Highly Unusual Fish

There are thousands of varieties of fish available for the fish owner today. Many people keep fish like goldfish, platies, angelfish, tetras, and catfish. These are some of the more common varieties of fish. There are also many types of uncommon, unusual fish that you can get. Some of these fish look like dragons while others look like parrots. There are also fish that puff up into balls, swim upside down, have teeth, have no eyes, or that come with some other interesting, fascinating characteristics. A few of these fish have even starred in movies and stories. Let us now take a look at some of these unusual, extraordinary fish.

There are two kinds of fish that you can get which look a lot like dragons, the dragon eel and the dragon goby. The dragon goby is long, thin, and tubular in shape. It also has curved fins all along its back which gives it the appearance of a dragon. This fish is normally about 6 to 8 inches long, is gray or silver in color, and has a large mouth. The dragon eel is usually brown with white and orange or yellow spots, and can grow up to 3 feet in the wild. The fish has a mouth filled with fang-like teeth which it keeps open almost all the time, as well as two antennae that look like horns, making it look like a dragon.

The parrotfish is another fascinating fish. It has huge puffy cheeks as well as tusk-like front teeth that are fused together resembling a beak, hence the name parrotfish. The parrotfish comes in colors that range from blues, yellows, browns, blacks, and reds to bright orange or greens. In the wild, the most aggressive female is capable of taking over a group and changing into a male. This interesting characteristic may well occur in your aquarium too. Parrotfish are also known for burrowing into gravel or producing a cocoon around themselves when going to sleep.

The black ghost knife fish is all black except for a white or creme colored stripe down its back. It has a pointy mouth and a pointy tail. It moves through the tank by moving its long dorsal fin in a wavy motion, much like a shark! You may want to put a special ghost knife tube in the tank for it to hide in. This is a clear plastic tube in which the fish thinks it can hide in, which makes it feel more secure while letting you view it easily. Though the ghost fish likes to hide, it can become quite friendly and will even eat out of your hand. This fish can grow to about a foot in length.

The piranha is definitely a different sort of fish in a class by itself. This fish has gotten quite a reputation from a lot of movies and stories over the years. It is not as aggressive in a tank, but you should not put too many fish other than piranhas together. When they are small you can feed them flakes, plankton, and tubifex worms. As they grow most people feed them what are called feeder fish. Piranhas are schooling fish that can grow up to a foot in an aquarium, but pictures taken from a river in South America show that they can grow up to over 2 feet long!

The fresh water puffer fish is a small, cute fish that is round in shape. Puffer fish come in a variety of colors and subspecies. You may even have eaten one kind of puffer fish - a fat, poisonous, and very expensive variety served at some sushi restaurants. As a pet, the green spot puffer is one of the more commonly kept types of puffer fish. Puffer fish have the ability to puff up with air when they get excited, scared, or upset. They also have a unique and comical way of swimming, making them even more interesting to view.

The upside down catfish is a fascinating type of catfish that swims upside down. These fish have been admired for countless centuries, as their images have been found in ancient Egyptian art! Like other types of catfish, they tend to get along well with most fish and are also very easy to keep. They have large eyes, forked tails, and three pairs of barbels or whiskers. They are usually light brown with dark brown spots, and they usually grow up to 3 or 4 inches long. These fish developed the ability to swim upside down from the old days in the wild, when they swam upside down along the water's surface to eat water insects. Another interesting fact about these fish is that their undersides are darker than their backsides, which served to camouflage them as they swam upside down in the wild.

The blind cave tetra is quite unusual and unique because it is totally blind. This fish originally started as an albino that has mutated from being in caves - to a point where its eyes did not develop. Even though the fish has no eyes, this fish has no trouble eating and surviving. It may even be a bit of a fin nipper if you put it with long finned fish. It can grow to a couple of inches long. Most nipping can be minimized by keeping the fish well fed.

This is just a small sampling of some of the more unusual fish that can be kept in your home aquarium. There are many, many more! If you have any questions regarding these unusual fish or any other fish, just ask us and we will help you any way we can.

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