Fish as pets?

Whatever fish you decide on, don't go less than a 10 gal tank. It's harder to keep the water balanced in a small tank. Remember that a fish tank is a small ecosystem; everything needs to be in balance.

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Fish are great, but owning them is more of a hobby

Creating and maintaining a proper environment for your fish ends up being the most satisfying thing to me. Some fish do show off their satisfaction at being in a good environment compared to a shitty one, but they don't offer nearly as much comfort as a dog.

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I once met a Lactoria cornuta.
It was very into humans and put its head out of the water to be fed.
Most dog like fish i ever met.
I heard pufferfish are similar in behavior.
They are difficult to keep fe the green one because it rather likes brackish water and its only diet are snails, otherwise their teeth grow and they die.
And buy led lightning. It charges off after a while because it does not need replacement and consumes less energy.

A fishtank will be as expensive and time consuming as you want it to be. A basic tank can require as little as an hour or so a week of work and can be purchased largely second hand, complexity like a reef tank will require a specialty shop if not online can take near daily maintenance. It all just depends what you want to do.

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>>1994625
>you cant really interact much with them
Not completely true, but yeah, not as much as a dog. My friend's leopard gourami watches Top Gear with her.

>How high maintenance are they? Is getting the equipment, like tank etc. expensive? Are fish generally expensive?
This all depends on what kind of tank/fish you want. A 5 or 10 gallon tank with a betta and some clean up crew (or invert only) would run you $80-120 to set up with new equipment (maybe less secondhand, but that all depends on where you live) and require maybe 15 or 20 minutes of maintenance per week once everything is completely set up and stable (cycled). There really isn't an upper limit on the amount of time, money, and energy you can spend on a tank if you wanted to.

Fish I like personally:
>leopard, pearl, sparkling, and honey gourami
>glowlight and celestial pearl danios
>pygmy, dwarf, and dainty corydoras
>ram, apisto, shell-dwelling and kribensis cichlids
>dwarf puffer
>scarlet badis
>bettas

>>1994625
>>1994665
Also, if you want to "play" with a pet fish, you can train a lot of them to swim through hoops, and most fish will chase a laser pointer.

>>1994625
If low maintenance is the desire, you might consider a snake; like a couple of garters or a colubrid (corn/king/milk etc.). 1 feeding per week, usually one cleaning per week, change water bowl out every three days or sooner if soiled.

>>1994625
I got a softshell turtle which is pretty fun to play with. You generally need a larger tank for those, and usually only 1 in a tank max.

>>1994625
Btw that is a very shitty tank for foldfish

>>1994625
Amature fish keeper here.
I love fish as pets theyre amazing to watch. If your into it you can breed em and enjoy that aswell. I have goldfish that play wiht a laser pointer. Just whatever you do do not get a bowl ill find you and make you buy a tank.

>>1994625
you can set up a small freshwater tank for pretty cheap. check craigslist, people sometimes give their setups away for free even. fish range from dirt cheap to super expensive. and id have to disagree about the interaction thing- my puffers definitely respond to my presence, and i have an apisto that will actually nuzzle my hand like a cat if i put it in the tank. there are plenty of species that are widely considered to be more intelligent than others. i recommend starting small with the tank, and if you enjoy it then you upgrade. i recommend killifish and dwarf cichlids (not african cichlids, i would say wait to have those until you have some experience) these species are cool looking and relatively easy to keep happy. and get some java fern and java moss to plant your tank with, they are very tolerant and easy to grow

>>1994626
Unless you want just a betta or something.

I have three five-gals because my apartment doesn't allow for tens. It's not hard to keep them clean at all. They share their tanks with basic things like snails and frogs that don't add much to the bioload and can handle fluctuations in parameters.

That said, I also successfully kept more "difficult" fish like Celestial Pearl Danios, Clown Killies, etc in these small tanks. It's all about bioload.

>>1995149
>my apartment doesn't allow for happiness
Your property manager sounds like a tight lipped sandy ax scab.

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Since we are on the topic of stocking what should i put in my 56g?
>half dozen cherry shrimp
>5 or 6 otos
>2 nerite snails
>5 or 6 ghost shrimp
>plants

Would like something more upper level since the bottom has plenty of plants but the top is open

>>1997031
I'm partial to cherry barbs. 8-10 would look great in that tank. Get some corydoras, too. Every single species of corydora is wonderful. You can't go wrong.

>>1997037
I thought about corys but heard the substrate i use would screw up their barbs, i use floramax with about 2 inches of dirt under it.

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>>1994625
> TL:DR
If you miss your dogs, get two rats of the same gender. They're like tiny self-cleaning dogs that never require walks. Cages can be found cheaply at thrift stores (don't use fish tanks due to poor air circulation), old newspaper bedding is free, and food is cheap. Fish aren't cheap.

> Long story nao
Unless you can get things on sale, fish stuff is murder this time of year. Someone "gifted" me a beta last December and the gear needed just to make a five gallon run was expensive.

> Tank: $20
> Filter: $20
> Sand: $10
> Water cleaner: $15
> Food: 5
> Net (just in case): $5
> decorations: $25
> Cleaning tube: $10
> Heater: $10

120 dollars for a "free" betta.

Even worse, I found out about the heater thing after the betta got sick from the water temps dropping below 80 due to winter. He didn't make it, so I restarted and decided to be smart this time buying a little at a time.

