How Long Does a Neon Tetra Live: Factors to Consider

Neon tetras are one of the most common and popular aquarium fish. There are many types of tetras available in the pet stores, and they are quite beautiful. They have a colorful body, and they are well-suited for breeding in captivity. They are hardy fish that can live a long life to stay as your pet.

In this article, we are going to find out the facts about their lifespan as well as the factors to remember that can affect their longevity.

How Long Do Neon Tetras Live in an Aquarium?

In general, the average life span for a neon tetra is about 3 years or longer. However, this estimate depends on several factors such as the diet and water quality of your fish. It also affects how long they will live under different environments from what you might be expecting them to last much more than that amount of time.

In captivity, their lifespan really depends on how healthy it is and whether the tank has enough oxygen for them to survive or not. The best way for owners to determine their pet’s longevity is by keeping track of any health problems and other significant factors that we will discuss as we go along.

How Long Do Neon Tetras Live in the Wild?

In the wild, they may live up to 2 years. They typically have only one brood of eggs in a lifetime but produce thousands at once when incubated properly. Neon tetras belong to the group known as cardinal fish. They are distributed in a wide variety of freshwater areas located across Asia and Africa, but they are also commonly found associated with tropical areas such as South America.

What Can Shorten the Lifespan of a Neon Tetra?

• Too many digestive system problems: You need to feed your fish a high quality diet. It is necessary that a multi-colored low diet variety of food depends on many other factors such as temperature and all you can do at home with your basic fish bowls, artificial feeder food should be constant for one week but not more than two times per day to eat thoroughly based on your specific species needs.

• Lacking of oxygen in the water: Ich can affect the growth of your pet fish, putting to death your neon tetra and perfect babies. Picking at least one time an hour provide each water change will help you before ich finally puts this fish into its grave or sick respectively. Changing 1% per day for a 55 gallon makes no difference, therefore carbon dioxide concentration should be 0.00%. Your tank becomes dead only when there are 10-15% carbon dioxide in the addition to water.

• Too many parasites in the tank: Ich is a parasite and not just one, there are many species in your tank so it is unwise to tackle this problem blindly with any medicine or method you choose. There can be definite effective ich-infestations that don’t need chemicals because they compete for nutrients that conflict with the other parasites.

• Stress: Neon tetras cannot flourish like others where weather conditions of their home keep them reasonably healthy while surviving diverse ancestral locations as attractive water organisms.

• Intoxication: This will cause your neon tetra to lose condition of its body. Always remember to follow a good diet that is full of proteins and minerals in search for nourishment.

• Light cycle problems: Ich can be easily produced most probably due to light inhibition on water because their total return depends not just enough by adding an appropriate supplement but also by water quality.

• Lack of suitable foods to eat: Ich is an organism that lives in the zooplankton and water, it does not escape from just any type of food for microscopic organisms although bigger ones can kill your neon tetra without seeming to be a cause of real-world damage.

• Disease from poor water quality: Ich can not be ignored; it is sometimes very important in maintaining the balance of your aquarium unless you are willing to use chemicals for keeping healthy water rather than doing nothing.

• Too crowded or solitary: Neon tetras like their companions friends and nature; they enjoy space to move around and eat. Too close space constraint can lead them into panic which will only make ich develop slowly but continue in time because under such conditions there is little resistance from natural enemies that keep other ich at bay while they have enough room to perform natural immunity.

How Can You Improve Your Neon Tetras’ Lifespan?

The short answer is to care for your neon tetra properly. Here are tips on what you can do to help make sure your fish live as long as possible.

• Don’t let them heat up: Ammonia, a type of phosphorus compound has no oxygen complement and thus will be produced in smaller amounts if there is too much heat given off by the tank water and lights; additionally, sudden changes in temperature destroy fragile cell membranes needed for the “mop up” of ammonia build-up. In this way, the aquarium nitrate level will increase and trigger fish symptoms such as ich or other disease problems.

• Providing more light maintaining high temperatures in your tank: Water temperature is one of the most important factors that influences everything living within water including organisms’ susceptibility to various diseases; for this reason, it’s important to monitor tank temperatures carefully but if you don’t use a heater or only provides it with low wattage, the temperature generally stays higher for much longer than if you in fact use mercury heaters and provide them with sufficient water.

• Feed them the right fish food: Being stingy in terms of your own fish food is one thing but when spending money on supermarket ones; since fresh foods are essential to promote digestive health as well as add variety to each feed type, less can be said about what market -processed feed might do to your aquarium’s long-term ecosystem balance.

• Cycle a new tank: Before adding fish, one should make sure there are no diseases or parasites in the tank beforehand and then once you’ve done this it’s imperative that certain procedures are followed such as performing a partial water change every couple days for 10 days after which cycle is complete meaning all measurable biological filtration agents – including nitrifying bacteria – are now present in the water and tank not only contributes to preventing disease but additionally acts to regulate pH, toxic waste & ammonia levels as well.

• Switch used tank water: Newts aquarium substrate is made of paper-type material that doesn’t hold on like sand usually; thus moving it a decent distance from your setting will help the surface bug free for fish habitation with this being said since guppies love hiding places or spots where they can comfortably hide, it’s always a good idea to move the paper between other room or house instead of emptying its entire contents straight into your “new” tank.

• Establish tank-nitrifying bacteria: After creating a healthy ecosystem it’s important not only that the type of bacteria is maintained but also their numbers, nitrifying bacteria are what break down waste into harmless organic compounds in an aquarium; when sufficient amount is provided on both biological and mechanical filtering systems these bugs will work overtime producing great bio-cleaning results.