Daunted by the size of the typical rainbowfish available? Rainbow keeper Petra Glover introduces some smaller species that may be just what you’ve been looking for.
PETRA GLOVER A teacher by profession, Petra has kept, bred and written about fish for many years, and in particular the oddball fishes.
I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT it would be interesting to find out the most common tank size of the typical fishkeeper. Obviously, it’s tempting to think that all home aquarists have at least one tank of a metre or more in size, but from the many questions across the internet about keeping fish in smaller tanks, I am guessing that this might be stretching it. With smaller houses being built and less space for monster tanks, no doubt the trend towards smaller and nano tanks will continue, particularly given the increased cost of food, water and electricity in the current times.
This, then, goes some way towards explaining the popularity of smaller fish with presence, such as the dwarf neon rainbowfish, Melanotaenia praecox, for people looking for a beautiful, peaceful fish that can be kept in community tanks.
Overly inbred?
Unfortunately, one has only to look to the dwarf gourami, Trichogaster fasciata, to see the poisoned chalice that popularity brings, with mass-breeding and proliferation of poor genetics having a detrimental impact on captive-bred fish populations. This also appears to be the case with M. praecox, and many owners will have experienced the cycle of replacing their fish, only for the next batch to die. Sometimes the cause is obvious (bloat) or explainable (tuberculosis), but sometimes there is no clear cause. Eventually, the idea is formed that rainbowfish are difficult to keep and these keepers turn to other fish, which is a shame given that most rainbowfish tend to be incredibly hardy and adaptable.
Now is definitely time to spread the word that there is a plethora of other, smaller rainbowfish out there, all of which would happily fit into the same size tank that a group of praecox could thrive in, and the majority of which will never exceed the 5-7cm attained by older praecox males.
This article only looks at a selection of species that can be easily sourced in the UK but, for those who are happy to import, new species are being discovered all the time. Many of these have not yet been scientifically described and many more are waiting in the wings while dedicated explorers and breeders stabilise their populations in captivity be
