In the old days there used to be these thoughts that you should have "catfish" (by which we meant cories) to "clean up" the bottom (which they don't necessarily actually do.) Now we see cories as delightful shoal fish in their own right. Likewise we used to talk of "getting an algae eater" (which, in my small USA world, meant get a Plec (aka Sucker), which would look weird, stay stuck to the glass and would hopefully clean up algae.) (the UK has its own separate lingo for all this stuff!) Anyway, we now also look at "plecs" and "otos" as individual fish with individual per-species diet likes/dislikes. There's actually no requirement that one have any of these fish (we now keep the gravel quite clean via the weekly gravel-clean-water-change, thankyou) unless you are actually interested in have the fish because you particularly like it! Oto is short for (I'm not going to look it up, somebody will insert I'm sure (otocinculus?)) a little twig of a fish that only eats algae and in fact easily dies if you don't have -enough- algae! Plecs of course come in a vast array of different types and looks. One other thing to mention is that of course all these fish also come up because its true that people like to consider having fish that stay in all 3 zones, top, middle and bottom of the tank and a lot of these are bottom zone fish. But of course how much a given species sticks to a zone or roams out of it varies a lot too and there's no requirement that one have fish for the bottom zone.
Yes, neons/cards are one of the only types of tetra that immediately springs to mind as having this odd "wait" requirement. Many others are absolutely fine in a first stocking. The interesting thing about tetras that a beginner needs to get up to speed on is that although there are many types that are just fabulous as community members, there are others that are quite aggressive, so you -have- to do your research on the individual species. We can all help but it goes better if you do your homework first and mention your findings in your query. (bleeding hearts, lemons, black skirts all spring to mind as nippers, neon/cards, glowlights, head/taillights, rummynoses, scissors I remember as not nippers generally) All tetras can can exhibit nasty nipping behaviour if not in minimum or larger shoal groupings.
Livebearers (guppies, endlers, platies, swordtails, mollies, etc.) have strong pros and cons for beginners (makes it hard!) because the whole experience of fish having babies has a long popular history in the hobby and many people have had some of it as a kid and want to reproduce it for their kids too or just like it themselves. Its true it can be a wonderful experience but also as a beginner its good to consider some of the problems: The fry create a surprising addition in bioload on the filter (like adding more new fish) and can quickly cause you to be overstocked, despite having perhaps made a good stocking plan earlier! Sometimes new fry drive one to need new equipment for the existing tank or even to feel the need for a new "fry tank" and so this can all get involved and expensive. Nearly all fish eat some percentage of their new fry and of course this can be one of the more challanging aspects of the experience for kids. So decisions need to be made: Are livebearers the right thing for the first tank or should one be a beginner for a year and a half and -then- try the livebearer thing. Its great either way but I just like to help people think it through beforehand.
~~waterdrop~~
