Welcome to CommunityFish.org! This web site will provide you with a lot of
useful information on freshwater community fish. A beginner or an advanced
fishkeeper, we hope that this web site will become a useful, valuable
source of information for everyone who is interested in aquariums and fishkeeping.
Most new aquatic hobbyists want to start their fish fun with a community tank and some laid-back fish who are easy to please. It.s best to set yourself up for success on the front end, and a small community of low-maintenance fish is the way to go. Swordtails, mollies, platies, zebra danios, and coryadoras catfish are hardy, easy keepers and are pretty inexpensive to boot. These fish also have the benefit of allowing you to choose their color, something that would likely cause some controversy in people communities.
As your knowledge and experience grows, you can wade out into deeper waters. Try tin foil barbs, brilliant Rasbora, silver dollars, red hook metynnis, and Australian rainbow fish. Some of these fish will be a little more expensive, but they add color and beauty to a tank. Once you feel confident that you know how to care for them, the added expense will be well worth it.
And while we.re on expense, make sure your eyes aren.t bigger than your tank. A community of 15 fish can be beautiful, but not in a container that was built for five. There is a wealth of quality equipment on the market, including tanks of all shapes and sizes. Add a tank, or trade-up to a larger size, just don.t over populate (a general rule is one inch of fish per gallon of water). Overpopulating a tank is tough on the fish, especially for neons, cardinal tetras, bleeding hearts, rummynose tetras, lemon tetras, Von Rio tetras, and black phantom tetras who can be a little harder on their environment to begin with.
As for the water you.re providing, the first two groups of fish we listed can handle a wider range of water conditions than the last group. Livebearers, like swordtails, do well in slightly hard water (pH in the 7.0 to 8.0 range) while the tetra group are more suited to softer water (a pH between 6.5 and 7.0).
Fish are pretty flexible, though, and as long as you make the transition gradual, they can live out of their initial comfort zone surprisingly well. The groups above can even live in the same community if you bridge their preferred pH levels to reach some middle ground. What a great world it would be if we were as easy-going as some of our fish.
Here you are:
Idea and Development by Illya Konovalov (aka horbor)