Hey guys! My 10 gal finally cycled!

FishForums.net Pet of the Month
🐶 POTM Poll is Open! 🦎 Click here to Vote! 🐰
Yes but secondary resources (multiple ones) also state that store bought specimens who have been acclimated to standard tank conditions will thrive in any oxygen saturated environment as the oxygenation provided by the current is the key factor to them thriving and I have more that adequate surface agitation in this tank. As was already said, the largest issue by and large is them starving due to lack of algae which I already have a plethora of in this tank.

This is false advice being given by these individuals. Each species of freshwater fish has evolved over thousands of years to function in a very specific environment. Environment means the water parameters, habitat conditions, etc. This is programmed into the species' DNA. Neither you nor I nor anyone is going to somehow change a species DNA just because we do not provide what that species needs. It takes evolution to alter DNA. Here we have a fish that has evolved to cling to rocks in fast-flowing water; that is how it is "made," that is how it functions physiologically, that is how its metabolism works...and it "expects" such an environment. To not provide it is frankly inhumane. Read Dr. Loiselle's comment in green in my signature block; he is an authority on cichlids, but his observation is spot on. As is Nathan Hills' (blue comment) for that matter.

As for the "secondary sources," here again we have the frustrating problem in this hobby of conflicting information from unknowledgeable sources. You cannot assume what "X" says is true, unless you know the knowledge level of "X". If you check any knowledgeable source, you will find they tend to agree with one another, because it is frankly either scientific fact or reasoned inference from facts. Knowledgeable means the individual has spent time learning, whether professionally (education) or through their own research, how fish live and function biologically. Experience alone is not enough--keeping this or that fish alive for a period of time is not researching and learning the fish's physiological design, what it "needs" to be healthy. We cannot talk to a fish, so we must ascertain the factors that nature has provided the species so the fish can function at their best, and we must be willing to match it as much as we can.
 
Last edited:

Most reactions

trending

Staff online

Back
Top