Hey Alex, thanks for the awesome video! Can I offer one tiny little correction? Mollies and platies can't crossbreed. Platies + swordtails can, as well as mollies + guppies + Endlers. :)
Yes thank you! I forgot what could spawn with what, clearly. Swordtails and platies should probably be grouped together using their categorical logic in this market prospectus (which is odd... endlers didn't exist and were just considered guppies also)... I contemplated grouping all the big 5 livebearers as one entry since year to year, the list seemed to have them all in the top qt some place. Thank you kindly for the correction to my error, I'll pin the comment so it's visible as the first thing. Cheers!
@@Fishtory I've never seen mollies and guppies breed together, ever. Not really sure the two different species actually can but only going by experience not scientific studies. Way back in the day we only had fancy guppies and feeder guppies which were just wild caught specimens. Heck back then we didn't even know there were two species of the genus Poeclia - Poecilia reticulata (fancy guppies) and Poecilia wingei (endlers).
@@James_Hande You can see in my shorts on my channel mix molly/guppy babies. I didn't know until it happened lol. I only had one male guppy with one female guppy and a Molly, with my betta babies. Now there's baby guppies and little muppies/gollies? 😅 idk if you can even sell em lol.
I had never seen any that bright either! I've seen a whole lot of them and aquarium coop/ dean is my other local shop, so it's surprising that there is an even brighter strain around town now
@@Fishtory that was a bit of a fluke! Agree with the message on goldies, I love mine but absolutely agree they are incredibly challenging to look after in an aquarium.
Hi Alex, I wasn't aware that Mollies, genus Poecilia, and Platies, genus Xiphophorus, were capable of interbreeding. Thanks as always for your entertaining and informative videos. I always enjoy your excursions into the local environment.
They are not. I was being a dullard haha. Sorry. I was trying to make sense of why they grouped the 2 species as one entity yet species for corydoras ...and then again for plecos grouped common , rubber lip and ancistrus as the categories...and like #28 or something said "L series"... so I don't know why they did that lol.
The precursor to glow fish was the so called "painted glass tetra" which hit the hobby either late 80's or early 90's. The genetically altered glow fish were first marketed in the U.S. in 2003 by Yorktown Technologies. 😉
Yeah there's been a bunch of versions... oddly enough, the ones you see now are registered as a supplement/ drug under FDA lol...for customs reasons I guess
@@Fishtory The FDA allowed the GloFish and the genetic altering (proteins/genes from jellyfish & corals) because the fish were not intended for human consumption.
I would guess top three would be betta, Neons, and guppies. Although people only buy one betta per tank so maybe not. (Unless it’s a female betta “sorority tank”).
I am focusing on cold water, but I don’t mean koi and goldfish. I mean breeding fish to tolerate colder water to end the dependency on heaters. Working with the more common cold tolerant fish, but pushing their limits and breeding from survivors.
That's a worth while goal for sure! I keep many unheated tanks now too. I would like to go completely unheated but I still love my apistogramma and small cichlid species that do need some warmth
@@Fishtory have you tried lowering the heater and then lowering it again in a few weeks? I am keeping half of my cultures in ponds over winter (I am in coastal Connecticut) and half indoors for security, but I don’t own any aquarium heaters? I may get some pond winter heaters to prevent freezing, but that’s pretty much it. A lot of these fish have become cold intolerant because of steadily heated aquaria over hundreds of generations.
Scot, that's something I am working on too. But first, I had to build my husband's tolerance to heat. Our apartment is on third floor so heat is no problem. But because of that, my husband liked to turn the air conditioner to frostbite. In an effort to save electricity, half the heaters are now gone, and the air conditioning is set at 72f. Our electric bill rate is going up 112% next month, so we are motivated to unplug everything that we can. 😐
Hello Alexander, Thankyou once again for a very interesting upload. I come from the UK like a previous respondent and fully understand why that here in the UK that live bearers top our charts here because they are a very economical way of populating/overpopulating an aquarium. I was however and as always you educate me , quite surprised to see that based on your research the Neon Tetra ranked above the Cardinals. Primarily because Cardinals are more robust in so far as they appear to be completely free from, and indeed precluded from being able to contract the dreaded species specific Neon Tetra disease.
I totally agree with you. I think it may have to do with the fact that we can buy them for literally $4 USD A Kilo in Peru/Brazil (that's 700-1200 young fish). Beyond this, there is now project piaba trying to push ethically sourced cardinals...and that raised the price about 20% I'd say...on top of a 50% price hike to all nano fish since 2019 (which m3q w ite probably even more-so the case now, but they only had data from pre-2020. ) Also in America we have farms in Florida raising neon blues and skirt tetras also, but not many have seemed to produce cardinals of a high quality. I think trends and history of them being 2 for 1$ only 10 years ago, also makes the price margin stay lower for most retailers ... admitting defeat and a lower profit margin, in hopes of selling a more expensive community friendly fish in the transaction. Thanks for your input though! I really appreciate it. Have a great week too!
