fishkeeping advice: why so diverse?

[coolchinchilla]

<sigh> Why is there such diverse and opposing guidelines and experiences in fish keeping? I'm doing a fishless cycle on my FW tank. I've come up with 3 or 4 different stocking schemes only to find that for some reason each one won't work.

1. my water is too alkaline for this fish
2. those fish will fight amongst themselves to the death
3. that fish will nip another's fins
4. this particular fish needs a tank twice the size I have.
5. one of those fish costs $100 so I can't afford it -- (ok it wasn't that expensive but it might just as well be $100)
6. another fish will jump out of the aquarium
7. some other fish will eat aquarium plants
8. this fish likes warmer temperatures than that fish.
9. this fish will eat that fish
10. those fish really need to be in a school of six

Then there are the experts and experienced fish keepers who give totally opposite guidelines.

1. one expert claims that fish can thrive in any type of water while another swears by RO/DI only
2. one expert says this fish is very docile, another says it is very aggressive.
3. one article says you need a 200 gallon tank for this fish while another article says that it will thrive in a 20 gallon tank (ok, exaggerating here a bit)
4. someone has a fish who eats all the plants yet the same fish in a different tank will leave all plant life alone.

On and on and on it goes. <sigh> Of course any one fish in a species has a distinct personality which may account for some of the diversity we see but not all. Other pets don't have near the amount of variation in care, housing and feeding. Like for a regular spayed female cat adopted from the shelter, how much variation is there to her care? Where she sleeps, litter box, food. Sure there are lots of kinds of litter to choose, not to mention the different kinds of cat food. But for the basic functioning of an indoor cat, the choices are pretty clear...

The choices for fish keeping are not nearly so clear. I'm advised to research and research the fish before I even consider buying any. That's cool, but my research has brought to jillions of forks in the road and forks within forks until they all begin to form a huge labyrinth. And as I travel the labyrinth I hit wall after wall after wall. I'm becoming overwhelmed by the choices and constraints on aquarium keeping.

What do people do when you stock your tank? Do you just plunge in and hope you did enough homework? Thanks in Advance!

 

[greenmaji]

I pick one thing and work around it.. HTH

 

[Devilishturtles]

Asking questions is the best thing to do, IMHO. Websites will list THEIR experience with that fish, but not an overall collection of experiences. Researching fish shouldn't be a chore, and my guess is that you aren't finding the right websites (if you are looking online).

That's why forums like this are great for the hobbyist. You can get an overall set of opinions from different people whom have had the fish that you are researching. You may get varying opinions, but that's just the way things always are it seems.

Also, many fish can adapt to just about any condition you give them. This isn't ALWAYS the case, but for the most part it is. Its kinda like the weather almost. You prefer it warm, but you can live in below freezing temperatures. (Maybe not such a good example, but you know what I mean. ). If the ideal pH for the fish you want is 7.0 and you have a pH of 7.4, there is no problem. The same thing goes for most water parameters.

This is just my opinion, hope it helps some.

 

[Jchillin]

I understand what you are getting at and it is overwhelming when you add up all of the variables.

I will give you an example of why this occurs. I've had my angels since January. I began with 4 in my 30 gal. I set up and transferred them to my 75 gal. During this time, they left everyone alone and never made an aggressive move. One mysteriously passed on and then two of them paired up. I moved the odd one back to the 30 gal. Again, there is peace.

Until this weekend...the odd man decided to eat one of my bristlenose albino pleco's. I don't know if the fish had died or not but he had been around a number of fish that had perished and never once even pecked at one.

That being said, I could very well start suggesting that Angels are more aggressive than what had been known and stated. Up to writing articles on the net about it.

Conclusion: Do the best you can and hope for the best. Nothing is absolutely concrete as nature abhors a vacuum. HTH.

 

[DeFeKt]

also remember that anything you read online does not have to be certified literature, while books and articles in magazines have to be correct to be printed.

Alot of peoples opinions differ to their experience with certain species.
For example, Silver dollars are supposed to live in packs, whereas my single silver dollar has teamed up with a couple of oscars with no trouble at all.

Now i'm not saying they would do this in the wild, i'm also not saying they are "compatible".
Just my experience is when raised in the "right" environment, they can be known to respect each other.

