Knowing Your Specific Tropical Fish Species
Many people know that choosing the best tropical fish species for their house setting is something very hard to do. Indeed, it is a very challenging job to choose, simply because there are just so many of them. If you open up a book on tropical fish, you can find up to 2500 different types and tropical fish species!
A tropical fish species originates from the tropical zone, living in warmer areas like freshwater lakes and rivers. Basically, this type of fish would include all those living in water with the temperature of between 72 °F and 86 °F. But not all types of tropical fish species can be reared at home, due to their inherent nature.
Most of them require really huge areas of swimming space, and the water needs to be maintained very well and oxygenated. For this reason, some tropical fish are best left out to live in the freshwater lakes and rivers, rather than keeping them in small glass containers, we call aquariums.
Common Species Found in Stores
There are basically fewer than ten types of common commercial tropical fish. They are Catfish, Cichlids, Characins, Cyprinids, Anabantoids, Killifish, Oddballs, Discus, the Live bearers, and some others. These different tropical fish types can generally be found in any fish store, where the sales person would also describe to you the nature of the fish and its demands to be able to survive in an aquarium.
If you were to go around finding the fish according to the genetic species name, you might end up with nothing, because there are just too many to name. There are literally tens of thousands of freshwater tropical fish species, with new ones being discovered almost every day.
All fish are classified by the binomial system, in which the first word would be the family or generic name, and the second later would be the species name. For example, the tropical fish family of Barbus. Barbus tetrazona and Barbus oligolepis are two of the common species under this family. The first word depicts the Barbus family, and the second one the species.
Generally, there are known to be over twenty different families of tropical fish species. Each of these families may contain up to five to ten thousand different species. Some famous families are such as the Poecilidae, Callichthyidae, Characidae, Cichlidae, Cobitidae, Cyprinidae, Cyprinodontidae, Anabantidae family, and so many more.
See more: What Is Commercial Fishing?