Neon Tetra

🌍 Overview

The neon tetra is a small, brightly colored schooling fish native to the clearwater and blackwater streams of the western Amazon Basin. Its iridescent blue stripe is produced by light-reflecting cells called iridophores rather than pigment, and this stripe visibly dims while the fish sleeps at night - a natural nocturnal change. Neon tetras are intensely social and rely on large schools for both natural behavior and reduced individual stress.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

Few aquarium fish arrived with as much theater. Auguste Rabaut carried thirteen live specimens out of the Amazon to the Paris firm Lepant, where they were christened the neon fish, and in 1935 the stock changed hands for 6,500 dollars to two Hamburg dealers, Hugo Schnell and Walter Griem. In July 1936 five neons were flown to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago aboard the airship Hindenburg at a transport cost of 3,000 dollars, and only one survived the trip. George S. Myers described the species that same year as Hyphessobrycon innesi, honoring the American aquarium publisher William T. Innes, who had supplied the preserved material. Roughly two million are now sold in the United States each month, nearly all farm raised in Southeast Asia.

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