Species

If you keep hard tap water and you want a splash of colour that will not sulk in it, Endler’s livebearers are one of the best small fish you can buy. I picked up my first group almost by accident, a handful of unlabelled males in a bag from a local keeper, and they turned a quiet 40 litre into something that stopped visitors mid-sentence. The males look like someone dipped a guppy in metallic paint and then shrank it. They are cheap, hardy, endlessly active, and they thrive in exactly the water that makes soft-water darlings like cardinal tetras miserable. This is how I keep them, what they actually need, and the one habit that will save you a lot of grief later. ...

If you have hard, alkaline tap water and you want a tiny cichlid that runs its own colony in a small tank, Neolamprologus similis deserves a place on your shortlist right next to its famous cousin. Similis is a shell-dwelling Tanganyikan, one of the smallest cichlids kept in the hobby, and it does everything the better-known multifasciatus does: it digs, it defends a shell, it breeds inside it and it builds a little society across the tank floor. The main practical difference is the look and the temperament, and both, to my eye, come out slightly in favour of similis. This is the species profile: what it is, how it differs from the multi, and how to keep and breed a colony in water like mine. ...

Some fish demand careful water and a gentle hand. The zebra danio is not one of them. It is a small, striped, endlessly busy little thing that behaves as though it has drunk far too much coffee, and it is about as forgiving a fish as exists in the hobby. If you have hard tap water and want a lively shoal that adds movement to the upper half of a tank, danios deserve a serious look. I have kept them as a dither shoal in community tanks for years, and they have shrugged off conditions that would have finished more delicate species. ...

If you have hard, alkaline tap water and you want a fish that looks like a boiled sweet and behaves like it has somewhere to be, the platy is hard to beat. It sits alongside the guppy as one of the two livebearers I recommend most often to people starting out with water like mine, and in some ways I prefer it. Platies are a touch chunkier, a little calmer, and they come in colours that seem almost unreasonable for a fish you can buy for the price of a coffee. I have kept them for years, usually as the middle layer of a community tank, and they ask for very little in return. ...

If you have hard, alkaline tap water and you want a small, colourful fish that will not just tolerate it but genuinely prefer it, guppies are one of the easiest recommendations I can make. Poecilia reticulata is the fish that got most of us into the hobby, and there is a good reason it keeps turning up in beginner tanks: it is tough, it breeds without any encouragement, and the males look like someone spilled paint. I have kept them on and off for years, and the tank in my kitchen has run more or less on autopilot for the last two. ...

The tank I look at most often is not my biggest or my prettiest. It is a low, wide box sitting on a shelf in the bathroom, holding maybe fifty litres of very hard water and a floor covered in empty snail shells. Inside it, a colony of the smallest cichlid in the world runs its own affairs with almost no help from me. These are shell-dwelling cichlids, Neolamprologus multifasciatus, and after several years of keeping them I am still not bored of watching. This is the practical account of how I keep the colony, what my hard tap water does for it, and the handful of things I got wrong before I got them right. If you want the full species profile, I have written one already on Neolamprologus multifasciatus; this piece is the lived version, the day to day of actually running a shellie tank. ...

The colony in my bathroom tank started as six fish. Nobody asked my permission for what happened next, and that is rather the point of Neolamprologus multifasciatus. These are shell-dwelling cichlids from Lake Tanganyika, usually just called multies, and they hold a genuine claim to being the smallest cichlid in the world. A big male is 4 to 5 cm, females noticeably smaller, and yet they carry all the character of their much larger relatives. They dig, they squabble, they defend, they raise young, and they do it all in a tank that fits on a sturdy shelf. If you have hard, alkaline tap water and you want your first taste of Tanganyikan cichlids without a 300 litre commitment, I honestly cannot think of a better fish. ...

Few things divide fishkeepers like snails. Half the hobby buys them on purpose and the other half is on a forum at midnight asking how to exterminate them. I am firmly in the first camp these days, but I got there the usual way, through the second. Every tank in my fishroom has snails in it, most of them uninvited, and the tanks are better for it. The trick is understanding what a snail population is actually telling you, because a snail boom is a message about your tank, and killing the messenger has never once fixed the message. ...

If you want to keep a cichlid that behaves like a cichlid, guarding a cave, herding a cloud of fry across the tank, flaring at anything that comes near, without needing a huge tank or fancy water, the kribensis is the classic answer and it still holds up. Pelvicachromis pulcher is a West African dwarf cichlid from the rivers and drainage ditches of southern Nigeria and Cameroon, farmed in vast numbers for the hobby, and forgiving of almost everything a beginner will throw at it. The female’s cherry-red belly, which brightens rather than fades when she is ready to spawn, is one of the best colours available in an easy fish. ...

Ask in a shop for an algae eater and you will usually be pointed at a pleco. The trouble is that “pleco” covers everything from a 10 cm cave-dweller to a half-metre monster, and the cheap ones on the bottom shelf are very often the monster. The bristlenose pleco, sold as Ancistrus sp. or Ancistrus cf. cirrhosus, is the one that actually belongs in an ordinary home aquarium. Mine spend their days rasping the glass and the wood, spawn in caves without being asked, and have never outgrown their welcome. If a suckermouth catfish is going in your tank, make it this one. ...