True, I won't argue that there is a fair amount of natives that only bring out their most stunning colors for breeding season, but that's not the majority of them. A pumpkinseed or longear will look amazing at any time of year though. I've just had much better experience with natives is all. My old cutteri cichlids just terrorized all tankmates and preferred to bite my hand rather than observe it first. My green sunfish (which by now you probably know, sunfish are pretty much the NA equivalent of cichlids) is much more personable than any cichlid I've owned and will handfeed rather than bite me, she's also intelligent enough that taught her to swim through my hand and jump for food. Getting in to the category of smaller fish, my redside dace at 4" will actually swim against the glass and beg for food! Something I've never observed in any of the tetra species I used to keep. And darters just top them all. They are some of the most intelligent and curious fish for their small size that I've ever seen. They'll all handfeed at 2", they watch you just as much as you watch them, and they'll explore every little detail of the tank that you put them in. And that, is why I like natives so much better than any tropical fish. I'm also seeing that people who like to claim how boring natives are don't bother to mention all the bland tropicals out there. But I don't complain about those fish because normally fish that lack color, whether native or tropical, will sometimes make up for it in personality. Some examples of bland tropicals that people keep.
