welfare
Aquarium welfare
AquariumHQ's editorial standard: plan for adult size, treat dimensions as seriously as volume, honour social requirements, prefer stability to ideal numbers, and label a minimum as a floor rather than a recommendation. Where evidence is incomplete we say so rather than filling the gap with confidence.
Short answer
Welfare means providing the conditions in which an animal can express normal behaviour, not the minimum in which it can survive.
Practices AquariumHQ does not recommend
- Unheated, unfiltered bowls, vases and jars for any fish.
- Dyed or injected fish, produced by a process that causes injury and mortality.
- Selectively bred deformity strains — balloon-bodied fish, bubble-eye goldfish and similar — where the trait impairs swimming, vision or organ function.
- Buying an animal for a task rather than for itself.
- Stocking to a capacity figure.
On uncertainty
Much husbandry guidance is convergent practice rather than measurement, and AquariumHQ labels it as such on every page. Where sources disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than averaged away. Where there is not enough evidence, that is stated instead of guessed at.