

Also, they can be a little aggressive towards each other, so keep more females than males and introduce lots of obstacles (like floating plants) to block line of sight. This larger species enjoys meaty foods like bloodworms and brine shrimp, so don’t keep them with any tiny fish that can fit in their big mouths. Like many killifish, they enjoy slightly cooler temperatures between 72-78☏ (22-26☌) and require a snug lid without any gaps around the power cables and airline tubing. The male is more colorful and has a brilliant yellow body with a blue-green sheen and orange edging on its tail and fins. Aplocheilus lineatus is a gorgeous (and hardy) centerpiece fish that gets up to 4 inches (10 cm) long. Not all surface dwellers have to be schooling fish. Because many of them are wild-caught specimens, make sure you get a group of at least six silver hatchetfish that are not malnourished, and consider proactively treating them for ich or white spot disease.
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As with most surface dwellers in this list, they are excellent jumpers and always seem to find the smallest crack in your aquarium top to leap out of. They tend to surf around the water surface with their fins out like little wings, looking for small foods floating up top. Their body is shiny silver, narrow, and curved like the blade part of a hatchet. If you naturally gravitate toward oddball fish, take a look at Gasteropelecus sternicla.
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For more information, read our full article on pencilfish. As a docile schooling fish, they feel most comfortable in a group of six or more brown pencilfish and readily get along with other peaceful community fish of similar size. They like to drift along the surface looking for tiny foods (like crushed up flakes or baby brine shrimp), so avoid having high flow near the top of the aquarium. Their common names came from their slanted swimming style in which the head points toward the surface and the tail dips down at a 45-degree angle. Brown PencilfishĪ cheap and easy surface dweller to start off our list is Nannostomus eques, also known as the hockeystick or diptail pencilfish.

To balance out your aquarium, try adding some top-dwelling fish that will feed from the surface and fill the upper third of your fish tank. Bottom dwellers are quite popular because they cruise around the bottom of the fish tank and clean up any food scraps from the ground.
