Advice For Beginner Aquarists
If you are a beginner fish keeper, your success as an aquarist will often stand and fall with your choice of species and how much you learn about their requirements before you go about.
As a newcomer to the hobby, peaceful tropical community fish is an excellent choice since aggressive fish have very particular requirements that can be hard to fulfil if you are inexperienced.
When beginners get aggressive fish, the result is often excessive violence in the aquarium and injured or even dead fish. The fact that you go for peaceful species doesn’t mean that you have to be stuck with guppy, platy, molly and neon tetra.
You can for instance purchase some of the less aggressive cichlids, such as kribs.
The Kribensis cichlid will defend its territory while breeding, but if you give the couple a cave they will most likely be satisfied with defending only the cave. They might chase other fish around once in a while just to establish dominance, but they will not engage in any fighting unless the fish tries to invade their cave.
If you are interested in breeding fish, tiger barbs is another great option since tiger barb breeding is easy even for beginners. You should however keep in mind that this is an active species that can reach a length of 1.5 inches.
The aquarium must therefore be fairly big to house them. Ideally feed your tiger barbs meaty foods, such as Tubifex or daphnia, since this is known to promote spawning.
