Freshwater Aquarium Fish - Discus

Multiple colours of discus in aquarium.

Symphysodon or more popular known as discus is one of the most popular aquarium freshwater fish for since long time ago. This explained why there are so many varieties of discus in the market to make sure there always new characteristic introduce into the market every year. Discus originally native to Amazon River basin is actually part of cichlids genus. Today most of the fish breed and live in the aquarium.

Not like gourami that little tougher to water condition and diseases, discus is more sensitive and considered as ‘fragile’ fish. It’s not suitable for starting your aquarium hobby – unless you already started with few other easier to keep fishes for some period of times. Anyway for some qualities this fish has, you might want to try to keep it in your aquarium at some points.

Wide varieties of colours and patterns.

Gathering in groups.

There are three main species of discus; Symphysodon aequifasciatus (blue), Symphysodon discus (red), and Symphysodon tarzoo (green). Anyway by selective breeding, aquarist successfully produced many varieties of colours for this fish. So there are many beautiful discus fish you can keep - if you like to see all of these beautiful colourations and patterns.

As any other cichlids discus has thinner body from the top, but flatter and beautifully almost round from the side. This shapes rarely found in freshwater fish, that’s another reasons why discus become so popular. Discus also has patterns on its scales. As mentioned before, they are many new patterns produce by aquarist all over the year.

Discus behaviour itself is wonderful to watch. It’s highly social behaviour and prefer to be in groups up to dozens of individuals and only separate itself from the group during the breeding season. Discus will take care their young for the first four weeks. They also will secrete a mucus for their young to feed on. For all that reasons, discus still maintain itself as popular aquarium fish for so many years.

Let see some of the varieties of discus. More details of this fish will be included in the future articles. 

Bright colours and stunning patterns.

Beautiful stripes and spotted.

Another beautiful breed of discus.

Selective breeding make this colours possible.

Freshwater Aquarium Fish - Gourami

Gouramis usually swim in group.

Another beautiful aquarium fish known as gouramis consist many types of colourful fishes. There are huge number of fishes in this family from smaller size fish to a bigger one. Gouramis are easy to keep in the aquarium as they are more tolerate to aquarium environment. The most important is they are also colourful – the important factor to make it as beautiful aquarium or ornamental fish.

Gourami has thinner body if looking from above and broader from the side. They have smaller scales (some bigger size gouramis have bigger scales such as Giant gouramis; Osphronemus goramy) and they all make beautiful ornamental fish. Even though gouramis also popular as a food source in many areas where they can be found.

Same as any other ornamental fishes, gourami also been breed to produce more varieties of colours. Here we want to see these varieties to know the possible colours you can get from gouramis.

We hope to highlight more details about gourami in the future post.

Giant gourami can achieve a very big size. 

Chocolate gourami has unique colouration. 

Dwarf gourami with blue scales.

Pearl gourami with white spots and bright orange underneath it.

Another types of gouramies with white spots on it.

Kissing gourami has brighter colour.

Typical colours of wild gourami.

Popular Fresh Water Aquarium Fish?

We have been looking for koi fish for these few days. As koi one of freshwater ornamental fish, let see what other options we have in the same group of this class. As you know most of the freshwater fishes are small, with shorter lifespan that also make their prices cheaper. Anyway some of them are really beautiful and have fairly long life that will be sell at so expensive price (up to million dollars). Freshwater fish are easy to take care of compare to the saltwater fish, so here we will see some of them.

10. Neon Tetra

Neon Tetra is really GMO product anyway still nice to see it in your aquarium as it can glow under UV light. Produced in order to help scientist to detect water pollution, but something not working according to plans so, it was turned into aquarium fish instead. It will add something beautiful to your aquarium but we still not sure the impact of this fish if we put it back into the wild – so keep this fish safely in your tank.

9. Sword Tails

Sword tails is another simple fish to keep same as Tetra but still nice to see as they will swim together in the small group in your tank. They are few colour variations from sword tails too, so the right colour choice will add extra vibrant into your aquarium. As sword tails are easy to keep, it is suitable even for young beginner to start their new hobby.

