Freshwater Aquarium Fish Trivia Quiz

Answer: Panaque species

No vertebrate can digest cellulose or lignin on its own. Panaque species have symbiotic gut bacteria, first identified in the 1990s,that help the fish digest the splinters of sunken wood it likes to gnaw on.

Answer: Neon Tetras

The disease is still often called "Neon Tetra Disease" though other fishes, even some non-tetras, are also susceptible to this minute intracellular parasite. Its specific name "hyphessobryconis" refers to the Neon Tetra's genus and might have given you a clue.

Answer: Cardinal Tetras

Though the other fish are not all commonly bred in open pools, they are not notably fussy about the hardness or alkalinity of their water either. Cardinal Tetras, on the other hand, require extremely soft, acidic, tannin-loaded "blackwater." Most Cardinal Tetras on the U.S. market are still caught wild in the mid reaches of the Rio Negro.

Answer: Aphyosemion species, African killifish.

Aphyosemion and other killifish get through dry seasons in their West African homeland by burying their eggs in the muddy bottom. The adult fish may die when water levels recede, but the eggs survive. Killie fanatics exchange the carefully packed eggs through the mail. No rainbowfish or cichlids are specialized in this way.

The real "rainfishes" are South American annual killifish, but you should have recognized Ichthyophthirius as no rainfish at all. Instead, it's a ciliate parasite, the common and dreaded "Ick!"

Answer: dosing a new aquarium with household ammonia.

Though a new aquarium should be innoculated with nitrifying bacteria to start the "nitrogen cycle," which converts ammonia to harmless nitrate, "fishless cycling" substitutes small doses of bottled ammonia for the ammonia excreted by a few hardy "starter" fish, to get the nitrogen cycle going in a more humane way.

Answer: because of their too-lively pecking order.

Lone Tiger Barbs may harass their tankmates. Tiger Barbs kept in a group of six or more will concentrate their energies on their conspecifics. Their appetite for the fast-growing floating weed, duckweed, might be counted a virtue!

Answer: Africa; Africa and Asia

Characoids apparently developed in Gondwana, before South America and Africa rifted apart. Both the South American and African tetras are characoids. One Mexican characoid, Astyanax, can be found in some south Texas waters, it is true. But there are no characoid fishes, such as tetras, in Asia, and no cyprinid fishes, such as barbs and loaches, in Australia

Answer: in Victorian England

The glass aquarium in a metal frame was a development of the "Wardian case" by which live plants were being shipped from the Far East to England-- exposed to necessary daylight but protected from salt spray-- after 1830. The popularity of home aquariums, first in Britain, dates from the 1850s.

The Chinese were the first to enjoy fishes indoors, but in porcelain bowls, not in glass bowls or aquariums.

Answer: the Paradisefish.

The Siamese Fighting Fish *is* Betta splendens. You wouldn't normally call its Anabantoid cousin the Dwarf Gourami a feisty loner; Dwarf Gouramis are familiar community tank denizens. The Paradisefish, Macropodus opercularis, was a garden pool fish in southern China. Glassfish aren't even Anabantoids; the reprehensible custom of streaking them with day-glo colors became common after 1980.

Answer: twig catfishes

These Loricariids from South America are well disguised as delicate twigs, even to patterns like peeling bark and minute knotholes.