Neon Tetra

Looks how to spot one

Small scaled schooling characin

A slim, torpedo-shaped little fish with a see-through quality to much of its body. A glowing blue-green line runs from the snout to the back of the body near the adipose fin, and below it a bright red band covers the rear half down to the tail. The belly is silvery white. The shine comes from light reflected by tiny guanine crystals in the skin. Females are a little larger and rounder, which makes their blue stripe look slightly bent, while the male's stays straight.134

Personality what they are like

Gentle, lively and completely unaggressive. Neon tetras move around the middle of the tank as a shimmering group and get along with other small, calm fish such as similar-sized tetras, small catfishes and small peaceful cichlids.346

Daily activity how busy a day looks

Active mid-water swimmers that need open swimming space between planted areas. They are busiest and most confident in a larger shoal, and they rest at night, when their colours fade.136

Grooming and care the hands-on bits

Water: about 20 to 28 C in the wild range, with roughly 21 to 25 C being a comfortable aquarium range; pH about 5.0 to 7.0 is preferred (4.0 to 7.5 tolerated), and soft water up to about 10 to 12 dGH. Farm-bred fish adapt to a wider range than wild ones. Keep nitrate low (under about 20 ppm) with regular partial water changes, and quarantine new fish before adding them.123

Home where they are happiest

An aquarium with a base of about 60 x 30 cm (around 54 litres) suits a proper shoal; FishBase also gives 60 cm as the minimum length, while some guides accept 38 litres as an absolute minimum. A planted tank with dark substrate, driftwood, leaf litter and gentle lighting mimics their shaded forest streams and shows off their colours best.321

Food basics what goes in the bowl

Omnivore. Wild neons eat tiny crustaceans, insect larvae, worms, zooplankton and some plant matter or algae. In the aquarium give a quality small flake or micro-pellet as a base, plus frozen or live foods such as bloodworm, daphnia, brine shrimp and mosquito larvae.2316

Company who they like around

A true schooling fish that needs company of its own kind. Keep at least six, and ideally a group of 8 to 12 or more, where they are more active and confident.132

The story where it all began

The neon tetra reached the aquarium world in the mid-1930s. The French collector Auguste Rabaut sent fish from the Amazon near Iquitos in Peru to Europe, where a handful passed through a Paris dealer to aquarists in Hamburg in 1935 for a very high price. In 1936 a few specimens travelled on the airship Hindenburg to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. That same year the American ichthyologist George S. Myers described the species scientifically, naming it after William T. Innes, editor of the magazine The Aquarium. The German ichthyologist Werner Ladiges nicknamed it 'swimming gold from the Rio Ucayali' because of its value. Breeding it in captivity was difficult at first because the special needs of the eggs and larvae were not understood, but once the technique was cracked, starting with breeders in Thuringia, the neon became a mass-produced fish. Since the 1960s most neons have come from fish farms in Southeast Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, and it remains one of the best-known aquarium fish in the world.51

Recognised by the official bits

IUCN Red List

Least Concern (assessed 4 March 2021)2

Taxonomy

Type species of the genus Paracheirodon, which also holds the cardinal tetra and green neon tetra; order Characiformes6

Scientific description

Described by George S. Myers in 1936 as Hyphessobrycon innesi1