fish for kids?

[Angelphish]

This can not be argued

Larger tanks are more stable. End of discussion.


If the sky is the limit, I would start off with a 75+, which would give you freedom to go in a lot of different directions with the tank. You could easily keep 2-4 schools of tetras/rasboras, you could keep a handful of smaller cichlids such as electric blue acaras, do a biotype. The sky is the limit. Personally I would even shoot for a 120 or a 125, with the 120 having the advantage of better dimensions (4x2x2). You can typically find 75+ gallon tanks on craigslist for dirt cheap.

 

[Angelphish]

Desert gobies?

I love gobies. They're really fun to keep and watch, but you need to have a well established tank (6-12 months) before you can keep them.

 

[pops]

running a 5 to 10g tank, I would put some neon tetras in it, not hard to take care of, small bio load and active.

 

[Thacarter54632]

Haha, a flame war wasn’t going to break out between us. I simply disagreed with his ideas and said so respectfully. Feel free to post your original comment if you wish.

Not a big deal. I know nano tanks and fish can be a hotly debated topic. A nano tank 10g and under is easier for the younger crowd to keep. It is what I learned proper maintenance on. It is easier for a kid to lift a gallon jug of water once a week than to trust them hooking a python up or expecting them to run multiple 5g buckets around.

Fish availability is also much better than it ever has been in the past. Even the biggest chain store can special order some pretty rare fish now and have them in 3-5 days pretty easy.

 

[Angelphish]

running a 5 to 10g tank, I would put some neon tetras in it, not hard to take care of, small bio load and active.

You could probably get an even smaller bioload with certain species of rasbora.

 

[fishhead0103666]

Aquaticarts like I mentioned before has a variety of micro rasboras. Very good if you want to browse around to get a feel for mirco fish.

 

[Angelphish]

Not a big deal. I know nano tanks and fish can be a hotly debated topic. A nano tank 10g and under is easier for the younger crowd to keep. It is what I learned proper maintenance on. It is easier for a kid to lift a gallon jug of water once a week than to trust them hooking a python up or expecting them to run multiple 5g buckets around.

Fish availability is also much better than it ever has been in the past. Even the biggest chain store can special order some pretty rare fish now and have them in 3-5 days pretty easy.

The rarest fish I've ever seen at a petsmart/petsupermarket/petco are senegal bichirs, and I once saw a black ghost knife. Neither of these fish I really consider difficult to find.

 

[Supergeorge123]

If you have the same bioload per gallon of water and the same per capita amount of surface area in the aquarium and in the filtration, feeding the same scaled up amount of food and the same percentage of live plants then they would actually be equally as stable in terms of water chemistry. The only difference would be in the stability of the water temperature.

The stability that i believe most people do not take into account is the human stability as in changing 20 percent of the water is a much bigger job in a larger aquarium and therefore more likely to be delayed or skipped.

 

[Thacarter54632]

The rarest fish I've ever seen at a petsmart/petsupermarket/petco are senegal bichirs, and I once saw a black ghost knife. Neither of these fish I really consider difficult to find.

They can special order anything your favorite fish store can get and often cheaper. It is dependent on the region and store as to what they stock.

 

[Angelphish]

If you have the same bioload per gallon of water and the same per capita amount of surface area in the aquarium and in the filtration, feeding the same scaled up amount of food and the same percentage of live plants then they would actually be equally as stable in terms of water chemistry. The only difference would be in the stability of the water temperature.

The stability that i believe most people do not take into account is the human stability as in changing 20 percent of the water is a much bigger job in a larger aquarium and therefore more likely to be delayed or skipped.

I think what he's trying to say is that an inconstancy on your end is scaled down on a larger tank in comparison to a smaller tank.

The total length of all of the fish full grown should not exceed about 12 combined inches

Also, take this with a grain of salt. This does work for smaller fish, but that's actually a simplified version of 1 cubic inch of fish per gallon of water. That comes more into play once you start getting taller and wider fish.

Aquaticarts like I mentioned before has a variety of micro rasboras. Very good if you want to browse around to get a feel for mirco fish.

This. And they also have a good selection of shrimp too.