fish for kids?

pops

Alligator Gar
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Nov 24, 2013
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no offence super but you are making more complicated than needed, OP just asked whats a first time fish for his daughter in say a 5g tank.
 

deeda

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Mar 26, 2008
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How old is your daughter and what fish does she like? That may be a better starting point to figure out tank size and choosing fish.
 
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Drstrangelove

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Oct 21, 2012
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My younger son was around 8 when I gave him a 10-gallon. (My parents did much the same for me.) We used guppies in both cases, with neons, mollies, swordtails as additions. I would not do more as a first tank, but that's my experience. He lost interest quickly in fish, but re-directed it towards keeping lizards and cats. I absolutely agree some tank should be available of course. Fan the flames!
 

Niki_up

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In a 5g tank I would try a Killies, a shrimp colony, sparkling gourami, one of the micro rasabora (not sure how to spell it), a Betta, snails, Pygmy cories, endlers, a small aposto if you were really dedicated. (Obviously not all these listed fish together).

If it were me I would do one sparkling gourami, 3 Pygmy cories, and one Neirite snail, add plants and call it a day. I would also do 50-60% water changes a week.
 
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esoxlucius

Alligator Gar
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Dec 30, 2015
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My younger son was around 8 when I gave him a 10-gallon. (My parents did much the same for me.) We used guppies in both cases, with neons, mollies, swordtails as additions. I would not do more as a first tank, but that's my experience. He lost interest quickly in fish, but re-directed it towards keeping lizards and cats. I absolutely agree some tank should be available of course. Fan the flames!
Yeah, got to agree with this. It's a little girls starter tank for god sake. A 10g with guppies, mollies or swordtails is a fantastic starting point.
 
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bobblehead27

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Apr 15, 2010
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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.
My Petco down the block here has multiple apistos, ornate bichirs, 5 species of rainbows including both threadfin and celebes rainbow and many different types of shrimp. Granted none of these are absurdly difficult to source, but just goes to show that they are coming a long way in their stocking. (this changes from store to store, I'm aware)
 

Angelphish

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Dec 13, 2015
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Yeah, got to agree with this. It's a little girls starter tank for god sake. A 10g with guppies, mollies or swordtails is a fantastic starting point.
Some of us just realized that he wasn't ambitious enough, so we decided to be ambitious for him.

Jokes aside, I think you'd be best off with a 20 gallon tank to start with, and I think this would be a good stock:
A school of 12 Rummy Nose Tetras OR a school of 12 Celestial Pearl Danios
A Male/Female pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides "Triple Red"
A school of 6 Corydoras sterbai
And after the tank is running for about 6-12 month, 3-4 gobies. For the most part any species under Stiphodon, Sicyopus, Or Rhinoghobius will work, but I recommend Sicyopus zosterophorus. I have one of the these and I love him. I call him Gary the Goby.

This stock would give you a lot activity from the danios/tetras and the cories, the gobies would add a uniqueness factor if you will/just make the tank more interesting, and the apistogrammas would act as a show piece. Also, all of these fish are on aquaticarts.com, so if you can find them locally, you can look there.
 
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Angelphish

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My Petco down the block here has multiple apistos, ornate bichirs, 5 species of rainbows including both threadfin and celebes rainbow and many different types of shrimp. Granted none of these are absurdly difficult to source, but just goes to show that they are coming a long way in their stocking. (this changes from store to store, I'm aware)
Jesus. I just recently started seeing fish like that in my mom and pops lfs. They get a lot of uncommon stuff most of the time, particularly cichlids and plecos, but never anything particularly rare. The best I've seen there have been different varieties of Pleco (I'm sorry I don't know my plecos), the more common species of earth eaters, texas cichlids, occasionally they'll have a small flowerhorn, and I've seen them have Viejas from time to time. Even then they're just synspilums, or very rarely they'll have another common species of Vieja. They did once have a Vieja guttulatus that I jumped on, but that was a fluke, as they didn't even know what it was at the time.
 
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