8. Fire Mouth Cichlid

Fire Mouth Cichlid is another easy fish for new beginner especially when they prefer a bit bigger colourful fish. With its bright red colouration on their underneath of its body. They might be more aggressive during the breading season. So it’s either you can keep it alone or provide proper protection areas (hiding place) so they can lay their eggs peacefully.

7. Goldfish

Goldfish one of the most popular fish to start with as it is easy to keep. Anyway there are still few simple rules to follow. Gold fish have beautiful colours and swim slowly in the water. Suitable for kids to start learning how to keep fish in the aquarium. With good care, gold fish can live much longer in the aquarium.

6. Gourami

Aquarium gourami is different than the wild types gourami. Just like any other aquarium type fishes, they are specially breed to produce wonderful colours to look more attractive. Gourami’s body is thinner but broader from the side. Gourami can achieve a bigger size and live much longer than goldfish. Gourami can be keep in small group and they have slower motion (and sometimes not move) - it will give you more time to see their details.

5. Discus

Another beautiful freshwater fish from Amazon River. They are wide range of colours from red, yellow, green, blue, oranges, brown, and cream with different shades. They also have different types of marking make it more attractive. With all the qualities, discus become great choice if you’re looking for colourful freshwater fish. Discus is considered expensive for beginner. So make sure you have some knowledge before start to invest on this fish.

4. Angelfish

They are many types of freshwater angelfish with many colours of them. The reason to make them special than any other freshwater fish is their shape. Angle fish has triangular shapes while they also come with various colours and marking. They are many types’ of triangular freshwater fish, but usually we still refer them as one group – Angelfish. Same as other types of fish has been breed to produce more colourful species for ornamental purposes.

3. Flowerhorn Cichlid

Flowerhorn Cichlid is another cichlid family produced from various crossbreeding of cichlid family. The most significant for this type of fish is the protruding head and the spots on their body. While they also have various colours, but the markings are considered more important. Most popular colour is red. While the most expensive Flowerhorn ever was sold for 600 thousand dollars during Malaysia exhibition in 2009.

2. Arowana

One of the most expensive freshwater fish other than koi. The different is, arowana is harder to keep and it’s rarely keep in open pond. Arowana known for its beautiful larger scales even though it will only have one or few dominant colours. They are some extant species from South America, one from Africa, several from Asia, and two from Australia. Larger scales make them resemble the Chinese Dragon another reason that make it so popular among Chinese keeper. Arowana requires larger space, and rarely keep in large number in one tank.

1. Koi

Koi is more colourful and beautiful to keep in open pond. Not like Arowana you can keep few koi in the same pond. Even though the price of koi can be expensive, most of them are at fair price when small and will be kept until they achieve bigger size. They are so many colours of koi with different types of scales, produces by koi breeders in order to get new types of koi. Koi are suitable in open pond as they are colourful when they swim together in small group.

Well, the more you learn the more you know about colourful species of freshwater fish - that you can get the same result with saltwater fish, where the care will be more complicated. With proper planning and understand what you want to achieve from your hobby will help you to know which fishes are suitable with you. Anyway, you need to start with something simple to develop the knowledge and some experiences before you get more serious with expensive fishes.

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Types of Koi Pond - Which One Is The Best?

Beautiful koi pond promote healthy fish and beautiful landscape.

Koi is one of the most popular pond fish. To make it even better, suitable ponds are needed to ensure not only the fish to be healthy but also to make it more enjoyable to see. The fish healthy should come first though the other aspects should come next. With proper planning, we can get beautiful fish with beautiful views of the koi pond landscape. So let see what are the possibilities that we can get through this wonderful hobby?

To build successful koi pond we need to understand to whole process of the koi cares so it will works for long term use. Koi lifespan can be considered as long for ornamental fish. It’s important to make sure that your pond design can accommodate all the needs for koi. Proper planning will make sure you safe lots of money and to avoid your lovely koi from diseases and other problems. Perhaps your pond can also encourage your koi to produce younglings. If you decide to have koi pond, you are also decided to learn many things related to koi cares – and it will be lifelong learning!

Successful pond requires proper planning.

