Rainbowfishes

With a wide range of colours and sizes, the Rainbowfishes have risen to become familiar inhabitants of home aquaria Read More

With a wide range of colours and sizes, the Rainbowfishes have risen to become familiar inhabitants of home aquaria around the world. Often kept in mixed species groups, ‘Bows’ are also stunning when kept as single-species shoals, where males will compete to outshine one another and impress the females. Despite these striking colours when mature, young are often overlooked in stock tanks as they tend to be late bloomers.

As aquarium pets, their diversity means that there are species suitable for a range of set ups, with the tiny Blue eyes suiting planted nano tanks that would be far too cramped for the large Glossolepis and Melanotaenia. Most are adaptable fish capable of thriving in local tap water and some, such as Madagascar rainbows, are found in cool, forest streams which tend to be soft and acidic unlike the hard, brackish home waters of the Celebes rainbow.

Having evolved a high degree of endemism, some of these species are only found in one or two lakes or streams in the wild and this makes them extremely vulnerable to habitat loss. The aquarium trade represents a useful insurance population for some rainbows, which hopefully we’ll never need.

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