JChillin is right, learn what you can, then do the best you can and hope for the best.
Hopefully, if something goes wrong, you get in on time to save the innocent victim.
It is also human nature to trial and error, to make mistakes and learn from them.
Within reason of course. obviously you want to prevent as much death and illbeing as possible.
But like it has also been said, living things can adapt to different conditions, it is a way of life, it is evolution. Fish bred in captivity have the advantage of being able to adapt much easier as they did not know any different.
Much like a child born to american parents but born in,say, spain, will adapt to the spanish way of life and the environment.

Every living being is unique and unpredictable. which is probably why there is such a fascination in keeping and caring for them. *shrug*

Hope this makes sense. as I was struggling to come to a main point.


Matt.

 

[SLACkra]

4. someone has a fish who eats all the plants yet the same fish in a different tank will leave all plant life alone.

this is really the luck of the draw. its like some people who have emporer angel fish in sps reef tanks and they don't touch a thing while other peoples emporer angels completely destroy their corals.

the reason i think there are so many different bits of advice is because everybody has had a different experience!

andrew

 

[talloulou]

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'

-Isaac Asimov

 

[Jchillin]

This is really a pretty good topic. I am moving it to the "General Discussion" forum, since this is a "Discussion".

 

[Fishyfanatic]

As said before, it's pretty much the luck of the draw. I had parrots that were very calm, but I have heard of ones that will terrorize tank mates. The Auratus that we purchased last year was harrassed by the Yellow Labs. But I've read that they are one of the most aggressive of all Cichlids. It's kind of like the Betta and Ghost Shrimp discussion. Some Bettas will eat the GS whereas others see them as friends. It can become frustrating, but its trial and error. I haven't had to deal with any issues like this so far in my Community tanks, but in our African Cichlid tank it gets iffy. We purchase fish and hope for the best. If aggression escalates, it's time for a trip back to the lfs with our little finned friend.

 

[mvigor]

also remember that anything you read online does not have to be certified literature, while books and articles in magazines have to be correct to be printed.

No, that's entirely up the the publisher. If I wanted to go to the expense of printing an entirely inaccurate book and publishing it myself, I could start selling it on Amazon the day after tomorrow.

If it's a publisher that would like to stay in business, they'll do some fact checking or stick with very trusted authors, but don't automatically give a book more credit just because it has been bound and stamped with an ISBN number.

 

[Tiffi]

That is true mvigor!

Another part why keeping an aquarium is more difficult than keeping a cat is that the inhabitants (fishes and plants) you keep come from different ecosystems around the world. Hence if you want to set up a community tank you will have to try to please every species as much as possible or keep species that can adapt to the same water quality, etc..

What I did when I've set up my tanks was to look online for pictures of good looking fishes, "deleted" those that would definitely not fit to my water parameters, that were too aggressive, would get too big for the size of my tank. Then I started to calculate how many fishes of each I could keep. A pair of these, a small group of these, and a school of those, etc..

It's like trying to keep a housecat together with a tiger, one will eat the other most definitely etc. You can compare housecats maybe to dwarf cichlids from one ecosystem. They are the same species, maybe different breed for appearance. What happens now if you add mice (shrimp), a tiger (bigger/aggressive fish) and so on.

 

[aquakev]

At some point your just going to have to jump in and hope you did the right! research and enough of it.

All fish are individuals, some can show weird behaviors for their species.
Its like saying, yea Ive kept humans together, they get along fine!-as there is multiple wars going on.

A lot of the advice you get is like guidelines, some can be bent and others should never be even thought about breaking.

And everyone has different tanks that could produce different behaviors ect.

 

[coolchinchilla]

Thanks everyone for your replies! It helps! I understand how different information comes from different experiences. I just want to have a nice aquarium and do right by the fish. A couple months ago I just wanted a nice kitty from the shelter. It wasn't near so troublesome to set her up in my home. <sigh> I'll just have to jump in with the best choices I can make and take it from there. 8)

 

[Jchillin]

I'll just have to jump in with the best choices I can make and take it from there.

No truer words have ever been spoken.

 

[vero]

I feel your pain... The amount of information on fish, plants, aquarium set up, equipment, etc is literally overwellming. If one was to read all that beforehand, one would never end up with a tank! And add to that that there is a lot of conflicting information (Different sites will even give different latin names to the same fish! As a side note, this problem has a very deep source. I've read somewhere that the whole fauna/flura/etc species classification system is old and obsolete and basically needs a lot of work... we're not at the end of our troubles. And evolution is not static... so the job is even harder.)

