waiting ( not so patiently ) for your fish to mature...

[Magnum Man]

so, there is a big difference between mature fish, and the baby's most places sell... I'm not a patient man, and a hobbyist sees the picture ( when buying on line ) ... of coarse it's the super model of the fish world, and almost always a male, in breeding colors... then you get the baby shipped to you, and it looks like a female guppy... my tanks have changed a lot over the last couple years... for one thing, it's easy to over crowd a tank, when the fish come in a fraction of the size they'll grow to... but the tank is so much more spectacular to view, when the fish are mature... I was drinking my caffeine this morning, at 1st tank light, and the male sailfin tetra, was out from his hollow log, his dorsal has gotten impressive... sure the little guys do cool things too... when my panda gara gang was tiny, the little 1/2 long fish would come and steal food right from the mouth of adult tin foil barbs... I thought for sure they were going to get eaten... now as a mature group, there is a lot of yellow / oranges in their finage, at 4 inches... most tanks in my main group now, have mature fish, but I still have babies in the bitterling tank just getting going, there are baby panda garas in that tank as well, but they are like female guppies at 1 inch right now... maybe it's better when the fish mature with each other???

 

[GaryE]

It's an interesting point. I just moved a batch of black neons that hatched Oct 12 (it's Dec 17 as I type). By Christmas they'll be the size we get them in stores. They are pretty little fish, but that growth is a contributor to why they're so common. Slower growing fish are rarer, because the farms have less profit from using the space to grow them.

When I see a fish I'm unfamiliar with, I first check origin and water needs. Then temperature. And then adult size. They may be tiny, but I buy them as if they are full adults. If I know it'll take 3 years for them to get there, I assume I'm a good enough fishkeeper I won't kill them in the next 3 years. In planning stocking, there's no such thing as a one inch fish it it grows to six inches. It's always a six inch fish.

How many of us have become attached to a pleco or goldfish, and had to get rid of it because it outgrew our tanks? Stores sell them predicting we suck at fishkeeping and they'll die from us. If we have proper maintenance routines and care, they'll live.

I have waited for some developments in fish when I knew those things were coming. It's fun to see their changes, and to see the final result. A lot of the most beautiful fish we can keep are slow growers.

There's a myth that if they grow up together, they'll be fine. I've had a few Cichlids I bought really small bust that one. They grew and seemed tolerant of their childhood friend tankmates, til one day they ate them all.