> 20 gallon long tank at a "dollar a gallon" sale: $20
> 40 gallon filter with 15 dollar discount coupon: $15
> More sand (reusing old sand): $10
> Live plants on sale: $10
> Reusing old decorations: free
> Reusing old net and cleaning tube: free

Price to upgrade the tank: $55

I did the same thing for the fish, waiting for sales to hit and sniping bargains where possible. I currently have six female bettas (yes, they can live together in numbers!), ten corycats, some marimo and plants, and an apple snail. It ran me around $40 for all the fish.

Fish aren't cheap. Buy some rats, those are cheap! I was a ratkeeper for almost a decade before deciding to try something "different" which led to a well-meaning friend gifting me a fish before I could pick what I wanted.

> Two rats: $10, possibly less if rescued. check your shelter!
> Cage: $20 at a thrift shop
> Old newspaper bedding: free
> GLASS water bottle: $10 (plastic is cheaper but can house bacteria)
> Wooden bird toys someone was discarding: free (check yard sales)
> Dryer lint for nest building: free

Total cost: $40

>>1997048
>I thought about corys but heard the substrate i use would screw up their barbs, i use floramax with about 2 inches of dirt under it.
Poor water quality is much more detrimental to barbel health than the substrate. Corys can be kept on virtually any substrate as long as the water is clean and there isn't too much detritus and "muck" on the bottom.

For a coarse substrate, the only thing I would do is avoid the smaller cory species, like habrosus and pygmaeus. The rest of the 2" or larger corys won't have a problem with floramax.

>>1997077
>floramax
Even finer substrates can wreck a cory if they're sharp. Yes, flouramax is one of those that can do it. When in doubt, don't risk it.

>>1997084
Might talk to the lfs an see if I cannot give some cories a trial run.

>>1994638
I can confirm about the cow fish. They are super friendly. There was one at my office and every lunch break I would come down to the tank and it would pop out of hiding to swim by me. I thought it just came out to me because it thought it was being fed or something but when other people were by the tank it wouldnt come out. Guess it liked me

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>>1997058
Free 30 gal tank
16$ for two foam filters
25$ for two air pumps to drive them
20$ heater
30$ in fake plants
35$ in black sand
20$ for spongebobs home
75$ in angel fish
20$ for a catfish that hides in spongebobs home
10$ for a pleco
15$ for a pair of clown loaches that hide under the filters :/
and too much money for deep sea miku

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>>1999916
No.

30

Aquariums aren't cheap at first but here are a couple tips to save monies
>play sand at home Depot can be used as a substrate and it looks awesome, 4$ for 50lbs. You just have to clean it
>use organic miracle grow potting soil for keeping plants,lay that down first then lay the sand on top of it as a "cap" completely safe for the fish
>get a clean up crew, ghost shrimp are cheap and fun to watch
>find plants in your loCal river, a light bleach bath followed by rinsing will kill most parasites
>craigslist is great for finding full set ups for cheap. 100$is the norm
>planted tanks are self decorating If you know what you're doing
>driftwood is free,you just have to boil it
Happy hunting

>>1998774
This is disgusting

>>2000667
It's awesome

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Get an octopus or cuttlefish. Theyre fun as fuck. They do have short lifespans though

tank!tank! never a bowl. yes fish are high mantinence and can be costly. but they make great pets you canr expect every animal to be like a dog. fish suitible youll need a filter and dechloinater. for beginners are: bettas, corydora catfish, Loaches, livebearers, tetra, barbs, gouramis, danio,

Always remember the golden rule 1 neon tetra per gallon

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>>2001453
>mfw 40 neon tetras

>>2001470
>160 neon tetras
Im not even sure i can legally order that many

>>2001453
I think that with great filtration you can have more than one per gallon. They have a pretty small bioload.

>>2001421
walstad bowls are awesome tho
my tanks are pretty low maintenance.. automatic feeder and I change the water 2x a month so that's like three hours a month. shitty pets, great hobby.

Some of the larger predatory fish are actually pet like as they are smart enough to recognize you and beg.

>>2002197
Pretty much all fish do that.

>>2001453

And have at least 5-6 at the minimum.

>>2000667

Heh. I put one of those Spongebob houses in one of my tanks to amuse my son (not that he watches Spongebob) when it was a new tank...it's pretty much hidden by anubias and melon sword now.

>>2002211
Tetra's won't let you pet them like a large cichlid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A9l3amEpaQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmmGAlzfvv4

>>2002223
And taming a cichlid probably stresses them out less than taming the average reptile considering they have loose social structures and monogamous pair bonds maintained partially though contact.

>>2002223
they might. I've never tried it.

but anyone that's kept any fish for a while knows they learn to recognize the person that feeds them and to beg for food. It usually takes them less than a month to figure that out.

I once ran an experiment on a batch of very shy saltwater fish in my basement. They'd all come for food when I went in the room but hid when anyone else came in. So I tried dressing my kid up in my clothes to see if they'd come out. Nope, they hid. So I tried wearing different clothes than normal myself. They all came out. I realized they recognize faces.

they recognize fucking faces. We're talking damsels and gobies and firefish, the marine equivalent of goldfish and guppies.

>>2002225
Damsels are territorial fish that live in large loose mixed specie communities on the reef, not surprised really. Gobies though seem dumb.

>>1994625
It's a lot of maintenance and a high initial cost for something you can't really interact with. IMO fish care is more a hobbyist thing than a companionship thing, like gardening or something.

>>1997058
THIS
H
I
S

rats are based, based, based. they will chill out on your shoulder and be your awesome little homies. they're smart and friendly.

get prepared for when they inevitably get a gigantic tumor and die though :(