Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

A couple of months ago I posted about the loss of my pet fish, Victor. I took my time to grieve, but I eventually reached a place where I was emotionally not just ready to embrace a new pet fish but actually excited about the prospect. I had been thinking for a while about how other fish enthusiasts have whole ecosystems in their tanks. I had never branched out beyond my one goldfish in part because of inexperience, but also in part because of Victor’s nature. He’s had a companion in the tank before and he’s had a variety of different decor, but he’s never shown the slightest bit of interest in any of it. So I was content to give him his best life as the only fish.

Now I want to challenge myself. Going in I really was attracted to the idea of multiple fish and in particular multiple species. As much as I love goldfish, it’s hard to keep them with other species readily available at pet stores due to the risk of fin nipping or other forms of fish bullying. Additionally, water temperature requirements severely limit the species in consideration as tank mates for Goldfish. Maybe someday in the future, I could invest in a multi-species cold water tank, but for now, I wanted to go the path that was most readily available in chain pet stores.

At my boyfriend’s recommendation, I started looking into some warm water/tropical species. He initially suggested mollies as he and his family have had good experiences with caring for mollies in the past. However, at the time of the suggestion I hadn’t been in a space to let go of the idea of goldfish, so I held the mollies suggestion loosely. Through my research, I found species like the rosy barb and various types of platy very interesting. In one of my many visits to pet stores, I discovered I actually could have aquatic plants in my tank, which opened another exciting world of possibilities.

I narrowed down the list of plant options to three top favorites. That’s when my boyfriend recommended a filter fish. After a brief look through I fell in love with the rubber-lipped pleco. A brief dive into care guides told me that not only would he work well with the planned set-up, but he would also get along well with the platties and rosy barbs I was planning to get. After talking through some logistics, I settled on getting one pleco, 5 barbs, and 7 platties. Then he found a filter fish called a flying fox fish. They look like a normal fish but since we both love bats the name is tempting. If we can find it we might go with a flying fox fish instead of a pleco, but that would be determined based on availability.

Math-minded readers will notice that the total number comes out to 13 fish. When my boyfriend pointed it out he took the romantic route of ‘both of us were born on the 13th of a month’ while my mind went immediately to Taylor Swift. We both started coming up with a list of names. Later that day, we went to both PetSmart and PetCo. PetSmart was the first one we stopped at and while they did have the fish we wanted, we decided to check PetCo and come back if needed. However, after talking to the employee at PetCo and looking at their fish options, we agreed that jumping head-first into a 13-fish multispecies tank was not something to be done in one trip.

We agreed to start with the platties. My boyfriend pointed out some really cool Green Lantern Platties so we got two. I had originally wanted some sunset platties but they weren’t available at PetCo. I nearly walked off with just the two Green Lanterns but then as I was doing one last check for the Sunsets I spotted some Bumblee platties that I instantly fell in love with. We got three of them, for a total of five fish. After bringing them home and getting them set up in the tank we realized the names we picked out with Rosy Barbs and Sunset Platties in mind didn’t fit any of the fish we had. So starting almost from scratch we named them Midnight Rain (a Taylor Swift reference and one of the names originally on the list), Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’, Husky, Cleo (another name originally on the list), and Honey.

I want to give them time to settle into the new tank and make sure they’re adjusting well. I will want to add a couple more plants over the coming weeks, but otherwise we will hold off on more fish until after the holidays. We did briefly discuss what the next steps would be for fish. We both agreed that a filter fish could still be a really good addition to the tank, especially if I do get more plants, but again something we can wait on. However, since we really like the platties and they come in so many color varieties, plus they give us the option of trying our hand at breeding later down the line if we like, we will hold off on any barbs for now.