A Visit to the Aquarium Store

My pet guppies have been multiplying to overcrowd my tanks, fortunately there is a pet store nearby that specializes in aquariums and fish. They offer store credit in exchange for fish and I can use the credit to get crickets/mice for my snake and spiders.

I know this is mostly a fish store but they also sometimes have reptiles for sale. This time they had piles of bearded dragons.

These are all fairly small still at 50% of their full grown size. Its hilarious seeing them all pile up under the basking lights.

Now on to the fish, the first one is a pleco, sadly I didn't note which specific species of pleco this polka dotted one is. This is a tricky fish to get for your tank as they need many gallons to survive but people often buy baby ones and their small tank eventually kills them before they can grow to full size. The general rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish length equals 1 gallon of water. So if you have a foot long pleco you will need at least 12 gallons for just that one fish.

Goldfish have the same rule of thumb they actually need lots of water to survive even though you always see pictures of them in tiny bowls. Typically a goldfish will do well in at least 20 gallons. The top one is an Oranda goldfish and the bottom one is a Ryukin. If you give goldfish enough water to live in they will flourish and can live up to 15 years. But if you keep them in a tiny bowl they will die within a couple years.

I think this really fat goldfish might be a fantail. There are all sorts of different species, it would be cool one day to get a 50 gallon tank and have a bunch of different species of them together.

At first glance these look like a goldfish but they are actually a parrot cichlid. They get really big and need lots of water as well.

Like most species of cichlids they are very curious and smart. They rushed towards me when I walked by to see what I was up to. I bet they were hoping I was there to feed them.

Here is another large cichlid, a paku. These almost resemble piranhas and they do have a strange feature about them, if you look in their mouth they have teeth like a human lol. Very strange fish.

Now for some fish that can live in smaller tank sizes. Look at these weird skeletons swimming around. They are called phantom glass catfish. You can see all the way through them. The fish on the lower left is a platy. These fish are only an inch long or so allowing you to have quite a few in a smaller ten gallon tank.

If you want some company for small fish in a tank you can add some African Dwarf Frogs. I suspect you have to feed them some live food like bloodworms to perk their interest in eating. Frogs can be quite tricky to keep as well, they are very sensitive to water changes etc. Do your research before delving into the pet frog realm.

Now for a standard beta fish, if you don't have room for a large tank or even a small tank these fish are one of the few that do well in a bowl. They also tend to have a wide range of personalities, some will even do tricks like jump through hoops if you train them. My betas at home typically will see me approach their tanks and they will flare their fins at me to try to get my attention to feed them. Betas are best kept solitary as they like to fight with each other. I have had success keeping them with guppies though as they don't see them as a threat.

If my guppies keep having babies who knows what kind of store credit I can rack up. Perhaps I can save up for a huge tank and collect a paku or ten different species of goldfish lol.

That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)