Trying to get an exact answer is impossible, we need to consider that a fact. Add to that that often the question we ask is just as inexact/incomplete/innacurate and you can see the problem? It's like asking to find two tanks that are perfectly the same? No matter what we do, there will always be variations and thus variations in our experiences and outcomes.

You think fish are difficult and cats are easier? I don't think so. My sister had two cats. A female house cat that loved to hang around in the barn and a male baby cat that she rescued from the cold winter. I had to give her my own female cat, which had never gone outside before. The day she entered the house, the house was split in two: one floor for each of the two females. The male cat hides usually we don't know where (who said a male cat is territorial and imposes himself on his harem?). It was like that for a good year, the two females couldn't stand eachother. My sister couldn't tolerate any baby cat (she growled even to see one outside). A few years later, they all sleep together and cleanup eachother (my sister's female cat cleans the male like if he was her baby). My cat is constantly asking to go outside, the other female is not particularly attracted to it and the male cat loves to dig soil in the plants but freaks out if an outside door opens. Now... tell me who could have predicted those changes in behaviors!!!

I think the main problem (I call it a challenge) is that we are trying to recreate a whole ecosystem open to the oustide in a confined microsystem. Think of the fish which used to live in a big lake in Africa... now confined in a 20gal tank? With fish that used to live in the Amazon river? Wouldn't that be a shock? It needs to adapt, it is adapting and the outcome is uncertain.

I think our goal is to do the best we can to give good conditions. They won't be perfect, but fish, like humans are able to adapt. Hope for the best.

 

[poppab02]

I think the main problem (I call it a challenge) is that we are trying to recreate a whole ecosystem open to the oustide in a confined microsystem.

Jackpot. There's alot of the problem. Imagine if you lived underwater how hard it would be to create a perfect ecosystem for a cat. Most of the work that is challenging in fish keeping is taken care of for other pets by mother nature.

I tend to look for the pattern. There is always a pattern in the advice. Most experienced fish keepers will admit that there are quite a few different ways to do things. Just filter out what is said. Plus, if you stay on AA long enough you learn who knows what they're doing(the advisors) and who's just pulling it out of thin air(people like me).

Also, there are a few people that simply say "Hey, I've kept 40 goldfish in a 20 gallon aquarium for 10 days therefore I am an expert and will give contrary advice to everything everyone says." I can't tell you how many times some new person will pop up and say in a topic "You are wrong, I've been keeping my breeding pair of full sized Oscar's in a 10 gallon tank for 5 years with a betta and no problems." In a few days all their fish die and they are never heard from again, which is just too bad.

 

[vero]

there are a few people that simply say "Hey, I've kept 40 goldfish in a 20 gallon aquarium for 10 days therefore

Yep! I find it can be difficult to measure how happy a fish is in it's environment. Yes, you can put 40 goldfish in a small tank and they will keep swimming therefore look happy (they won't die right away, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't rather be somewhere else). And yes, you can keep a 10inches long fish in a 20inches long tank... He might survive, but is he happy? This is a reason why one has to use a lot of judgment and try to put itself in the place of a fish (which makes me think that I wouldn't want to end up in an aquarium... )

 

[crazycat]

i think every aquarist can give you at least 5 horror stories about something that happened to their tank, fish, and plants. not to beat a dead horse but it really is a lot of trial and error. i've had more whiteclouds than i can count "disappear" before i finally realized that either it's my karma not to be able to keep whiteclouds or somebody in my tank is eating them. so i no longer try to keep whiteclouds in my main tank i choose fish because i think they're beautiful or special in some way. i research them and try to make sure that they're compatible with my other fish and plants. i rely on a few people whose knowledge i trust, and sometimes even try things that other people tell me won't work (occasionally, they actually do work). if it turns out to be a mistake, i'm sad (and sometimes broke), but i learn (insert schmaltzy violin music here). one thing i do recommend is pick your "experts". if you listen to everyone, you will have a bare tank filled with neon tetras (who will then all die ) if you limit the number of people you listen to, as long as you really trust their advice, it's much easier to decide and to figure out why something went wrong.

but don't give up! building and maintaining a happy tank is always a challenge, but it's so much fun when it's working!

just my 2 cents.