I hate Cardinal/Neon Tetras!

I find that neons are hit and miss depending on where they come from. But in general they are not too hardy. I bought 10 black neons, have not lost any and they look great.
 
I find that neons are hit and miss depending on where they come from. But in general they are not too hardy. I bought 10 black neons, have not lost any and they look great.
Black neons are actually hardy.:) A few species are.
 
I've got a school of 20 Cardinals for a while now and they've been doing really well, except the colour on them is just not as bright as cardinals I've had in the past. Other cardinals I've had/seen look like jewels swimming through the water but mine look really faded no matter what I do. My rummies have the most gorgeous dark red snouts, and my koi angelfish have fiery orange and yellows in the same tank as my cardinals so I don't think my water parameters are the problem. If I could get them to colour up nicely, 20 schooling cardinals would be a nice sight.

As for neons, I've been thinking about getting a small school for a 10 gallon I have kicking around. I've had good experiences with neons in my early years in this hobby, but haven't had any for years.
 
I've never kept a cardinal before, but I've never had problems with neons. I set my tank up in january, and five neons was the first addition to the tank. One died a day or so after adding, but the rest have been very healthy since. This includes many months of high stress caused by a guppy explosion. At one time, I probably had well over 100 guppies in the five gallon (with the three kuhlis, four tetras and one otto. I've since managed to get the guppies out and under control, but for a few months, I couldn't change water without sucking out a cloud of baby guppies. I've measured my water parameters at well over 200 ppm for nitrates during that time, but God's blessed me with no fishy health issues at all all year.

It was still nice to get the water back under control though.
 
I had 26-30 neons, going into my 90G planted tank, and a few days later, all gone. I will admit, that I found proabably 10-12 in my ehiem. I didn't have a small filter over it. I was coming from having oscars, to community fish. Just over looked it.

My white clouds are doing okay though. I did have an ammonia problem, from when first stocking the tank, I stocked it pretty heavily, with being a new tank and all.

I plan to setup my 20G long tomorrow, cycle it, plant it, and put a school of 25 neons in there, with a few corys. As long as the tank temp stays about 82, all my parameters are good, and I have good filtration, I should be good to go.

Great thread, very helpful.
 
I have been haiving bad neon luck as well. I had 7 neons for almost a year then they decided to attach themselfs to the filtter intake. I replaced them and got some ottos at the smae time. So far all 6 neons died and 2 otos. Now I have a 10g with 1 oto.
 
sorry to hear of the neon trouble. Im not an expert keeper by any means but ive had a school of 5 neons with only one death. it was prob due to an ich treatment for another fish and i used stuff not good for tetras. read that after the treatment. :( but i got mine at a smaller local fish shop not at petsmart where I usually get them. the fish from the local place seem to do alot better than the chains.

heres the babies
CIMG0487.jpg
 
A few months ago, I bought 5 neons that had ick. The ick caused a few fish to die, but 3 survived and are doing very good along with 5 new neons and 5 glowlight tetras.
 
I just bought 20 today, I'll see how it goes. I'm going to add water very slowly maybe 5ml every 10 mins to aclimate them good.
 
will albino catfish wreck tetra eggs if their are any eggs to be had?
 
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