What to Look For When Buying Your Fish
 

When buying fish there are several things that you should consider.
First if you have a community tank, that is a tank that has more than one type of fish in it, you should find out if the fish you are intending to buy are suitable for such a tank. For example if you are going to keep Rainbowfishes then buying a small Barramundi might not cause any problems at the start but when it starts getting bigger the Barramundi will prey on the smaller Rainbowfish. The same goes for mixing Rainbowfish with Cichlids as the Cichlids will bully & prey on the Rainbowfish.
When keeping native fish like Blue-eyes and Rainbowfishes, setup a tank for the Blue-eyes separate to the Rainbowfishes, as the Blue-eyes will get intimidated by the larger Rainbowfish.
Also some fish will tolerate their own species but will get quite aggressive towards any other type of fish, so this also has to be taken into consideration.
Once you've decided which fish you want and are ready to go looking for it, use the following has a guide to what to look for in a fish.

 1.  Make sure the fish is free of any diseases e.g., white spots ( it looks like the fish is covered in small white dots), ulcers ( small lumps on its body), ect.
 2.  That the fish is swimming freely and doesn't look like it is asleep, not gasping for breath at the surface or missing any parts of its fins nor has it any deformities like a bent spine (could be that the fish is old).
 3.  Doesn't look like it's been on a hunger strike {isn't skinny}.
 4. 
When buying fish remember that fish do grow and try to keep similar fish together, for instance don't put Blue-eyes and larger Rainbowfish together has the smaller Blue-Eyes will have trouble getting enough food because the bigger Rainbowfishes are more aggressive.