List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Non puffer freshwater discussion. Don't tell your puffers, they'll be jealous!
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by RTR »

Technically, all the so-called beginner livebearers do not require salt in the water, but likely need such unless your water is at least hard and alkaline (GH 9 and above) and alkanine (KH also ~9 and above). But beginners should avoid fish requiring water modifications. That is an effort they do not need to undertake, and frankly most LFS and/or chains have no clue as to how to do water modifications - it is a wonderful excuse for them to sell un-needed products, such as commercial buffers.
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by JRC3 »

RTR wrote:...such as commercial buffers.
It is maddening that Petsmart doesn't have a single vitamin supplement in the whole store but they have a whole shelf dedicated to deadly PH bufferes and "start up" bottles. More so for me at least is that my so called local "ma and pop" fish store is a regional chain called Jack's Aquarium and Pets. I talk one on one with a kid that works there and he complains because they outright tell him to sell a buttload of fish to people that buy brand new tanks. He also outwardly laughs at the "live sand" in a bag that they sell for $33 a bag.

Every time I go in to Petsmart I go to the fish care brochure rack and I grab 2 or 3 "betta care" brochures and I put them in between the betta cups...I figure it might help one at some point.


I just don't understand fish stores that want to sell fish and supplies to a newby. To me it would be better to have someone start right and have a successful fishkeeping experience...You know, some one that will keep coming back year after year instead of someone that gets discouraged and quits because all their new fish keep dying so they give up and list their stuff on CL.

OK, I'm done beaching. LOL
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by Pufferpunk »

^^^^^^^^^^
Great post!
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by fugu99 »

JRC3 wrote:
RTR wrote:...such as commercial buffers.
It is maddening that Petsmart doesn't have a single vitamin supplement in the whole store but they have a whole shelf dedicated to deadly PH bufferes and "start up" bottles. More so for me at least is that my so called local "ma and pop" fish store is a regional chain called Jack's Aquarium and Pets. I talk one on one with a kid that works there and he complains because they outright tell him to sell a buttload of fish to people that buy brand new tanks. He also outwardly laughs at the "live sand" in a bag that they sell for $33 a bag.
Every time I go in to Petsmart I go to the fish care brochure rack and I grab 2 or 3 "betta care" brochures and I put them in between the betta cups...I figure it might help one at some point.
I just don't understand fish stores that want to sell fish and supplies to a newby. To me it would be better to have someone start right and have a successful fishkeeping experience...You know, some one that will keep coming back year after year instead of someone that gets discouraged and quits because all their new fish keep dying so they give up and list their stuff on CL.
Ive had to prevent my husband many times from giving up on the fish hobby out of frustration, before we understood the whole tank cycle. We dont exactly have a handle on it yet either, but I feel more capable of handling situations with water params now, and have a basic knowledge of whats going on in my tank. Insomuch as to go into the lfs and look at their tanks and wince in horror. Ive learned that I cant just get all the fish I like and stick them in a tank together. Ive learned that a 100% clean will not solve my problems. I understand how sensitive my fish can be, and what to do if they show signs of distress. And I can say for sure that I learned none of this at the pet store, where it probably should be learned by newbies like me. I learned it through my own research, and primarily here on this site. In future I will attempt fishless cycling, and using garbage fish to get things started, rather than risking healthy fish by uncycled water. Store employees pushed a product on us, and told us we could start our tank up and put in our fish right away if we used it. And we ended up freaking out when our water params went haywire, nitrite, nitrate and ammonia would skyrocket, and the lfs managed to sell us more products... I can see why so many ppl give up. Its an expensive hobby if you dont know what youre doing. (well, its expensive anyway!) but its less stressful when things arent going haywire. So, my warning to other amateur fishkeepers. Dont let it happen to you! lol so melodramatic. At least we didnt try out the expensive fish first! :O
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by JRC3 »

^

Agreed...But "garbage" fish or expensive fish all deserve the same consideration. I wish more fish stores offered starter media...But then they couldn't sell those "garbage" fish and bacteria bottles.

If there is ever a person in the Dayton area that stumbles across this post and has a new tank in need of starter media, I will give it to you. This also applies to mailing it.

Take care and good luck.
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by FrogSplash »

ditto fugu i learned that lesson too about getting a ton of fish a one time and how its not goood. case in point after cyclying my tank with seachem stability and reading 0 ammonia/0 nitrites/~5ppm nitrates i thought i was golden for getting the tank to re-cycle in just a week. but i added 5 bolivian rams, and 4 silver dollars only to see the cycle completely destroyed. i re-cycled with the seachem stability and have since moved on to seachems purigen. not a single problem, even when i added the 12" pleco to my 40 breeder ( i never learn, and am close to upgrading to a 120).

you can get starter media from your lfs just not commercial fish stores. i would like to see sections dedicated to beginner/medium/pro fish selections that way it would be far easier to get into the hobby with as little frustration as possible and while sparing your wallet the expense of failure and replacing dead fish
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by Pufferpunk »

Purigen has nothing to do with cycling a tank, it's like adding carbon. Neither does Stability, for that matter...
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by FrogSplash »

Pufferpunk wrote:Purigen has nothing to do with cycling a tank, it's like adding carbon. Neither does Stability, for that matter...
stability has worked wonders for me, its cycled all of my tanks relatively fast. with normal water param readings. but it might not work the same for others too
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by goby1kenobi »

Definitely agree with steering *most* beginners away from mollies...unless they live in a place with seriously hard water or are starting out with brackish (which is what I did).
RTR wrote:Livebearers get weaker all the time. They used to be hardy and undemanding other than mostly preferring somewhat hard and alkaline water. They have be so heavily hybridized and over-bred to the point of being severely weakened.