I think Cardinals would be higher, but they are hard to find, at least in my area (Southern New Jersey). In fact I've only ever seen them once at a store and they only had 2 left.
Very nice run down of the most kept fish in the hobby. By now you shouldn't be surprised that I won't be keeping any of them. I tend to gravitate toward the weirdo fish, glass cats anyone? Oh wait...too big for my tank, drats! 😂👍
@@Fishtory buy 10 Otos and 2 or 3 will die. If other fishkeepers are anything like me they want to round it back up to 10 a d probably lose 1 or 2 again smh. They are very efficient algae cleaners. Also from what i heard Otocinclus don't really breed in captivity. This is the next part why i thought they would be higher in the rankings
No I was wrong. I pinned a correction. However for some reason they are lumped together as one "species' on their list...same with ALL plecos lol and elder/guppies
Part of it is bad genetics, but also many are now farmed and likely lack the nutritional content and over populated ponds on farms. With both impacting size
So it's a 4,699$ market prospectus pdf that's 2,500+ pages long. They dropped the price when covid hit in 2020 and changed their 4 year forecast 180 degrees lol. So a friend who owns a fish food company let me read his outdated forecast...I usually cite everything. However, sharing this document is strictly enforced and prohibited. I'll see if I can find the info elsewhere...or where they specifically cited their source from though!
In England, the top 3 are Guppies, Molly's and Platy's. Then above those in no order are Angles, Puffers, Discus, Coy and believe it or not Goldfish. How could goldfish come so late to the hobby ? People think they are common and easy to take care of. Fools ! I can't come up with 10. Red tailed shark. Bristlenose. Tetra of all sorts but the worst are the most common, neons 🤦♂ Rasbora are good though with some ember tetra.
Yeah this list grouped all plecos as one thing... yes corydora aeneus as one on its own...but due to 20 cent feeder Fish goldfish are on the list...which as you said is a bummer since goldfish really are Special and need special care.
@@Fishtory Love you Alex, I am back on my feet, new home, new pond and doing great. It has been a long struggle, but thanks to you and FF, with pals I made along the way, I am pucker. My two boys Marvel and Ninja have helped me no end. Good to be back with you buddy 🥰😘🤗 I'm off to bed. Two cats following and Sue will need to move over to make room for us three 😆
I love ember tetras. I want to try another small tetra once I move to complement the embers. I'm surprised no rasbora made the list - harlequins are my favorite.
I love my albino red eye pleco...I bought her from this neglecting chain store"shall not be named"🙃she turned brown/green after a week and stat having some disease problems(and this was in my community tank going on 3years) 🙃🤦🏻♂️ I end up nursing the little buddy back up to health🖤 there's a reason why chain store fish's looks good at first glance 🙃 because they have to get new ones every week from there poor/lack of care they done so people have to keep on buying them 🙃 never chain store ever again🖕
I search those stores for species mix ups ... or free fish that they say they're gonna toss (that are alive still!)... and sometimes some of the employees will let me bring them home. But always a month of QT TANKS!
Also, molly's will bread with guppies too. No one ever say that. Then watchin cory's on big gravel. Ouch! guppies are boring. Neon tetra's are not peaceful. Just people like you tell people they are. No Alex, they are not peaceful. They are not shrimp safe. They can be fin nippers with your betta. I hate them. Rather have a goldfish. One of my ember tetra jumped tank to the tank of three huge goldfish and it made it out a live and I was gone for days before I could move it.
I agree that neon will eat shrimp all day long. Most species of fish will eat them if they fit in their mouth. But calling a fish peaceful is always subjective. It's on a scale with Oscar's, silver dollars, angelfish, otocinctlus, and barbs. This is sort of the issue with top 10 lists or shallow videos...because yes. For a nano or small species I'd say they are moderately peaceful/moderately aggressive. With Scarlet badis, praecox neon rainbows and zebra danios on the agresive side for their size range ...and Panda loaches, otocinctlus, cory habrosus and cpds being on the peaceful or least aggressive... and then neon blue or green tetras being mid level (specially to fish their same size or other tetras getting most abuse in my experience.) I'd say neon blue tetras are along side ember tetras, rummynose tetras, espi rasboras, and most pencilfish being similar. I think the other factor you have to consider is their ability to do damage ... one nip from a threadfin is not the same as the bite from a small barb. But almost all species will fight amongst themselves to some degree, especially if they are in small numbers (under 15 or 20 neons in a tank to avoid the nipping for rank/dominance). But this is my personal opinion after keeping them for nearly 30 years...I know you and many others may have more experience with them than I do with keeping them...but now that you mention it, I would be very curious to see in a poll, asking people what they've personally observed with blue and green neon tetras and how agressive they'd consider them?
