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Top 5 Beginner Rainbow fish

Today we’re going to be looking at the top 5 best beginner rainbow fish. Or basically just an excuse for me to film some rainbow fish. So stay tuned. We’ll start out real quick with just some real easy basic tips on how to get the best color from your rainbow fish and it’s really easy. One plants. They love, love, love plants, the live plants. Or fake if you can’t do the live thing it’s better than nothing. Dark substrate which I do not have the hook don’t mind up my substrate. You definitely want a dark substrate it really brings out their colors. LED lighting will also help and also of course high-quality food. So just pretty basic fish keeping, right

Best colors

There. You stick to that. You’re gonna get the best colors out of almost any fish just got some glare down there. I thought I fixed all the glare but I guess not. So the first fish on the list and this is a no particular order is everyone’s favorite suppose Monty rainbow fish. This one right here. You can always tell a nice male boesemani by the yellow on the back and the greenish blue on the front. So I’m picking this one first simply so you can see the difference between like a Florida farm bred boesemani which is this one right here and then we’ll come over and look at a nice quality Gary Lang rainbow fish and definitely a lot darker almost orange back.

Things there hey buddy calm down the real difference though is in the front definitely a lot darker color. In the front and you can see even the females here just look absolutely outstanding. So one of the things I have a problem with when you look up scare requirement for the boesemani and almost all these rainbows to be honest. They always just recommend a 30 gallon tank. But you saw them the 125 how big they get and they definitely do not want a 3-foot tank. This one’s a 3 foot tank but these guys are still right around that 3 inch mark. So this is going to last in quite a while.

Water condition

But a really really easy fish to keep neutral pH, wide variety of temperatures down to the low 70s to upper 70s most rainbow fish are not going to enjoy hot water. So definitely keep them out of the 80s at most 78 degrees all right. And here we are fish number two in my opinion. Nope it’s not little-seen the mabu puffer we’re talking rainbow fish today. So I’m not going to feed them. We’re not going to get distracted by little seen. The best beginner rainbow fish in my opinion by far is the melanotaenia praecox dwarf neon rainbow. They’re cheap at about 5 bucks each. You can really load up on them.

The more you get the better behavior you’re going to get out of them. There are about a dozen in here and you can see the males are just going crazy. They’re flashing their schooling, well not a whole lot of schooling going on right now. They are trying to make babies but there’s only one female in here so I feel sorry for her. But just a great great beginner rainbow fish. So again like most rainbow fish they’ll accept a wide range of water parameters. Again not warm. Keep them under 80. They’re omnivore but they do prefer more meat diet. Live or frozen freeze-dried is great but definitely mix up a little green in form.

Best beginner rainbow fish

So because they’re cheap, because they stay small, they can go into a smaller aquarium. They accept a wide range of water parameters. This is definitely my pick for the best beginner rainbow fish. all right so we’re going to head back to the 125 for number 3 4 & 5 on the list. Number 3 is probably going to be the hardest one for you to find and that is the parking sonar rainbow fish which is this guy right here. You see a few of them swimming there. They have the yellow speckled look and when these get full-grown, this is not full-grown. This is a large rainbow fish and it’s not full-grown.

They’ll start to get that hump their head and it’ll just look crazy with that yellow speckled look and they’re just super awesome. Now out of the five I’m going to show you these are definitely the hardest to get a hold of. Not something you’re really going to find in a Petco or Pet Smart. You’ll definitely have to go to an LMS but totally worth it. They get you know upwards of six inches. Oh looks like we got a little problem there, darn it. Have to take care of that later but anyway you’re definitely probably have to go to local fish store to find this fish. Maybe even special order but they are out there they are available almost year-round.

Tank size

Like I said they get around 6 inches, 70 to 79 degrees. Again keep them out of the 80. Also a problem I have with this fish is a lot of sources online said oh yeah they’ll do fine in a 30 gallon tank. But come on. This fish and a 30 gallon tank you’re going to be in a world of hurt. You’re going to be so dissatisfied with this fish. It needs a 4-foot tank. It gets six inches they get huge so do not believe what you read online about 30 gallons for this fish. Definitely a 55 any 4 foot tank 40 breeder even a 33 gallon long is better well keep them out of those three foot tanks. Don’t believe anything you read online. Nah, I’m just kidding.

