# The Difficulty of Fish



## Joeee (Apr 3, 2010)

This question has been on my mind for the past hour. What is a difficult fish to raise compared to a beginner fish? 

Of course when I started out with a shrimp tank, I started with 2 CRS which were $2.50 each at Dragon Aquarium. They both died, the reason? Well, there's a few:
1. Tank was about a week into cycling
2. I had 3 filters on a 10G tank, a AquaClear 50, and 2 TopFin 10 filters. Only one of the TopFin filters had a sponge on the intake.
3. Zebra Danios.
4. Frequent water changes, temperature of the water would therefore flucuate greatly within 5 minutes
5. S-grade CRS and therefore are more sensitive to reason 1 and 4

Fortunately I'm beyond that and I can control myself from buying fish and shrimp now (sort of...). 

So let me try to broaden my question:
If we assume someone completely new to the hobby, which I will call fishkeeper A knows about the water parameters required for a certain fish, say a sensitive fish and often considered difficult fish like a discus. Fishkeeper A wants to keep discus and learned various ways of doing water changes (I created or stole a method which incorporated drip acclimation, so I drip some water into the tank after I remove it, this prevents dramatic temperature and pH changes, I'll write about this in another thread later) and is willing to do water changes on a regular basis, then what makes raising discus difficult for fishkeeper A? Let's also give our hypothetical fishkeeper the luxury of drip acclimation and assume that he/she did a proper acclimation.

If keeping discus is not difficult for fishkeeper A then it cannot be difficult. By 'difficulty' do people generally mean how much work a fish requires?


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## Darkside (Sep 14, 2009)

The difficulty with discus lies with breeding them.


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## TBemba (Jan 11, 2010)

Well Discus not only are very difficult to get the right conditions to breed they also require more attention then other fish.

Water quality is key to keeping fish. Most African cichlids can put up with a various range of water conditions and they will still survive. But other cichlids like Discus need more care. Better water conditions or they get sick or stressed and will die. These fish are not difficult they are sensitive. 

Try to think of it like keeping sw it takes more care and testing for sw then fw.

same with some fish I would say some sensitive fish are Discus, apistos, Tetras, corys,goldfish,ottos, shrimp, this is just some off the top of my head.

Just because newbies keep these fish doesn't meant they are successful.

Example: You buy 10 tetras and 6 months later you have 3 IMO you were not very successful. Same with goldfish they require huge tanks and major water changes and filtration.


So if you can keep 10 tetras alive for like 2 years you are doing great and are able to keep sensitive fish.

Plus there is a difference between keeping fish and having them thrive and be happy and healthy.


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## bae (May 11, 2007)

Unfortunately, as with so many things, there's an expertise to fishkeeping that you can only acquire by observation and experience. While reading up on it, and observing the results of what you do carefully will give you that expertise more rapidly, still there's no substitute for just being able to look at a tank and know something is not quite right.

Some fish can tolerate the fishkeeper's mistakes and inexperienced judgment better than others. 'Difficult' fish can't. Expertise tells you early enough that something is wrong that you can do something about it. It also gives you a feeling for what advice is worth taking. 

Some people can develop some expertise in months, while others can go on for years never understanding why their fish don't live long.


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## TBemba (Jan 11, 2010)

bae said:


> Unfortunately, as with so many things, there's an expertise to fishkeeping that you can only acquire by observation and experience. While reading up on it, and observing the results of what you do carefully will give you that expertise more rapidly, still there's no substitute for just being able to look at a tank and know something is not quite right.
> 
> Some fish can tolerate the fishkeeper's mistakes and inexperienced judgment better than others. 'Difficult' fish can't. Expertise tells you early enough that something is wrong that you can do something about it. It also gives you a feeling for what advice is worth taking.
> 
> Some people can develop some expertise in months, while others can go on for years never understanding why their fish don't live long.


+1

I find many new people to the hobby think they can go out and buy anything their heart desires and keep it. This results in alot of dead fish and people getting out of the hobby do to lack of success.


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