At some point, if you are going to house fish in your aquarium, you’ll need to buy some aquarium fish. Yep, that sounds pretty obvious. It is not something to take lightly, however. Take buying aquarium fish seriously and you’ll reap the benefits by having a healthy stock of fish in your fish tank.
Here are some good ground rules to follow when buying aquarium fish to put into your tank.
Buy from a reputable supplier
Finding a supplier that can be trusted to continually provide healthy aquarium fish is the way to go. Most aquarists have a favorite fish supplier or two. If you think that the fish you are buying are not good quality fish, find another place to buy.
Depending on where you live, you may have one or more local fish stores or local pet stores to choose from. Buying fish online is also an option. There are some great online aquarium livestock suppliers.
Pay attention to the fish health
If you are able to physically visit the store where you buy aquarium fish from you’ll be able to observe the fish before you buy. This is a nice buying advantage. Observe the fish you wish to buy thoroughly before making the purchase. Watch it for more than just a few moments. Observe the fish for as much time as you need to. Determine if the fish passes your visual health criteria. Make sure the fish doesn’t have any visible health issues.
If you can’t visit the location of your fish store or supplier, make sure to investigate the quality of the fish with other means. When using an online supplier, read as many reader comments or testimonials as you can find. Buy from sources that have a solid online reputation in general.
Overall health of the suppliers fish
Take a look at the overall health of all of the local fish store’s aquarium fish. If there are a bunch of fish that look unhealthy, or the water quality looks bad overall, don’t buy from there! Sometimes a local fish store might have a reputation for bad fish health. If so, don’t buy from there!
If you check out all the store’s fish and all the aquarium fish look healthy and all the tanks look clean and healthy, you’ve probably picked a good store.
Always quarantine new aquarium fish
Once you get your purchase home, acclimate the fish and put it in a separate quarantine tank for a week or two. Making sure to quarantine new fish will ensure that you don’t introduce any new bad stuff to your aquarium due to unhealthy fish or bad aquarium water from a supplier.
Using a quarantine tank removes a whole pile of risks from the process of adding new fish to an aquarium. Aquarists who use quarantine tanks swear by them for keeping their livestock continuously healthy.
