Hey! what happened to Freddy???

[Magnum Man]

do you prefer fish you can identify "personally" ( doesn't matter weather you really name them or not ), or do you like schools of fish that all look the same, and that you can't really tell them apart??? I have a theory that most prefer fish they can identify... but curious if that's really true ... I think being able to tell an animal apart, makes them more personable to us, having 4 cloned dogs ( or cats ) wouldn't be as special to us, because we couldn't tell them apart, as the same 4 animals with different colors, or spotting patterns... maybe you have fish that look identical, but you can tell them apart by personality... and maybe the cloned animals develop different personalities, by their slightly differing life experiences??? this thread is not about cloning, but more about us, and what we expect, and receive from our various pets... I personally prefer to know, and identify a fish when it dies, or disappears, rather than have a random group of fish, and tomorrow "one" of them is missing...

thoughts???

 

[GaryE]

Here's my weird mentality. A shoal of tetras is an entity. I don't much care about the individuals, but the shoal matters to me. If I lose it, it saddens me. If I start with ten and lose one, it's okay. If I lose more, then I either add back in with available fish, or try to breed it to make the shoal work again.
I have fish that do well to live three years, but which I have maintained as a species here since 1992. Certainly hundreds have lived their healthy lifespans and died, and I've gotten used to that circle of life thing. I take enormous pleasure when they swim out in their tanks, even after all this time. They're fantastic creatures, and I sometimes see all the hard work, planning and thinking that's gone into their still being here.
To me, a lone fish is like a nose running around looking for a face. I mean, that's interesting, but it's also kind of sad and futile.

But I have to be self aware. I got here by keeping fish for just under 60 years, continually. I've been working at breeding my fish for 35 years. I have an entire fishroom with a great number of species in there. I have one elderly dwarf cichlid, the grandfather of the fish in the next tank. He's become kind of a pet.

When I was new to the hobby, I had some fish I still remember well as individuals. They were certainly pets. Sid and Griselda, the Herotilapia cichlids, Scruffy the cory, a never named X variatus that used to swim into my cupped hand underwater, and just sit there. Some of my Steatocranus and large Satanoperca, with their eyes a human can relate to... but I also remember shoals of lampeyes I was able to keep running, or shoals of tetras I'll never see again.

 

[gimme30]

I look at schools the same way GaryE does....the group has a sort of personality as a whole. I'll admit though that an individual fish with heaps of character is as equally interesting to me, so I guess you could say I'm straddling the fence.
I have an affinity for misgurnus anguillicaudatus (dojo, or weather loach) They're not colorful showy fish. In a species-only tank you can't really tell one apart from another. But every single one is curious, bold, playful whether alone or in a group, and mostly harmless to other species. I say mostly because when the barometric pressure changes they go nuts and pinball off tankmates. While they always steal the show, for me, I certainly couldn't pick out Fred from Frank Farrah or Frenchy.

 

[Jamie D.]

I like both, personally. My plecos, angelfish, and yoyo loach are all named, and show unique personalities, and I enjoy them as individuals. If I had room for groups of each, that would be ideal, though realistically not feasible.

But I also very much enjoy my cories, tetras, khulis and cherry barbs both as groups and also certain individuals specifically.

I guess I just like fish.

 

[BanjoFish]

Years ago ( actually centuries as I was a teenager) there was a pond in the garden of the house my parents bought.

One of the shubunkin had two tails so I nicknamed him Spock.

For the fishtank I intend to buy a honey gourami eventually.

Might name him.

 

[jaylach]

Depends on the species. If I have a single rope fish it is always named Clyde but I don't generally name. I do intend to get a 10-12 shoal of Ember Tetras and could see calling the entire shoal something such as Sparks. As has been previously said by others I would consider the entire shoal an entity, not the individual fish.

On the other hand I also intend to get 3-4 Panda Garra which would not be easy to name unless, when mature, they developed different color patterns or another distinctive trait.

The difference to me is that the Tetras as a shoal would be a large enough group to consider an entity. 3-4 Pandas just doesn't seem enough to consider as an entity. The problem in this case is how do you name 3-4 fish as individuals when they all look the same?

I guess what I'm saying is that it is easier to name a single fish of a species or a large group than it is to name a few fish of the same species that look alike.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Many years ago I put a group of 65+cardinal tetras into my 75 gallon. It only took me about two hours to name them all but then I had tp put little name tags on each one so I could ID them. And they one night with a flashlight I surprised them and caught them swapping name tags.

I do not name my fish. When I did this very early on they seemed to die soon after. So I refer to my oldest largest clown loach as "the big one." I have two smaller ones which have easy to see black filled circles and I refer the them as spot and dot. But the terms are used interchangeably for these two fish.

When I was working with zebra plecos the #2 male was the largest fish in the group (this is common with zebras groups that the alpha male is not the biggest just the toughest). I used to refer to him as fatty.

The problem with the Latin names is many of them are difficult to impossible to pronounce. When I had Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi, I just referred to them as nickel fish.

The hardest fish name to pronounce is generally considered to be the Hawaiian reef triggerfish, Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa (Rhinecanthus rectangulus). Pronounced hoo-moo-hoo-moo-noo-koo-noo-koo-ah-poo-ah-ah, this 12-syllable name translates to "triggerfish with a snout like a pig" and refers to its unique appearance and grunting sound.

I think we can call this one pig face or better yet, Hog Nose.....

 

[Uberhoust]

I name most of my fish, except the schooling types but even some of those get named if they stand out in some way. I like to interact with my fish. I find I care for them more when they are named and they tend to live longer.