When I first got into the hobby, quite a while back, received wisdom said you needed a centrepiece fish surrounded by bottom, mid and surface swimming fish. I worked at trying to get that right for a very long time, before I realized it was a very poorly thought out idea.
Centrepieces are fine if you have a dining room table, but in a fishtank, it's an idea that collapses very quickly. The idea is to have a larger fish with a flat side to draw the eye to the tank. It's caused untold misery to hundreds of generations of flat sided social fish who get stuck alone in tanks too small for them to live anything close to a normal (for them) life.
For aquarists, the centrepiece doesn't stay in the centre. It moves around, often seeking to hide because it's a social fish and all possible companions are missing. Fish don't have friends of other species. This idea from the days when plants weren't common in tanks and fish were sold as ornaments really doesn't hold water, but in our conservative (but never conservationist) hobby, it reappears every few years. The current victim is often the honey gourami, although pearl gouramis often get stuck in too small tanks to do this job badly.
Surface hugging fish are great in tanks at eye level or higher, but these insect eating hunters get lost in tanks on low racks, where the fishkeeper has to be a contortionist to see them.
Substrate, bottom of the tank fish aren't the clean up crews the oldtimers said they were. That's prime territory in a tank, as in nature. You might as well believe humans are a clean up crew for birds.
Midwater is trouble. In most tanks, it doesn't exist. Measure your tank from its base to its top, then imagine standing in it. Is it deep? For most aquarists, the answer is an easy NO. If we're supposed to be basing stocking on nature, then your tank represents a very shallow stream. You can have midwater shoaling fish thrive in it, just as in nature you'll see shoals of small fish moving though shallows. But in a standard tank as most new aquarists have, there is no midwater. The bottom blurs into the top.
Do you need a central blob to draw your eye? Or do you keep a tank because you like looking at it anyway. Does a shoal of small fish catch your eye? Does a well aquascaped tank with healthy plants and decor appeal? Remember that the inventors of the centrepiece concept had incandescent light bulbs over fairly bare tanks. So whose eye are we aiming to catch? Yours should already be a prisoner. Visitors to your house rarely act impressed by tanks. They aren't the novelty they were in 1950 when the centrepiece idea was hot.
I propose we start out thinking differently. If you see a fish you like, gather info on it. Read or check videos and podcasts. Set the tank up for it. If you find other species that also fit what you've set up, add them. Inform yourself so you don't force them to fit the tank. If the tank is right for them, then they could be a fish for you. If not, get another tank!
Make sure the tank corresponds to what the fish needs, not to what a 1950s interior design handbook thought would be good. A tank with appropriate decor and well chosen fish isn't going to need a central focal point. In an average room the whole tank will be a focal point. And it's the whole thing you'll enjoy.
Centrepieces are fine if you have a dining room table, but in a fishtank, it's an idea that collapses very quickly. The idea is to have a larger fish with a flat side to draw the eye to the tank. It's caused untold misery to hundreds of generations of flat sided social fish who get stuck alone in tanks too small for them to live anything close to a normal (for them) life.
For aquarists, the centrepiece doesn't stay in the centre. It moves around, often seeking to hide because it's a social fish and all possible companions are missing. Fish don't have friends of other species. This idea from the days when plants weren't common in tanks and fish were sold as ornaments really doesn't hold water, but in our conservative (but never conservationist) hobby, it reappears every few years. The current victim is often the honey gourami, although pearl gouramis often get stuck in too small tanks to do this job badly.
Surface hugging fish are great in tanks at eye level or higher, but these insect eating hunters get lost in tanks on low racks, where the fishkeeper has to be a contortionist to see them.
Substrate, bottom of the tank fish aren't the clean up crews the oldtimers said they were. That's prime territory in a tank, as in nature. You might as well believe humans are a clean up crew for birds.
Midwater is trouble. In most tanks, it doesn't exist. Measure your tank from its base to its top, then imagine standing in it. Is it deep? For most aquarists, the answer is an easy NO. If we're supposed to be basing stocking on nature, then your tank represents a very shallow stream. You can have midwater shoaling fish thrive in it, just as in nature you'll see shoals of small fish moving though shallows. But in a standard tank as most new aquarists have, there is no midwater. The bottom blurs into the top.
Do you need a central blob to draw your eye? Or do you keep a tank because you like looking at it anyway. Does a shoal of small fish catch your eye? Does a well aquascaped tank with healthy plants and decor appeal? Remember that the inventors of the centrepiece concept had incandescent light bulbs over fairly bare tanks. So whose eye are we aiming to catch? Yours should already be a prisoner. Visitors to your house rarely act impressed by tanks. They aren't the novelty they were in 1950 when the centrepiece idea was hot.
I propose we start out thinking differently. If you see a fish you like, gather info on it. Read or check videos and podcasts. Set the tank up for it. If you find other species that also fit what you've set up, add them. Inform yourself so you don't force them to fit the tank. If the tank is right for them, then they could be a fish for you. If not, get another tank!
Make sure the tank corresponds to what the fish needs, not to what a 1950s interior design handbook thought would be good. A tank with appropriate decor and well chosen fish isn't going to need a central focal point. In an average room the whole tank will be a focal point. And it's the whole thing you'll enjoy.
