There are so many different species of tropical fish to choose from. But the first thing you need to do is decide what kind of aquarium you are going to set up, or indeed know which one you already have! For instance our aquarium is a tropical freshwater aquarium which is just about the easiest type of aquarium to maintain. Other types of aquarium ond tropical fish species include saltwater, coldwater and some others which we won't go into here as my focus is on tropical freshwater species.

One of the tropical fish in our freshwater aquarium is a catfish named Jag - because he has spots like a Jaguar! He is an algae eater and cleans the inside of the glass, the ornaments, the gravel and just about everything else he can get to! We think he is a Royal Pleco, I say think because its hard to tell from pctures as catfish do differ in their colours. He is housed with lots of other tropical fish and seems to keep to himself. We feed him algae wafers, cucmber and raw potato and he is growing rather big, we think he may reach 5.5inches. He also also has the occassional treat of live bloodworm, but can be fed tubifex too.

The newest additions to our aquarium are five blue tetras (Hyphessobrycon boehlkea) which are beautiful to look at with other colours apart from blue on their body such as lilac. They are still settling in to their new home at the moment. I have read that they can be prone to white spot so will keep an eye out for this. Also if the water quality in your aquarium isn't too great these blue tetras may well be very sensitive to this and may be the first of your tropical fish species to become affected by this decrease in water qualiy. They are good in a community tank and it's also a good idea to buy at least three of these fish together as they are known as shoaling fish which means they like to swim together with other fish of the same species. We feed our blue tetras tetra min flakes the same as the rest of our fish apart from the bottom feeders, such as Jag mentioned above.

We also have three bronze Corys (Corydoras aeneus) which are bottom feeders so we feed them algae wafers which they really enjoy! It is important to make sure they get food at feeding time, because they feed from the bottom, often other fish will eat all the food before it reaches the bottom. This is why we bought algae wafers which sink straight to the bottom and then the Corys can enjoy a meal at the bottom of the aquarium which is where they look for food. Their adult size is 2.5inches so not too big.

This is just a small selection of all of the tropical fish species currently available as there are too many to discuss all at once, which is why I chose to talk about the species in our aquarium. I hope you have got some useful advice from my article.