black fin shark, silver tip shark: freshwater or not?
I went to petco about 3 weeks ago to get a fish (didnt know anything about fishes at the time. just thought i could buy a fish and throw it in water). i saw a fish that i really liked called a silver tip shark that the petco guy said was a freshwater fish. However, after finding out that without having a tank set up and everything, it would probably die. So the past 3 weeks i’ve spent learning about all this stuff and setting up the tank (i have 2 tanks now 29G & 55G) and also do a little research on this fish. I’ve been reading online that it is brackish water that eventually goes to saltwater, but on other websites i see that it can live in freshwater just fine. i also read that alot of pet stores sell this fish as freshwater when its not. I went back to petco today and asked the same guy about this and he said no, they are freshwater. I am so confused! who is right? and if petco is wrong, how can they not know these things when selling them??
They ARE freshwater fish. Even if i’m wrong, if the pet store kept the fish in freshwater, it ought to be used to it. Petco fish are really healthy. Well in my area that is, But try going to a different pet store and try asking there. That might help a bit.
i’ve had 3 of them in freshwater tank, but they were to small as my oscars thought they was dinner even though they was almost the same size as the oscars
Really, you don’t want to set Petco, or any other store, as the paradigm for fish knowledge– they are there to make sales. Their employees are generally getting paid very little, and have little or no knowledge of fish (occasionally you’ll find a good one). They give them a quick crash course in general animal care, based on their highly deficient pet pamphlets, and that’s often it.
The fish in question (Sciades seemanni) goes by a number of common names, and as many scientific ones (S. seemanni is the currently accepted nomenclature)– they are born in rivers and streams near the coast, and almost immediately venture out to brackish estuaries. As they mature, they find the sea, where they live the rest of their lives. These should not be kept in freshwater for ANY length of time. Petco keeps them in freshwater because they’ll tolerate it for a time (though it does affect their health), and it makes them easier to sell (more people keep freshwater fish than saltwater ones). If you want something similar in appearance, look into Pictus Catfish (Pimelodus pictus). These are truly freshwater fish, have the same shark-like qualities, and will only get about 5″, rather than the 14″ you could expect from S. seemanni.