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.
I think brackish water is going to add more unnecessary complications.Personally I think 3-10 bumblebee gobies and some brackish tolerant plants would be neat.
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.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!
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)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.
Some of us just realized that he wasn't ambitious enough, so we decided to be ambitious for him.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.
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.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)