Fish Of A Flock School Together
Very broadly, fish can be roughly divided into three types – community fish, semi-aggressive fish, and aggressive fish.
When you are planning your community tank, you need to decide what are the kind of fish that you want to keep, and decide on each individual species accordingly. For a community tank for instance, you would need fish that are able to co-exist together, without harming each other. Typically, the larger the tank, the greater your choices.
Community fish: These are very peaceful fish that are docile and generally fairly small. These fish can generally be mixed in any combination, provided that the smallest fish is too big to fit in the largest fish’s mouth.
Some examples of community fish include most tetras (such as neon tetra, glow light, and bloodfin), most live-bearers (like guppies, platys, mollies, and swordtails), danios (like the zebra danio), some barbs (cherry, gold,and rosy), corydoras catfish, smaller rasboras, etc.
Semi-aggressive: These fish may be territorial, nippy, or simply large enough that they frighten small community fish into hiding. Tank size is an important factor as well, since territorial fish need more space to themselves or aggression will become a major issue.
Some examples of semi-aggresive fish include angelfish, gouramis, tiger barbs, silver dollars, and rainbow sharks etc. Larger, faster community fish (like giant danios and red-eye tetras) may also do well in this type of tank. Mixing semi-aggressive fish is a bit trickier than it is with community fish. For instance, the fast and nippy tiger barbs will probably eat the fins and tail off of slow moving (but territorial) angelfish.
Aggressive: This group includes large, predatory, and/or very territorial fish. Many cichlids fall into this group, as do large catfish, gar, arrowanas, piranha, and many other oddball species. Mixing these fish is much more complicated and success depends as much on the size and layout of your tank and the personality of your individual fish as it does on species generalities. Do some research before purchasing one of these fish, as they tend to have more special requirements than fish in the other groups.
In short, do your research before buy your pets – know its characteristics, and you will always have a lively tank, without any incidences.
