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Schooling & group fish

82 species are flagged schooling, or have a group minimum of at least four.

Either a schooling flag is set on the record, or the group minimum is above two. Under-schooled fish look sick. They hide, they nip, they ignore food. The same species in a proper group of eight behaves like a different animal in the same tank. Buy the whole group at once whenever you can. Adding two more later rarely fixes the stress already imprinted on the first six.

Group size is one of the few stocking decisions you can fix cheaply on day one and almost cannot fix later. Six tetras you bought together at the same shop on the same day will school. Six tetras you bought as two groups of three a month apart often will not. By the time you add the missing three to fix the under-schooling, the stress damage on the first three has already shaped their behaviour.

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