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Long lifespan fish, what do you do with them when you rescape?

Jack Reilly

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10 Jul 2016
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143
Location
australia
I have had the same fish for a year and a half, some golden tetras and some dwarf chain loaches. Looking into lifespans the golden tetras are about 5 years and the loaches 10-15 years.

I love my fish and will care for them for their full lifespan, whatever that may be. But because of that I feel limited in fish selection, because if I want to rescape then I'm going to keep the same fish, and in small tanks the wrong fish can look really out of place.

It sounds harsh but now that im setting up my second tank I'm selecting species with short lifespans for that tank, just so that I'm not stuck with two tanks of fish that live for a decade.

What do you guys do?
 
Jack

I was lucky I had a spare tank. Buy a large plastic container and use that it stores your water and keeps the filter going. I had large Clown Loaches 20+ years old

If you have every thing ready you should be able to rescape in one day very easy.

Keith:wave::wave:
 
That is very difficult to say, lifespan of fish is very averagely determined when held in captivity.. And in the wild this is not always possible to study for all sp. And after all how good we try to do our best an aquarium never can compare with a the real natural invironment. Even tho we can exclude predation to a certain degree and take optimum car it still can go either way. What you read in databases is the average lifespan reported by hobbyists and breeders experience from the authors sources. And this data can slightly differ from source to source. Take for example some Tertra sp. reportedly average lifespan is said 5 years, but there are reports by now of them living up to 10 years. That's a 100% percent difference and thats quite a lot.

Very small fish averagely live rather short for example Boraras sp. reportedly live between 2 and 5 years. Till now noby officialy reported them living much longer.

There is one thing you can keep in mind.. Fish are cold blooded, they take invironment temperature as body temperatur. The warmer it is the more active they get, this next to water quality/parameters has influence on their lifespan. Warmer environment encreases metabolism and shortens lifespan without maltreating the fish, this is just a natural propperty of most cold blooded animals to burn out sooner.

Boraras sp. should be kept in an 22°C to 26°C environment and reportedly live 2 to 5 years. If everything else is in prestine perfect conditions from water quality to feeding etc. you could state, 2 years lifespan in 26°C and up to 5 years in 22°C.

It still is a long shot, but that's about all you can do.. Keep at the top range of the adviced temperatur.. And wait and see.. :)
 
Something also to consider is that often happy well fed fish produce more. I bought ten beckfords pencilfish a few years ago and even though I have lost a couple in that time I still have many more than I started with without any intervention from me.

I also completely agree with zozo above in that ages are hard to estimate. I bought a botia striata in 1998 and it's still going strong to this day even though the lifespans I've seen quoted would have had it dead over a decade ago.

I don't think your idea sounds harsh at all. You still plan on caring for the fish their whole lives, even if it's shorter.
 
It sounds harsh but now that im setting up my second tank I'm selecting species with short lifespans for that tank
Not harsh at all, very sensible a 'retirement tank' could be very useful but suggest that you use it to propagate plants/shrimps/fish from the display tank. It will save you a bit of money & offset some of the costs of the second tank. Split the second tank with a divider to separate some of the older residents who might be incompatible with the fish fry/shrimps if needed.
 
I have had the same fish for a year and a half, some golden tetras and some dwarf chain loaches. Looking into lifespans the golden tetras are about 5 years and the loaches 10-15 years.

I love my fish and will care for them for their full lifespan, whatever that may be. But because of that I feel limited in fish selection, because if I want to rescape then I'm going to keep the same fish, and in small tanks the wrong fish can look really out of place.

It sounds harsh but now that im setting up my second tank I'm selecting species with short lifespans for that tank, just so that I'm not stuck with two tanks of fish that live for a decade.

What do you guys do?

Friend of mine who runs the local Maidenhead Aquatics bred some corys when he was at college..... he's still got them now and he's in his 40's!
 
Friend of mine who runs the local Maidenhead Aquatics bred some corys when he was at college..... he's still got them now and he's in his 40's!
That's fantastic I'm breeding some Cory Sterbai at the moment. I'll update this thread in 20 years time to tell you how big they have grown.
 
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