Speaker A
So today we're going to be talking about five perfect centerpiece fish for your smaller-sized aquariums. A lot of the time, we have customers come into our store here in Brisbane. You guys should definitely come visit us. We'll put details on the screen. People come and visit the store, and they might have a community aquarium, and they kind of want to add one fish to kind of rule them all, something in the tank that just is the centerpiece of the tank. So something to build a tank around. We've got five today, really good examples in store that you guys should be able to find at your local fish store to kind of point you in the right direction. So we'll start off with our number one, and we're going to start with angelfish. So we sell tons of angelfish here at the store. You can see we've got a ton of these Blue Sapphire angelfish here at the moment. Now, I recommend just adding one of these to your aquarium. Angelfish, a lot of people will say, "Oh, they get a little bit nippy. They can terrorize my tank." And I find that that's only when you have a couple of angels in a tank. So it can be really tempting when you see a tank like this to think, "Oh, I want to get a bunch of these because they're beautiful and they look good." I'd recommend only getting one, and you're going to miss out on that breeding behavior, which is what causes the problems, in my opinion. Just one of these can be an excellent start for you as a centerpiece fish, and I'd recommend one of these for minimum a 2T tank, that 20 gallons. These definitely do better in like more of a 3ft tank or a 4ft tank with some tetras and bristlenose and just your general community fish. You don't want to keep shrimp or anything like that with these guys. Pretty much anything on this list, I would not keep shrimp. These can definitely be a perfect place to start for centerpiece fish. Our next one, there's a few really good examples here of why the centerpiece fish is going to be a pistas, and in specific, I'm going to point you guys towards kakato Tois. These are the first apistogramma I ever kept, and you can see they're just absolutely fantastic. So these are super orange apistogrammas. There's all sorts of different manmade strains nowadays. There's super reds, and yeah, there's these super oranges. I'm sure there's other ones that people have started to make. There's also other different types of apistogrammas. At home, I've got some borelli eyes, and I'm breeding them. For these being a centerpiece fish, I'd probably recommend either to get just one male or I'd recommend to get a pair, so a male and a female. These go really good in a 20-gallon aquarium. I've got videos on my channel on how to breed them. They prefer softer water. These are really interesting. They can be a little bit aggressive towards shrimp and stuff like that, so you're not going to really want to have shrimp in your tank. But these will go around the bottom, kind of be that nice little personable centerpiece fish that we're all looking for in our tank. So something where we're going to sit down, see all of our tetras doing their thing, and then you go look a little bit harder, and you'll see one of these guys. I'm not going to go in depth on how to care for them, but this is definitely one of my favorite centerpiece fish when I recommend them to customers. Okay, well, might as well come next store because it saves me having a walk to the other side of the shop. This one might seem pretty obvious. Betta fish are a great little centerpiece fish. These are some females in here. When I recommend these, I recommend just getting one really beautiful fighter in your tank. And similar to the apistogrammas, they're very similar in their behavior. They're just going to swim around, do their thing. Most of the tanks here at the shop actually have a really nice fighter in them. So like up here, we've got one. There's fighters all over the place. Oh, get right close to me. Where else have we got some fighters? I know there were some really good ones in here. Whatever, you guys should just come visit, come and see our fighters for yourself. But fighting fish, they've got that terrible name fighting fish. They're very, very peaceful when they're on their own. Just having one male in a tank or one female in a tank is going to be a great little centerpiece, great for 20 gallons and smaller. We'll say 80 liters as well because people have been saying you've been using gallons too much, but whatever. So those are the first three. My next one's going to be similar to the last ones, and this is going to be rams. I've got a lot of experience with rams. I've bred a ton of rams in the past. Up here, we have some gold rams. These are sunshine gold rams, super popular. I'd recommend getting either one or a pair for a tank, and you can see instantly why they're centerpiece fish. Similar attitude to the apistogrammas. They're both dwarf cichlids, and dwarf cichlids just have a really soft spot in my heart. They're amazing little fish. These are just super good for community tanks. I'm not going to say they're shrimp safe, but they get along with a lot of stuff. They just have like that personality that we're looking for. So you can get gold rams, you can get blue rams. I love blue rams. You can get black rams nowadays even. There's electric blue rams. I'd recommend just to make sure that you get like a really nice healthy happy fish when you're looking at them. So all the fish in this tank are a great example to go off. If you can find local bred rams, that's even better. Either a male or a pair of rams is going to be great for a centerpiece fish. And one last centerpiece fish for you guys is going to be gammies. This is just going to be some gammies. So in here, we have pearl gammies. I'd recommend only getting one of these guys. These get a little bit bigger, so these are going to be good in like a 3ft or a 4ft tank. I probably wouldn't go any smaller than that. You can maybe squeeze one into a 2ft tank, but it's just going to be a little bit too small for them, in my opinion. But there's other gammies that are definitely heaps better. In here, we have honey gammies. So these are great little centerpiece fish. They can be a little bit more on the nippy side, but if you're after something a little bit more interesting, definitely go for these honey gammies. They're a great little one. We've also got sparkling gammies. So if you've got a little nano tank, sparkling gammies can be another great centerpiece fish for your little tanks. So things like 5 gallons and 10 gallons, and they only get yay big. I think I've got them somewhere in here. It's the annoying thing, there's so many tanks. See in here, this is a good example of the blue rams we were talking about before, the males and females flaring up. They're great little centerpiece fish. I can't find them. All right, cool. Well, those are my centerpiece fish. I hope I pointed you guys in the right direction. Yeah, if you got any questions, leave them in the comments below. Come visit our store. We'd love to see you here and love to help you out with your fish tanks. So see you. [Music]