Design

Technologies encourage more sophisticated designs for koi pond to be possible. New technologies not always means expensive and most of them can safe more money for long term use as they are more effective. When thinking about design, take advantage of the new technologies available so you can get the best designs that work as long as it can.

Koi pond’s design focusing not only to take make sure the fish can live healthily but also to blend in with its surrounding, for most situations your garden or some part of your home – that will be important. Proper planning will avoid future alterations and add more values to your home.

Ready pond also might work in some cases. Especially when you have future plan to build bigger pond. As the price of koi can be too expensive, you might want to start with smaller koi where the price is cheaper. So, there’s nothing wrong to start small, but to understand your needs.

The bigger pond the better - with proper care.

Size

Pond size is important for koi to be comfortably live and growing up. The volume of water per fish is the important factor in order to understand about the size of your pond. You also might need a deeper pond in case to allow your fish to grow up to supersize!

It is important to understand the size of your pond and the volume of water inside it in order to manage it properly. The filtration system requires you to decide how much water to filter per hour same as when you are applying chemicals to clean up or to cure diseases in your pond in the future.

The suitable size for koi will start at 23 to 25 feet long by 12 to 13 feet wide and 3 to 4 feet deep. Well that’s for the start. Anyway as we mention before, if you start with smaller koi, then you can use temporary pond with smaller size.

Important aspect such as filtration system need to be built at the early stage.

The Flow of Water

The consistent flow of water will give lots of benefits to your fish, to your pond and also to you as it produce wonderful sound of flowing water. Most of the time this feature come together with filtration system. By designing this feature in the form of waterfall or water fountain, will contribute to aeration for your pond – another important feature for healthy fish.

Waterfall feature increase aeration.

Filtration

Filtration system is crucial for koi pond as koi is sensitive to water quality. Good filtration not only to keep your fish healthy but it also will make your pond look more pleasant and need less cleaning work. Its’ better to leave it to the expert to do it, however the understanding how its work is also important. In some cases, the design can also contribute to the suitable filtration system. That’s how the whole system works – everything are link between one to another.

Well that’s too much on the design instead of the types of the pond. So, in order for us to make the right decision we need to know the important aspects of the design to understand our needs. By understanding the key features on the design – you can get more information about it from this link; we can easily identifies the right types of pond that we requires.

Open pond is more beautiful but hard to take care.

Open Pond:

Open pond is the most beautiful and usually large in size. You can get the best result as long as the quality of water can be maintain at its best. Anyway, this requires the best filtration system as sunlight and heat can caused the water to turn green. Make sure there are plenty of trees or shades to avoid the blooming of algae

Earth pond is more natural.

Earth Pond:

Earth pond is more natural anyway not suitable for ornamental koi as koi will increase the turbidity of water – they keep on stirring the substrate from the floor of the pond. Anyway, you can have earth pond for breeding purposes or just to keep koi as nursery pond. The turbidity can be minimize if the bed of the pond is made of sands and stones.

Now you can see your fish swimming in the water.

Hi-rise Pond:

Hi-rise pond can give extra benefits for the filtration system and also to add glass panel to allow you to watch your fish like in aquarium instead of just watching it from above. The bottom drain can easily be built with this type of pond as you don’t have to dig too deep for it, not to mention for future maintenance.

Stylish, but not for the fish!

Small Steep Pond:

Small steep pond as built next to building and with steeping stones crossing it is beautiful for ornament but not for the fish. Koi requires bigger space and deeper water to swim freely to allow them to grow. If you are planning to have healthy koi, then you might need a second pond instead of this type of pond – well it still useful for the younglings though.

Plastic Tank:

Maybe it’s not really a pond, but for temporary purposes – when you building their permanent pond, or during the maintenance and to transfer the fish, plastic tanks will be best alternative. Keep in mind there always be emergency cases where you need to put your fish into temporary place: so, plastic tank can be the best solution.

Proper planning will give you the best result.

Well, that’s the summary of the koi ponds. There are limitless of pond designs and it’s all depend on your own goals for your lovely koi. This is not the type of fish that you can take for granted for their cares, especially when your fish getting bigger in size. Keeping koi requires lots of patience, knowledge and proper planning – but you might end up with the next most expensive fish!