rm
Passport
- Family
- Tetras
- Grows to
- 3 cm (1.2")
- Lives
- 5–8 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Beginner
- Swims
- Mid-water
- Keep
- In a group of 8 or more
- Water
- 21–25 °C (70–77 °F)
PeruColombia
Care requirements
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On record for Neon Tetra: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 38 L / 10.0 US gal
- pH 4–7.5
- Hardness 1–12 dGH
- Diet omnivore
- Tank length 60 cm minimum
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
The fish most people buy first, and the one most often bought wrong. Neons are sold young, in bare shop tanks, at a size that makes six look like plenty — and then they spend their lives washed out and hiding at the back. They're a shoaling species from shaded blackwater streams and they behave like one: put a big enough group over a dark substrate and they colour up hard and hold station in open water. Put a handful over bright gravel and you'll get neither.
They're hardy once settled and genuinely poor at handling a new tank. Nothing is more classically a neon than a fish added to something that was cycled last week.
Tank setup
Length will do more for them than volume. These are open-water fish that cruise back and forth, so a long tank beats a tall one of the same size every time.
Go dark underneath and keep the light dim and broken. Their colour is a response to their surroundings — the same fish over white sand under a bright lamp will look grey and stay grey. Floating plants, or a lid of surface growth, will do more for how they look than anything you can pour into the water.
Leave the middle of the tank open. Plant the back and the sides and let them have the space in between.
Feeding
Neons have small mouths and small appetites. Crushed flake, micro pellets, frozen daphnia and baby brine shrimp all work — anything they can't swallow whole gets ignored and fouls the tank.
Feed less than you think. They're easy to overfeed in a community because they're slow to the food, so the keeper adds more and the faster fish take that too.
Avoid: large pellets, whole bloodworm, and any once-a-day heavy feed. Two small feeds beat one big one.
Filtration and flow
Keep it gentle. They come from slow, tannin-stained water and they'll hang in a corner away from a strong outflow. A sponge filter suits them; anything stronger wants baffling or pointing at the glass.
Stable matters more than pristine here. Neons will take a wide parameter range but they respond badly to sudden swings, which is why they die in new tanks and thrive in old neglected ones.
With plants
Completely safe with plants — no digging, no eating, no uprooting. They benefit from heavy planting and from floating cover overhead, which is the cheapest way there is to get colour out of them.
Health
Neon tetra disease is the one that carries their name: a microsporidian parasite that starts as a fading or broken lateral stripe and moves on to a bent spine and trouble swimming. There's no cure, and you need to remove infected fish, because it spreads when the others eat the body.
Don't confuse it with ordinary stress fading, which is far more common and reverses. A fish that's pale in the morning and coloured up by evening is fine; one whose stripe is patchy and breaking up further each day is not.
Otherwise their weak point is the move into a new tank. Acclimatise them slowly, and don't use them to cycle anything.
Breeding
This won't happen by accident in a community tank. They scatter eggs that the parents and everything else eat within minutes.
Spawning them deliberately needs a separate tank, very soft acidic water, near-darkness — the eggs are light-sensitive — and a spawning mop or a fine-leaved plant. Pull the adults out as soon as they've finished. The fry are tiny and want infusoria before they can manage baby brine shrimp.
Tank mates
Avoid12
- Angelfish Angelfish eat small tetras.
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Neon Tetra at 3 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Neon Tetra at 3 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Kribensis Kribensis grows to 8 cm against Neon Tetra at 3 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Panda Garra Panda Garra grows to 9 cm against Neon Tetra at 3 cm, big enough to eat it.
Only with care10
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Neon Tetra is peaceful.
- Cherry Barb Neon Tetra and Cherry Barb are an uneasy mix: barbs and tetras are a pairing to watch.
- Gold Barb Gold Barb is a risk to Neon Tetra: barbs and tetras are a pairing to watch.
- Odessa Barb Neon Tetra and Odessa Barb are an uneasy mix: barbs and tetras are a pairing to watch.
- Paradise Fish Paradise Fish is a risk to Neon Tetra: large gouramis and tetras are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 84 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 2 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.