I remember trying some "chocolate mollies" many years ago. Good grief were those things delicate, and I had them in 1.006 brackish. After they died (when it got to 108* in the apt when the air conditioner died while we were gone for the weekend), I switched to the wild type and never looked back. How much worse have they gotten in the last seven or eight years?
RTR wrote:Most current hobbyists have never seen really good livebearers, especially mollies - which IMHO are not community fish.
Totally agreed. We were just on vacation in Florida, and went to see the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. In a waterway between the parking lot and the aquarium, I saw some absolutely gorgeous wild mollies. The mollies actually in one of the mangrove displays were not as pretty as the ones in the ditch, but they were the biggest I've ever seen. Some of the males were over 6" long.

When I had multiple molly tanks going, I segregated the mollies by how hardy the individual fish were. The hardier ones stayed in the planted tank, along with an army of ghost shrimp for cleanup duty and an SAE for algae control. We're talking about liquid rock for water, here, so most of the mollies did fine in it.

The less hardy mollies went into a light brackish tank with some knight gobies. The gobies kept the molly population under control.

And I had one molly -- beautiful male -- who ended up living in a quarantine tank because he got lymphocystis if his water got below 1.008.
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by RTR »

I had a relatively short fling with the big sailfin mollies back in my bachelor days. Then it was suggested that I allow 15 gallons per fish, but that actually was not enough. They were spectacular fish, but two maxed out a 50. That was my next to largest tank way back then and I had no space for more, so I had to give up those magnificent mollies. I have not seen any comparable in the last 30-40 years.
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by fugu99 »

RTR wrote:I had a relatively short fling with the big sailfin mollies back in my bachelor days. Then it was suggested that I allow 15 gallons per fish, but that actually was not enough. They were spectacular fish, but two maxed out a 50. That was my next to largest tank way back then and I had no space for more, so I had to give up those magnificent mollies. I have not seen any comparable in the last 30-40 years.
*sigh* We had some sailfin mollies. I think, in the end, that destroyed all our hopes for keeping those types of fish. We had regular mollies and sailfins together. They only sold them in a male/female pair, and we ended up getting two types of pairs. Looking back on it makes me feel like such a dunderhead. How could I have thought it would work? In a 30 gal. we had two pairs of sailfins, probably five or so other regular mollies (not balloons) and four Platys, two rainbow sharks, four fancy-tailed guppies, two swordtails... I mean, you can see where this is going. Way overcrowded, too many species, and not enough filtration to handle THAT kind of bioload. We didnt even have cleaner fish like Plecos and Cory Cats then. But thats not the end of it. If the mollies werent sick with ich or velvet, they were healthy and beating the crap out of one another and mating All The Time. It wasnt the harmonious, peaceful tank we had dreamed of having. The sailfins were beautiful, but their personalities are so aggressive that its frustrating to keep them. If ONLY the store employee had told us that our tank was overstocked already, and had told us how much more room they needed to be kept. Infact, this same employee helped us buy all our fish, I wish hed told us to stop when we had so many types already. No wonder everything was haywire with our tank. If only it was more clear to beginners that same-species tank is preferable to a community tank setup, and that each fish needs a different amount of space per gallon. Also being told the risks of certain fish that are prone to certain genetic defects, diseases and the like...
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by RTR »

The mollies have been crossed so widely that without fresh stock from the wild (provided their environments still exist). there is little hope of seeing them again. The big sailfins were always a bit aggressive, and fairly hard on the females. They really should have been kept as trios (1 male, 2 females) or as 1M to 3F in really big tanks over a hundred gallons. They were impressive enough for that - they were always show-stoppers, but back then I was limited in tank sizes. They were also water-demanding, rather hard alkaline water seemed essential, or very light BW but with live plants, and squeeky clean.
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by KJB »

FrogSplash wrote:
Pufferpunk wrote:Purigen has nothing to do with cycling a tank, it's like adding carbon. Neither does Stability, for that matter...
stability has worked wonders for me, its cycled all of my tanks relatively fast. with normal water param readings. but it might not work the same for others too
Stability works as does a few other products. I have found Stability to be a little slow and to stress the fish.

The best is Superbac. I know of stores that when they moved or setup display tanks with new filters use Superbac. Granted Superbac is expensive and has a short shelf life. We know what species of bacteria are needed these days and they have been cultivated for water treatment for a long time. Stigmas exist because so many snake oils were sold int he past that the legit products are buried in a sea of garbage or dismissed without testing.
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by fahucker »

what about firewood catfish?
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Re: List of freshwater fishes to avoid for beginners

Post by RTR »

Common names are not very helpful too often. SFAIK, I have never heard of a "firewood" catfish. Any hints?
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