The Best and Worst Fish PetSmart Sells (Tier List)

Some fish survive beginner aquariums.
Some fish quietly fail in them for years.

This video is a tier list ranking common fish you can buy at PetSmart from worst to best — based on biology, long-term tank compatibility, and how well these fish actually function in normal home aquariums. This isn’t a dunk on the store. PetSmart’s fish quality is generally solid. Most problems come from size, waste production, stress tolerance, and genetics colliding with small glass boxes and “easy care” labels.

Hardiness isn’t health. Survival isn’t thriving.
And tier lists make that mismatch harder to ignore.

Fish ranked in this tier list:

Common pleco — sold as an algae solution, grows into a space and waste problem

Fancy goldfish (oranda, ryukin, fantail) — selectively bred bodies fighting physics

Chinese algae eater — helpful juvenile, territorial adult

Bala shark — open-water schooling fish trapped indoors

Angelfish — elegant until territorial reality sets in

Neon tetra — decent PetSmart stock, fragile genetics and instability sensitivity

Corydoras (bronze & albino) — social bottom fish misunderstood by gravel

Platy — adaptable, forgiving, and quietly reliable

Guppy — generally healthy stock with long-term inbreeding consequences

White cloud mountain minnow — ignored, resilient, and biologically honest
#aquarium