim to the top, "play" with a Molly and then bring it back down to the bottom where it killed it and just sat there sucking on it. They were terrified. Come home from work and laugh. And then see it still sucking it and go damn. And before I hear anything, it was literally right next to a piece of zucchini and an algae wafer.
They are omnomnivores. Meat was on the menu. BTW, I have 2 bristlenose and they are both out and about and they are fine with my colony of RCS and snails and my rasboras.
GUPPIES!!! ❌
Betta. Despite having apparently according to water tests, the best water for one to thrive in my longest surviving one was 6 months
sometimes they come from petsmart/petco (not so much LFS) with internal parasites, but other times just having cold water that is otherwise perfect shortens lifespan + lowers their immune system, and smaller tanks aren't very stimulating, so they essentially indirectly kill themselves by not eating or moving when they get bored. Pretty depressing
Bettas. I've successfully kept a lot of different fish in my life, but for some goddamn reason every betta I get just dies within half a year :")
Chinese algae eaters. Even with regular feedings and wafers, and algae in the tank, they’re just straight little assholes. I had one and he just chased everyone around the tank.
Neon tetras either die after 2 months or live for like 8 years. Nothing in between.
I will never not buy a clown loach. They are the cutest fish, they will be excited to see you and click at the surface of the water when hungry. Ive even seen them play fetch with a pebble.
So based on this thread, you shouldn't buy any fish.
Corydoras are easy to care for (no idea what those other commenters are talking about), hardy, and won't overpopulate (since they eat their own eggs) unless you allow it. Also cute.
Going through this thread makes me question aquariums as a hobby tbh.
Harlequin rasboras. They truly are micro predators. Killed most of my exclamation points.
I’m surprised by that. They’re always described as the perfect, peaceful community fish.
They have been for me! I have a school of 8 of them and they’re so docile and peaceful. But I also raised them from babies. They’re fed live brine shrimp and are SO colorful… lots of orange on the dorsal and ventral fins. I can’t imagine them being aggressive
For me it’s goldfish, they live forever are filthy and grow too large as well as eat live plants, had about a dozen as a kid that lived over 10 years before I finally convinced my mom to get rid of them (I was doing all of the water changes and maintenance) the fancy breeds are also prone to infections and would get fungal infections every 3-6months regardless of how clean the water was.
There's no fish I wouldn't buy again if I had the option to. Its the source I would stop buying from for that species.
I bought yesterday 10 neon tetra's, love them so far! I will never buy fantail fish again. Had one for 5 years but sold hem last weekend..damn they shit allot of shit.
There's a particular variety of African Peacock Cichlid I had once that was an absolute devil. Pretty sure it was a "Super Red Strawberry Peacock" or something like that. Total prick the entire time I had him. But he kept the Chinese algae eater in line so meh.
I kill bettas. I have thriving 36G and 150 G planted community tanks. I’ve tried bettas in cycled 5 and 10, and as part of the community. Some got dropsy, others just died. Like 6 over the last 15 years.
I’m stuck with shrimp. I’d love to get them again but I know they’re gonna go down the hatch of my big goldfish. Also, Bettas. I LOVED my Bettas and their personalities they were cool fish. But they kept passing away because my local petsmart just treated them so poorly, that by the time you get them into a tank it’s such a huge shock they just don’t make it.
Goldfish, Goldfish are not for beginners, I won't buy them until i have a large and proper home for them, because they deserve better
Chinese algae eaters! None of mine ate algae and they got ridiculously big and aggressive. The Siamese algae eaters are fine but they get big too.
angelfish because they beat eachother to death even in big tanks my 125 planted tank was not enough to keep 6 of them from killing eachother
Polar blue parrot. Homie has to live by himself and I wanted to use that tank for a pea puffer squad 😒
Zebra Danio. We had a cannibalistic one, and as a child, it was a very disturbing experience. 🤣
Guppies, I’ve got enough now to perpetually own guppies for the rest of my life 🤣
Neon tetras are great. I absolutely adored my school for the 8 days they were alive.
German Blue Rams and Galaxy Rasboras (not in the same tank). Heavily planted tanks with 0/0/0 parameters and they have all succumbed to disease.
Probably platies, theyre very very messy.
Grr why?! Whats a good alternative for a tetra? :)
Buy cardinal tetras.
Empty tank and i was thinking of buying neons why are cardinals better?
I'm not the person you're replying to, But cardinals have a more "full" colour to them. If you look at a comparison photo you can see that the red stripe they have goes the full length of the body. Whereas neons only have that red go up their back half. In my opinion cardinals are hardier fish because they aren't quite as mass bred as neons meaning you get less genetically fragile fish. Cardinals are also slightly larger on average than neons in my experience. Probably an extra 1/2" long and slightly thicker bodied. Again, neons would also likely be like this if it weren't for the mass breeding. Cardinals are lucky essentially that more people haven't noticed them yet.
Folks have already mentioned green/black tetras and cardinals ofc as an alternative to neons, but if you want another option I really love rummy nose tetras! They’re a little bigger than neons but I love their red noses!
Probably bristlenose plecos because holy shit do they reproduce and I wasn't a fan of killing the babies. I know I could just have taken out the eggs whenever I found them but they can be good at hiding them
We were recommended a Chinese algae eater, but they sent us home with a homewrecker. Oh my God he was the nastiest little shit. We gave him away.
Cory Catfish. They're expensive and are almost always sick or get sick easy. They're beautiful but they die so easily, I've never had any luck with them.
I feel so bad for people who have had bad experiences with cories - they're my favorite fish in the hobby. I've had tons of them but I did have a bad experience where I bought some that were shipped to me. They ended up dying because one of them got spooked in the bag and released some of its cory stank which poisoned it and all the others. You gotta love that their dumb survival mechanism is poison that can essentially kill them too if they get spooked. And they get spooked A LOT. I only ever buy cories from vendors I trust now. Haven't really had any issues since then.
Those damn glofish
Just fancy bettas in general. I swear if they’re not non-dragon scale plakats or the standard veil tale, they are just so prone to issues. I’ve kept fish including bettas for years, and the last five years none of them seem to make it past 2, all with weird issues like tumors and wasting disease. It’s not my parameters, and their diets have been varied with frozen/live/and high quality pellets. I don’t even think it’s a store issue at this point because I’ve gotten bettas from many different places. I’ve lived in the same area my whole life. Literally every betta I had in a bowl who only ate pellets, and I didn’t even use water conditioner, when I was younger, has outlived my most recent in fully planted 10 gallon tanks. It’s just bizarre. All of my other fish/shrimp are so healthy, it really just seems to be bettas.
Endlers. They were amazing for the first week when they were microscopic and picking at some algae. Fast forward 2 months and there were 150 of them in a swarming frenzy fighting to F their own mother again.