What Fish Do You Regret Buying?

Lynnzer said:

My biggest regret of all was also in getting 3 small pea puffer fish to eat the snails that had taken over the tank. They nipped the tails off everything they could sneak up on.

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Wow!! At least they lived. Lol

One of my biggest regrets is not researching before buying fish. Back before I moved to Canada, my family had a 10 gallon I believe, and we did almost 0 research, and barely cared for the fish aside from feeding. Now, I regret that, and bought many fish that were way too big for their tank. I have a few stories

Coolest one by far: Black Ghost Knife Fish - these guys were insanely cool, but they didn't last long, and alas, they were aggressive. However, the temp wasn't a problem due to my living in the tropics at the time.

Another quite cool one: A baby Paroon Shark - it swam around for a while and actually survived for like a month, but it too succumbed to my poor management.

Extremely aggressive: Rainbow shark - This one actually survived, but while it was in my tank it picked off a few fish. We ended up giving it back to the reject tank at our local LFS

More aggressive: Cichlids - We got a few cichlids from the tank, but I was always sus on them because they always had their own tank, wherever we went. Turns out my suspicions were right, and they killed off a few tetras. We ended up handing them off to anyone who would buy them for 5 bucks.

Longest lived: Upside down catfish - I had one of these in my tank, and brother had one in his. These guys actually survived the entire time we had them, and mine only died later when I gave it to one of my friends when we moved. They were always cool, and at first I was afraid it would die any moment, but soon I figured out that was the point. Point is, they survived in my brother's 3 - 5 gallon for a few years, so that's a record.

Another long lived one: Some skeletal fish with whiskers - I'm not exactly sure what this one was, and I forgot what we bought it as, but I remember we called it the skeleton fish. I'll attach a picture. It lived as long as the catfish, and was also one of the longest lived ones we had.

Now I'm just listing off my most memorable fish. Also, I have a few mystery fish that I'm not sure what they are, so if someone could id them, that would be great.

Here are more photos

Yeah the tank was pretty miserable


And no This is from years ago so you can't dox me from my shadow

Convict cichlids. Jerks that make lots of baby jerks who in turn make lots of inbred baby jerks. I had them around 20 years ago and they were great. So we tried them again once getting back into the hobby and things just didn't go as planned. So we rehomed them, sold our big tanks and have been perfectly content sticking with nano betta tanks since.

The pale fish with red fins in pic 0083 is a male dwarf rainbowfish

The see though fish in pics 0081 and 0082 is a glass catfish

The striped fish in the same photos are black neon tetras and the bright pink fish is a glo-zebra danio


The yellow fish is a goby of some sort.

The fish in 0360 and 0361 look like a species of Synodontis, but I don't know which one

Essjay said:

The fish in 0360 and 0361 look like a species of Synodontis, but I don't know which one

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Yeah we called it the "upside down pleco", as it hung around upside down a lot, but I think that's all of Synodontis.

I believe is was the Oscar when I was little, I had a 55 when I was little, and I got a tiger Oscar + a goldfish, and I remember seeing the Oscar being aggressive, as usual, and in my little 4 year old mind, "They are playing tag, that's so cool", smh I really cringe at it when I look back

When I was 8 I wanted a pet. We went to the pet store, bought a 1/2 gallon “tank” and a betta. It lived 3 years but to this day i feel really bad.

And i can’t forget the goldfish bowls

I love all the fish I have bought or looked after but the one thing that still haunts me is a ballon molly we had named Erik. He died multiple times and we couldn’t tell if he was just just fooling around in the end other than him being annoying I have no other plans explanation to why we hated him so much

Hey there, answer is none because I never trusted pet sellers but always made many researches before buying, keeping in mind that "speed and haste are the worst aquarist ennemies".

Avel1896 said:

Hey there, answer is none because I never trusted pet sellers but always made many researches before buying, keeping in mind that "speed and haste are the worst aquarist ennemies".

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Well, not all pet sellers are untrustworthy. My LFS seems to know plenty, and refuse to sell us the fish if the tank isn't big enough or it's not cycled or there's something else they should know.

Tacocat said:

Well, not all pet sellers are untrustworthy. My LFS seems to know plenty, and refuse to sell us the fish if the tank isn't big enough or it's not cycled or there's something else they should know.

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Not bad, but there's more to it than that. There is also cohabitation between fish, incompatible species, water parameters.... A short time ago, I tested by asking if I could put 3 leopard sailfin plecos in 150 liters, the answer was yes, of course...

To me, a LFS that sells jar for goldfish is a bad one.

Flushable Pets said:

Convict cichlids. Jerks that make lots of baby jerks who in turn make lots of inbred baby jerks. I had them around 20 years ago and they were great. So we tried them again once getting back into the hobby and things just didn't go as planned. So we rehomed them, sold our big tanks and have been perfectly content sticking with nano betta tanks since.

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Funny that was my experience with Convicts to. I had a friend he bred them his whole fish room was full of Convicts that nobody wanted.