As our first blog post about birds as pets, fish as pets is a vast topic. From training fish to keeping freshwater aquarium fish and marine aquarium fish. As well as keeping fish in a garden pond.
Fish make great pets because they don’t need training, playtime, or grooming. Pet fish can reduce stress, anxiety, heart rate, and blood pressure, improve your mood and motivate kids to research and learn more.
Training:
With the proper training, your fish can be taught to interact with you and do tricks – just like any other pet! The easiest fish breeds to train include Oscars, Goldfish, and Bettas. Male Betta fish are usually kept alone in a bowl, making them the most focused and easiest to train. Here is a great step by step link from WikiHow.
Keeping freshwater aquarium fish
Freshwater fishkeeping is the most popular side of the hobby. Most pet stores often sell a variety to choose from. Your aquarium can have a variety of compatible species while single-species breeding is also popular. Mollies and guppies, which are livebearers, are the easiest to raise in captivity. Other regular species to breed are cichlid, catfish, characins, cyprinids and killifish. You can create freshwater aquascapes with aquatic plants as well as fish.
Keeping fish in a garden pond
Garden ponds are in some ways like freshwater aquaria, but larger and exposed to ambient weather. You can keep tropical fish in tropical areas but in the temperate zone, goldfish, koi and orfe work better.
Keeping marine aquarium fish
Marine aquariums have more specific needs and requirements to maintain. An expensive hobby and livestock are also more expensive. While staying in East London, South Africa, I kept marine fish myself. I had to do a 20% water change every 2nd week that I collected from the sea. If you live far from the beach, you need to mix your own water with specific salt that is available from pet shops that do sell it. You can create a coral reef with live rock, corals, and marine invertebrates. I will create a separate post on reef tanks. Here is a list of the top 10 saltwater fish for beginners.