fish with the best personality?

[Vampire fish]

What I would recommend is go to the fish store and look at all the fish. See how they respond to you, look for one that is responsive and not shy stays in the middle of the tank and friendly with other fish etc. That is the best way to find a fish with good personality. The best fish I ever had was a silver arowana, normal pike cichlid, wolf fish, and flower horn.

 

[white specter crayfish]

Lurker would be perfect. Not very demanding and outgoing personality. Only downfall would be that it would probably not be easy to pellet train or even eat pellets at all. But there are lots of things it will eat like the guppies you raise, frozen krill, shrimp, etc.

puffers (pea puffers excluded) NEED hard shelled foods like clams, crayfish, shrimp, snails, etc. and they have small scales so they are more susceptible to diseases so I don't want to have them at the moment

 

[white specter crayfish]

ok, thanks for all the suggestions, I'll check and see what I can get more easily, here's what I'm considering
1. a group of multies
pros: Cool to watch, breed readily
cons: don't interact with the owner too much (from what I've heard), very territorial, tank looks empty with just them in it
2. a dwarf pike
pros: predatory, possibly highly personable
cons: can only have one in the tank, may get too large for a 29
3. A school of 10-20 red eyed/rummynose tetras with some otocinclus and cory cats
pros: personable (from what I've heard), multiple fish in it, easy to feed, tetras are somewhat predatory
cons: won't eat live fish like I'd want it to, more expensive to get everything, tank may not be large enough
4. Jack dempsey
pros: predatory, personality (from what I've heard)
cons: might get too big for the tank to be happy

 

[white specter crayfish]

What I would recommend is go to the fish store and look at all the fish. See how they respond to you, look for one that is responsive and not shy stays in the middle of the tank and friendly with other fish etc. That is the best way to find a fish with good personality. The best fish I ever had was a silver arowana, normal pike cichlid, wolf fish, and flower horn.

I did that and there were 6 that stuck out to me, one was a porcupine puffer, one was a green terror, one was an arowana, one was a peacock bass, one was a gar, and a dovii, another one was a golden flowerhorn, but that won't be happening (it died unfortunately, the owner of the store had it in a 20 long while it was at 12-14 inches, apparently it got a really aggressive fungus)

 

[DMD123]

puffers (pea puffers excluded) NEED hard shelled foods like clams, crayfish, shrimp, snails, etc. and they have small scales so they are more susceptible to diseases so I don't want to have them at the moment

The lurkers I mentioned are piscivores and dont have the same need to have the hard shelled items like snails. They can be trained to take normal grocery store items like raw shrimp in shell or earthworms from a bait store. They are pretty easy, thats why I agreed with P PYRU in recommending one.

 

[white specter crayfish]

The lurkers I mentioned are piscivores and dont have the same need to have the hard shelled items like snails. They can be trained to take normal grocery store items like raw shrimp in shell or earthworms from a bait store. They are pretty easy, thats why I agreed with P PYRU in recommending one.

Oh, I wasn't aware of that, I will have to check them out

 

[PYRU]

Oh, I wasn't aware of that, I will have to check them out

I quit keeping the high crunch diet hunters and switched to lurkers for that reason.

It doesn't get much more low maintenance than my congo. It eats nightcrawlers and vitamin soaked seafood from the frozen food section. I think I have $10 in food from months ago and I haven't even went through 1/4 of it

 

[LambCh0p]

Out of all the suggestions given I would say if you absolutely want an interactive fish and that is what's most important to you a goldfish will likely be your best bet. If having a preadatory fish with a decent personality (although I doubt it would be as interactive as the goldfish) is more important to you I would say either get a some kind of ram or dwarf pike. I used to keep a dwarf pike when I was younger in a 29 gallon and while I never kept it until it was fully grown I would be very surprised if there isn't a species that wouldn't outgrow a 29 gallon. If it were me I would probably do the pike over the ram since they are probably the hardier of the two depending on your water conditions.

 

[Matteus]

I love the goldfish suggestion. I have an oranda with loads of personality. She spits at people she doesn't like, plays with toys, likes to be touched, and throws tantrums when she isnt fed on time.

I think I’ve heard somewhere animals often take on personalities of their owners...

 

[white specter crayfish]

don't goldfish get to be like 8-12 inches and need to be kept in groups? also they are very dirty so i'm not sure I want to have them