Seeing The Full Potential Of Fish In The Shop

I also saw cpds in MA today. They did look dull! Unrecognisable from the beauties shown on this website.

The impulse buy "it looked really nice in the shop" is probably one of the biggest causes of problems, especially for new fish keepers. Unfortunately, many of the less suitable fish for most tanks, such as clown loach, red-tailed sharks and many cichlids, look very attractive as juveniles in fish shops, while a large proportion of the tetras, barbs, rasboras etc do not show their true colours until they are well settled. But really, there's no excuse for not doing the research beforehand these days with the amount of information available online.

Now we are really getting into areas I am generally uncomfortable discussing but... whether a fish will live up to your expectations depends upon how realistic those expectations are. (Duh!). There is always a danger of a fish in your tank being visually less appealing than the images you have seen. Lighting changes, the colours surrounding the fish varies and we have no control over the editing of the image. There is little we can do about this. Conversely, the satisfaction we feel with our fish is not solely about their visual appearance. Look at  the discussions about cories for example. Cories are basically pretty drab little things. Any colour you like as long as it's brown and white. But, they are a very popular species. Why?

Can we guarantee a fish will live up to expectations? No.

[quote  Cories are basically pretty drab little things. Any colour you like as long as it's brown and white.
[/quote]




How very dare you..... Pandas are black & white 

Quote from: Resa on May 15, 2014, 04:08:46 PM

[quote  Cories are basically pretty drab little things. Any colour you like as long as it's brown and white. quote]




How very dare you..... Pandas are black & white 

Oops... there go the quotes again Well alright... black, brown and white. The point still stands, they are not technicolour extravagazas.

'Cos they're lovely and cute and have a little bumbling charactor. 'sobvious!

I am a long-term coryphile, it was rhetorical

I think perhaps I've given a poor impression of myself! I was simply referring to if fish will always necessarily colour up as you expect them to.  I know that's not the most important thing of course, but I'd be lying if I claimed I'm not more instantly drawn by the pretty colours of fish! Once I own a pet I'm fully committed but I guess I'm a little more shallow with fish to start with and more prone to the prettier ones initially! For example I was very tempted and had to stop myself buying another endler when I was last in MA because they were so pretty! But I love my little fish so knew I couldn't as my tank is full enough.  I'm particularly fond of my one remaining shrimp right now as she has survived where the others haven't to the point where I'm almost reluctant to get more as I know when I do I won't be able to tell her apart!

Ahhh I so wish I could get another tank for some new fishy additions though!!