Acquiring aquarium fish.
Undoubtedly, you should take advantage of every opportunity to acquire specialized knowledge in aquarium fishkeeping from books, magazines, the Internet, and other sources. Before buying fish, look through good photo albums and atlases, and choose the fish you would like to keep. Cross out those fish that, for one reason or another, do not fit your general parameters. You will discover some discrepancy between the size of the aquarium, the compatibility of the fish with each other, and your idea of an underwater mini-paradise, but a rich selection will allow you to draw up a final list of candidates without much trouble. The practical experience of aquarists, which has grown significantly in recent years, is of particular value.
But we should never forget that in an aquarium we are dealing with living nature. To survive, living organisms (fish, plants) tend to adapt significantly to new conditions over time. That is why the recommendations and advice of aquarists living in different cities and writing books (articles) at different times, but about the same fish, can differ noticeably.
Anyone lured by the mysterious world behind the “glass shore” should not treat advice, instructions, and recommendations on aquarium fishkeeping as something indisputable, strictly mandatory, or unchanging, no matter how authoritative the sources of this information are. And even more so, one should not blindly and mindlessly copy everything down to the smallest detail from the words of “experts”, hoping for the exact same success. Even an aquarist who has kept fish for years is not guaranteed against failures and does not always know how to fix a situation. Therefore, any advice and recommendations require thoughtful application.
When starting to choose an aquarium, you must first decide what kind of fish you would like to keep. The volume of the aquarium and the number of its inhabitants, the temperature and chemical properties of the water, and the lighting level will depend on this. What kind of fish do you like more: large or small? The fact is that some people prefer to keep large fish at least 15-20 cm in size, while smaller ones are simply not appreciated; “tiny fish” seem uninteresting and boring to them.
Others, on the contrary, prefer small fish, such as small schooling and bright characins. Naturally, large fish require a more spacious aquarium, and this must be considered when purchasing. Most large fish are incompatible with live plants. They undermine, break, and tear the leaves. In addition, large fish need swimming space, and the aquarium for them should not be cluttered too much.
Some fish are kept in groups, others in pairs. For example, a school of danios should consist of 8-9 individuals, with twice as many males as females. Conversely, when keeping swordtails, it is desirable to have more females than males. What kind of fish do you like more: active or slow? If you choose the wrong fish, the aquarium might annoy you. And when you later find exactly what you wanted, it turns out that these fish can no longer be placed in an aquarium with an already established community. Try observing an aquarium at friends’ houses or at a pet store, and decide which fish you like best. An aquarium with fish should not contain any crayfish, turtles, large shrimp, or clawed frogs, let alone Surinam toads and axolotls.
And now let’s try to formulate solutions for different groups of consumers. Let’s start with ordinary amateur aquarists. In principle, you should proceed from the fact that a specialized pet store offers you only healthy animals. We can only advise you to buy fish not from dubious sources, but in pet stores or farms with knowingly similar water parameters. And one more thing. Even in a pet store with a good reputation and suitable water, it is better not to buy fish immediately after they arrive for sale. Wait 4-5 days, shifting the possible adaptation difficulties of new fish onto the store. But since any store tank can undergo quick and unnoticeable changes, the buyer must have a clear idea of the condition of the fish themselves.
What is important when buying fish.
First rule: the fish must look healthy and accept food. And what does a healthy fish look like? It should not have a sunken belly, which indicates a refusal to eat; furthermore, it should not have external damage, such as bite marks: they easily become inflamed. The better a fish displays its coloration, the better it feels. Depressed fish (sometimes solitary ones) will not show their most beautiful colors. If there is some dullness of the integument and frayed fins (one can suspect a bacterial infection). You need to pay attention to the regularity of the fish’s breathing, and whether they breathe irregularly. Too frequent breathing may indicate, in addition to a lack of oxygen, oversaturation with CO2 or gill parasites. The first mistake is very easy to fix, but the second is not, especially since making a diagnosis is not so simple.
Characteristic signs of a cold-related illness when keeping fish at low temperatures are as follows: general weakness, manifested in low mobility of the fish; clamped fins; fading of body color; refusal to food. Staying in one place or slowly moving forward, they make oscillatory movements with the whole body. Often individual areas or the entire body are covered with a grayish-white coating. When comparing forms in representatives of the same species, one can determine whether they have a spinal curvature – a defect that sometimes manifests during so-called line breeding: cripples are born!
In addition, signs of a healthy fish include a smooth top layer of skin: there should be neither a whitish coating nor the wounds mentioned above. White spots indicate one of the known diseases, and exophthalmos (pop-eye) not only reports a lack of beauty, but also indicates illness. If you find such signs in an already purchased fish, but due to lack of time you cannot return it to the store immediately, you must isolate it in a separate vessel and under no circumstances keep it together with healthy specimens.
Probably everyone has seen how those who have firmly decided to get an aquarium make their first purchases. Going shopping, the beginner aquarist first of all takes a jar for the fish. He is in a hurry. Today the aquarium with fish will decorate a corner in the room and delight his imagination. The rest of the day is enough to wash the aquarium, lay down hastily washed stones, plant plants, and pour water. All this is done with great enthusiasm, inspired and, of course, hastily. Everything seems to turn out great: it’s time to release the fish from the jar. Admire how beautifully and briskly the fish swim up and down, up and down. They are, of course, hungry. Food is poured into the feeder. There is no limit to joy. But it’s time to go to sleep. Until morning.
