# Which way does your luck run



## trenac (Jul 16, 2004)

_Do you have good luck with certain fish that others don't_?... Or _bad luck with certain fish that others have good luck with?_

I have good luck with Otto's and bad luck with Neon Tetras and Guppies.


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## turtlehead (Nov 27, 2004)

Bad luck with ottos gold neons. Good luck with cardinals and altums.


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

Great question Trena! 

I have trouble with Oto's and things like Swordtails, for some reason. :-s 

Other than that, I have well over 100 healthy fish, with a several of them regularly spawning, and all of them thriving. KOW.....


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## guppy (Mar 7, 2004)

I cannot get any shirmp to live more than a day. =(


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## Osteomata (Jan 11, 2005)

I don't know about luck, all of my losses seemed to have pretty clear causes (my errors).
My bad "luck":
- I lost several neons and zebra danios on my first tank when I caused a massive stir up in mulm and substrate while moving the tank at low water.
- I lost 2 otos when moving the tank to my new condo. Stress from two moves in one day in different water conditions.
- I lost one dwarf puffer when I tried to make a 1 gallon tank work for him. Foolish beginner error.

My good "luck"
- No problem with any of my rasbora het espeis
- No problem with any shrimp, they are taking over my tank
- No problem with various plecos/cats


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## Cavan Allen (Jul 22, 2004)

I can't seem to keep wood shrimp alive for more than a day.


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## frozenoak (Jul 30, 2005)

I have a tendency to do well with large fish (although I had a Red Devil break the glass in my 70 gallon) and not so well with small fish. I will be putting this to the test as my new plant tank will have only small fish in it. I am hoping that the plants will help.


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## rrguymon (Jul 22, 2005)

Neons and guppies seem imortal in my tanks. Ottos on the other hand die fast.


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## Praxx42 (Mar 4, 2005)

I can't keep cardinal or neon tetras for more than a week.

However, I have shrimp that are going on 3+ years old.


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## Phil Edwards (Jan 22, 2004)

I've had amazing luck with Cardinals and Pencilfish. I was able to keep a school of 50 Cardinals alive for an entire 18 months without a death, until we moved the store and I sold them to a local beginning plant-head. I had a couple un-planned spawns with N. beckfordi in the same tank prior to the renovation, which always put a smile on my face. 

Bad luck-I haven't been able to keep shrimp alive for more than a few days. I finally figured out why...low pH! I tend to run with a pH around 6.0 which explains that I guess.


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## Jason Baliban (Feb 21, 2005)

If it wasnt for bad luck, I wouldnt have any luck at all. HEHEHEHE

Bad luck with Rummy Nose and sometimes cards.

Good luck with just about everything else.

jB


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## Lydia (Jun 20, 2005)

bad luck with neons and guppies :toimonst: . Good luck with otos and about any other small fish (I have never tried bigger ones because I have a small aquarium). I have even got 2 albino cories to spawn and produce viable eggs, which is supposed to be really hard to do.


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

I have had fairly good luck with fish since starting a planted tank. I lost one or two Cardinals I purchased from Aquarium Center when I lived in Maryland. I lost half a dozen Neons that were purchased from WalMart though. I still have the Cardinals purchased from AC so I assume their stock is probably healthier. 

I lost nearly every one of the Neons I purchased after moving to Ohio. I still have 8 (at least I have only found 8 at one time) of the 12 Otos from PetSmart though! 

The Apistos I purchased on Aquabid are doing well (they have spawned once) as are the Discus I got from a Jack W. 

Molorus73 gave me a male and two female Rams and the male died so now I have 2 female Rams. He was eating well before I got him and I never saw him eat up until the day he died. The male may not have adjusted to my higher CO2 rates very well. At least that's all I can figure.


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

Good luck with guppies, shrimp and cardinals, not so good with ottos. I have some amanos that are almost 3 years old. I seem to lose about half of ottos within a month of purchase.


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## koffee (Aug 21, 2005)

I've had good luck with cherry barbs and tiger barbs. I've had bad luck with cherry barbs and tiger barbs.

My LFS tends to sell babies (not fry). I combined a green terror with both kinds of barbs. At first, I had 5 cherries and 3 tigers. There were no problems at all, especially since the terror was small too.

But then I realized that the tank would become a bit too crowded, so I moved the cherries to a 10g. Immediately, one of them started attacking the others and killed 3 of them. He left the other one alone, so I assume I had 4 males and 1 female. I just gave up on all of them and moved them back with the terror. Everything was fine again.

Then, when I wanted to add sand, I moved most of these fish into a 10g temporarily. They were still small, so the tank was stocked to the max (inch per gallon), but pretty crowded considering the fish I had. It was only for a day or two while I rebuilt their tank. However, the cramped quarters allowed the terror to discover the two remaining cherries as food. She might have done that eventually, so I probably just forced the inevitable.

The tigers have been fine all along, even with the temporary move to a 10g. And my terror makes you wonder why she is called a terror. She obviously dominates the tank, but she doesn't chase anything or show aggression. I've tried putting in something as big as her, and she acted like a terror then. I've put in feeders, and got the expected results. But she ignores the other fish, including the tiger barbs and even the ottos.

All my fish have grown since I bought tiny fish at the LFS. The tigers are now obviously 2m/1f. I haven't seen signs of damage resulting from this, but I would like to change the ratio.

So, I bought a few baby tigers for the 10g to grow them some. I lost some, bought more, lost some, had them replaced. In a 2 week period, I went through at least 8. As far as I could tell, there were no obvious problems. I assume I just had bad luck acclimating baby fish. After the last death, I left the sole survivor alone for a few weeks. The fish is still tiny, though.

Luckily, another LFS (not as local, though) sells larger tiger barbs. They had a tank with big males, and another tank with smaller barbs of uncertain gender. Some of the smaller ones looked plump, so I took my chances and bought two hopefuls. They were the same size as the smallest barb in with the terror, and bigger than the tiny solo barb in the 10g.

This caused the terror to notice *all* of the barbs. She immediately began to pick on them, finally resulting in eating one of the new pair and most of the tail of my pre-existing small barb. Note that my terror is barely over 3 inches, and certainly not large enough to just gulp down even my tiniest barb.

Since then, she returned to her normal behavior of ignoring the barbs. I think the one missing most of a tail will heal. The surviving new barb avoided the terror and is fine.

I am going to take the tiny one back to the LFS and not get any more tiger barbs in the near future. It seems like I cannot introduce any new small (but bigger than feeders) fish into my tank. Not only does the terror see them as food, she then notices other potential snacks. It will take a while to grow the barb to full sized, but then the terror might see the big fish as a new threat.

I'm going to switch the 10g over to minnows or guppies, and then I'll have plenty of fish to put in with the terror.


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## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

I've had bad luck with Badis Badis and Rams ...of course...both fish I really like.


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

This is an interesting thread since the same fish are named many times on both the good luck and bad luck aspects of it. It would be even more interesting to see just what water conditions seem to determine this luck with the certain fish.

Another trend I forgot to mention with my fish is that if I buy a pair or trio of something, it's almost always the females of the set that I lose. With my different Apisto's it's been 100% female losses.


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