Some of it’s true but 4 foot or larger definitely for the parking so and I rainbow fish all right so before we get to the final cue we’re going to talk about some honorable mentions that could just as easily be on this list as any of these other rainbow fish and that is the Madagascar rainbow fish or the sometimes called torpedo rainbow fish that the long cylinders body. I don’t keep it right now but as the picture is popping up here I have kept it in the past. Another one would be the Australian rainbow fish which is more of a pretty bland looking fish although you can get somewhat some really nice fins.

turquoise rainbow fish

You can see the one in the picture here that I’ve kept before has nice yellow and the fins there. What else? The Millennium red or the red Irian. Also really nice fish those are not probably ever going to be on the list. Simply for how expensive they are. Depending on the size they can really get up there pretty quickly in price so those will probably never make the list. But still a pretty good beginner rainbowfish.

So next up on the list we’re going a different way with the color. We’re going with the turquoise rainbow fish. This is definitely a more common rainbow fish and this for a farm bred fish is not bad on the color you can see. I don’t know if the camera is going to pick it up but there is a little bit of purple on the tip of the fins which is awesome. Nice bright blue and silver. Just a great all-around looking fish. Now this is a little bit different than your other rainbow fish. That is it has a larger mouth and most rainbow fish fork size remind you that this guys are quite a bit bigger and yet a bigger mouth.

Fish sizes

But for the size, comparable size, they do have a bigger mouth but they still have a very narrow throat. So no large pellets on these guys or you could run into problems. Definitely flake, live ,freeze-dried, you know high-quality stuff here people. There should be some more of them in here. There’s two of them right there. You might notice I have these guys in here too which kind of look like maybe smaller versions of the turquoise or maybe baby turquoise. Hope you can tell by the hump on there that this is a full-grown fish. This is another what I considered or species that’s a Kamaka rainbow fish.

Definitely not something you’re probably ever going to see in a fish store unless you special order it. But I just wanted to point that guy out so you don’t think it’s just a smaller turquoise or a dwarf turquoise. Nope it’s a completely different fish as you can see where’s the rainbow for the turquoise rainbow there he is completely different fish. So the last but not least is going to be this nice big yellow rainbow fish or the Herbert Axelrod is a scientific name. Now this fish can actually go into the low and upper 70s. So if you want a colder water tank this one will do you just good.

Specific care requirements

Again you want it to be four feet, no three foot tanks with this fish. You can see how big it is if we can zoom in a little closer. There so like I said they can go down to 68 degrees although I think the low 70s is probably best for this fish. I keep this tank at 75 degrees and you know as you can see they all do just fine except for that one random boesemani that looked like it was hemorrhaging, so that’s not a good sign. This is a fairly common fish but probably not one you’re going to find in Petco or Petsmart. Very often this is more of a local fish store find. Here’s more of the small mom-and-pop shop type of fish.

See I put the sponge filter under the powerhead for funsies and I didn’t know the bubbles kind of distract from the fish. So I’ll probably move it again but I don’t know it was kind of cool for a minute. Anyways the Yellow Rainbow fish coming in at number five for best beginner species in my opinion. Alright so you may notice I did not spend a lot of time going over the specific care requirement for the different types of rainbow fish in this video. This simply because they can adapt to such a wide variety of water parameters that any community tank you have they can live in as long as it’s under 80. Like I said 72 is 78 degrees.

Building up numbers

Except for the yellow one back here they can drop down to like the upper 60s of 68 to 77 78. That range there otherwise you’re going to be just fine. A lot of people get turned off by the high price of the rainbow fish. Just start out with three and slowly build up your numbers. That’s how I built up this tank here. The higher price does not mean that harder to take care of. If you can keep a tetra alive you can keep a rainbow fish alive so let’s get started. Go out get yourself some rainbow fish. You won’t regret it.

Alright and just some bonus footage. Everyone loved looking at this tank but I have had some people ask for updates on the snapper Creek rainbow fish which were bred by Gary Lane emailed these to me and I do have an unboxing video of that somewhere on my channel maybe it’ll pop up here maybe it won’t. I don’t know but as you can see they’re starting to get some colors starting to get some good size on them and like always slow and steady wins the race with rainbow fish. It does take them quite a while to grow and color up but you can see them schooling and getting some nice color on them.

Concluding

So really looking forward to seeing how these are going to turn out as adults but probably still be a while before they’re big enough to get some real nice color on them but there you go quick bonus footage. People have been asking for updates and since I was filming a video on rainbow fish. I figured I just throw in a little bonus at the end for everyone so there you go all right there you have it thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video while it’s excused for me to film rainbow fish and put more rainbow fish content out on YouTube because I love them I’d love to spread the word about rainbow fish.

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