And the next morning… Oh my God, what a joyless picture appears before the eyes of the hapless “amateur” in the morning. Some of the fish are floating lifelessly near the surface – they are dead. Those that are still alive have a pitiful appearance: pale, with clamped fins, they lie at the bottom. Some of the plants have floated up, the water has become cloudy, tiny air bubbles are everywhere: on plants, stones, glass, and fish. Then the water spoils even more, as if milk was poured into it, and the fish die one after another every day. The joy of the first day is replaced by disappointment, and then interest in this new fleeting hobby disappears altogether. True, there are more stubborn people. They are not stopped by the first victims, nor do they make them think. They go for fish again, wash everything in the aquarium and… everything repeats just like the first time. New victims, new chores, new tears. Haste makes waste!
Many people make purchases without thinking, but since we are talking about living creatures in this case, one should first of all inquire about their needs. Especially important is the proportionate use of the three water layers: at the bottom, in the middle column, and at the surface. You must not oversaturate the aquarium with bottom-dwelling fish species, as they will lack habitats and shelters at the bottom, which can lead to the degradation and death of weak individuals. Fish should be introduced in a reasonable number and selected according to habitat compatibility: bottom fish + open water fish + plant thicket fish + near-surface species. Catfish and other bottom-dwelling fish (loaches, spiny eels, bichirs, sleepers, and others) generally do not leave the water zones near the bottom.
Other species, for example, cichlids, barbs, goldfish, etc., swim in the middle water column, but also eagerly tear up or dig into the bottom substrate, sometimes even arranging a shelter for themselves in it. Usually, these fish are afraid to swim near the water surface. This fear is an innate trait because in natural conditions danger awaits them there, and they do not want to become prey for aquatic birds. But even those species that live near the water surface – such as various killifishes, butterflyfishes, or hatchetfish – do not swim directly under the water mirror, but seek shelter in the form of a hanging leaf or floating plant. Of course, the middle water layers are the most densely populated. There is also more space here, and many small and medium schooling fish spend most of the day here – these are livebearers commonly found in our aquariums, such as platys, guppies, swordtails, and others.
Experienced aquarists do not buy fish “for their coloration”, but assemble an aquarium community in such a way that one fish does not interfere with the existence of another as much as possible. Difficulties can arise if an “established team” is already living in the aquarium and you decide to introduce new fish there. Every fish living in the aquarium will defend its shelter, and if they are also individualists – such as cichlids – it may happen that the newcomer immediately gets a good thrashing and looks for shelter in the upper corners of the tank, where it would not normally hide.
Therefore, new fish must be observed until you get the impression that they have settled into the aquarium. But if your impression is the opposite, and it seems to you that the new and old inhabitants of the aquarium will not be able to tolerate each other, then the fish need to be separated again and other keeping methods considered.
When choosing fish and plants for your aquarium, you are obliged to consider their water hardness requirements. For example, it is completely unacceptable to house cichlids from the African lakes Malawi and Tanganyika, which require hard water, together with fish from the Amazon River basin, which need soft water. You need to decide on your preferences in advance and determine what water hardness will be in your aquarium and, accordingly, which fish will live there. If you put a fish whose ancestors spent millions of years in soft water into hard aquarium water, it may live for some time. But at the same time, calcium phosphate is deposited in its renal tubules, forming crystals there, and the fish weakens and dies.
If you put fish from hard water regions – for example, Lake Malawi – into soft water, their water-salt balance is disrupted and ions are leached from the fish’s body into the aquarium water, where the salt concentration is very low. The fish weaken, their immune defense efficiency decreases, and they die. The fish itself will fight for its life to the end, straining all its ion channels, living with constant kidney pain. Do not torture animals just because you like them and want to admire them in your home.
At the initial stage of the hobby, amateurs striving to keep as many fish of different colors and shapes as possible in one aquarium often fix their inexperienced gaze on large and beautiful cichlids, such as jewel cichlids (Hemichromis spp), acara (Aequidens spp), and cichlasomas (Cichlasoma spp). Unaware of the surprises awaiting them, they acquire these fish and release them into the same aquarium with guppies, barbs, gouramis, swordtails, and other typical inhabitants of beginners.
Sometimes immediately, and sometimes the next day, aquarium owners inevitably begin to notice that some peculiar order is being established in their body of water – some plants are uprooted, the bottom substrate is dug up in places, forming deep holes, small stones have been moved… Most importantly, the rest of the fish begin to swim restlessly around the aquarium, gathering in schools, rushing from side to side, and some disappear without a trace!
Logic suggests that the number of fish and plants must be limited by the volume of water in the tank. Water is of decisive importance! The number of aquarium inhabitants is calculated based on the number of liters, not the capacity of the tank. In doing so, you should subtract the volume of bottom substrate and stones. The number of fish should not exceed the amount of water, and the choice in our stores is so vast that it will be almost impossible to resist buying just ONE fish. Try to buy a fish that (judging at least by written sources) will not grow large. Most often, mistakes of this kind are made immediately, right at the time of buying the fish.
Amateurs do not take into account (by the way, this also applies to plants) that they are dealing with young, immature specimens – such fish, with good care, will many times exceed their initial size in a short time. Therefore, ask the seller immediately what the final size of your pets might be. When buying aquarium fish, consider their adult size, not their current size; it is better not to buy aquarium fish that will become cramped when they grow up. This will be good for everyone: the fish, the plants, and ultimately – for you personally.
Refrain from buying fish less than a month before a vacation. If there is any disease lurking in the fish, it will most likely manifest itself within a month. If your new resident gets sick, three to four weeks will be quite enough to cure it and bring it into full combat readiness. Well, if due to circumstances or other reasons the purchase has taken place, it is best to leave the new fish in a separate quarantine aquarium so that in case of illness the infection does not spread to the old-timers. On the eve of a long trip, try not to acquire fish and plants (to avoid introducing infection), and do not buy fry or young fish that still have a lot of growing to do.
Who lives with whom? What should a beginner do when buying fish?
Branded prophylaxis products. Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Sera, Tropical. 
