What are your favorite fish species?

[Jacob Hill-Legion Aquatics]

I’m new to fish keeping so my favourite I’ve kept has got to be my golden white clouds they are super hardy, fun to watch and you can keep them outdoors!

[Mitch_ScruffyCityAquatics]

I love my corydora catfish. I could watch them all day and night.

[Intuos]

Favourite fish to keep depending on tank size

Nano tank - chili rasbora as you can have a lot in a small tank and get great colours and activity. 

Mid size - rummy nose tetra because they are constantly moving all over the tank and ime are very inquisitive when you are near the tank. 

Large size - Discus I just love the variety of colours. 

Breeding it has to be guppies the fact you can mix the strains so easily and try to create something new. 

For enjoyment has to be betta they have so much personality and are very engaging. 

[HenryC]

On 4/13/2022 at 6:14 PM, Torrey said:

 

12. Devil's Hole Pupfish (they are so cute and a beautiful blue!!!)

 

One of my dream fish, I live in 115F summer climate, they would be the prefect pond fishy for my place.

[Comradovich]

On 4/13/2022 at 7:14 PM, Torrey said:

Bucketlist fish... some I have already kept, and others I have only learned about due to the Co-op's YouTube channel:

16. Pitbull pleco

Probably won't ever get the plecos, as I no longer keep heated tanks, but this is a bucket list, right?

@Torrey I have some good news for you, but bad news for your wallet. Dan's Fish has your #16. The bad news is he wants $20/fish. Mine are in an unheated tank right now. They're doing just fine.

Pros:

1. Dan's got a 98.~% success rate with shipping fish/keeping them alive in customers' tanks after they arrive. This is less of a crap-shoot than some LFS's doing imports.

2. While they're imports, they all seem to be from the same spawn. You'll be getting juveniles that are about 1"-1.5", so you've got only about 1.5" of growth to full breeding size. If you want to see what the spawn looks like, his #3 pic is actually from my tank. If you check out the "show off your pipsqueaks" thread from General Chat, you'll see a Day 1 pic of them after I got them into the tank. You'd be buying basically the same fish as I have in the pics.

3. They've been treated with Ich-X at Dan's. According to Dan's manager who I was corresponding with, they haven't needed anything else. I hit mine with Prazi-Pro just in case, but so far no one's shown anything that concerns me. Dan's is really good at responding to emails, I've found.

4. Dan's is shooting for a 99% success rate with shipped fish, and he actually tells you how many he's lost in shipping or shortly afterward in his weekly livestreams on YouTube. So you could go watch the guy you'd be buying from before you decide whether to actually purchase. He's live every Weds night, and old livestreams are available on his channel.

5. Unlike some previous importers, these are definitely LDA25's. These look exactly like the old pictures, and not really anything like the rubberlip or bulldogs that some importers would advertise as "pitbull plecos".

Cons:

1. 20 bucks is 20 bucks. No sugar-coating that price.

2. You'd need a few of these guys for a decent colony to breed with. I went with 6.

3. You're getting juveniles. While these have been babied and checked over, they'll still have some growing to do before you can use them.

4. You do still have to pay shipping.

Neutral:

1. Dan's will be voluntarily shutting down for a few weeks during the holidays when the UPS/USPS systems are jammed up. While this can be good since you know your fish won't be stuck in a package sorting center for days, it can also be bad if you don't like to be rushed to make a purchase.

The above was my research before/shortly after buying. I'm fairly new to the board, so I don't know the rules on linking websites. I'll just say that if you google "Dan's Fish", he should be the first result. Hopefully that's okay by the moderator staff.

 

I've kept these previously for 6-7 years before they started to become rarer so my tips:

1. If you plan on drip acclimating, the small USPS box with styrofoam inserts almost perfectly fits one of those Kirkland plastic mixed nuts jars from Costco. Meaning you could just dump the shipping bags into the jar, then place the jar back in the package to start your drip-line. This helps shortcut Flip Aquatics' usual drip acclimation advice of keeping the fish low to the ground and in the dark for as long as possible. They're in a nice dark box and that box can go on the floor of your fish room.

2. Once they hit the darkened tank, they should start to color up within a few hours. So you'll know almost overnight whether or not any of them are struggling. Struggling fish are having difficulty matching your substrate.

3. Most of the feeding action happens after lights out. This is the best time to drop in food for them. They're really not demanding. Algae wafers, Repashi gel foods, shrimp pellets, flake that hits the substrate, fluval bug bites, mulm on your rocks and driftwood, they'll at least sample whatever they can find.

 

They got rarer because they seem to have been left off of the Brazilian export list in ~2012. Which I'm told means that most of the infrastructure built around exporting them got shut down or repurposed. (Holding ponds, etc.) I don't know if they're becoming available again because they're back on the list, or if someone spawned a group of fish themselves. Leaning more towards the latter, as these all seem to be the same general age. 2018 ICUN survey listed them as "least concern". Parotocinclus Jumbo is a species that should not be rare in the hobby, but somehow is.

[Mmiller2001]

Hmm, and you may think I'm weird. Of all the fish I have or had, Cherry Barbs are my favorite. They are stunning and a classic. If I couldn't do Cherry barbs, then next on the list would be Red Beckford's Pencil fish.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 12/6/2022 at 8:00 PM, Comradovich said:

2018 ICUN survey listed them as "least concern". Parotocinclus Jumbo is a species that should not be rare in the hobby, but somehow is.

Probably due to the size & lack of demand.