Lightly Medicated | Diamond Head Neon Tetra (Paracheirodon innesi)

What “Lightly Medicated” means

This is the same animal as our non-quarantined listing, held briefly in our systems and given one short prophylactic course — a light treatment for ich and for internal and external worms — then observed eating in front of us before it goes home.

A light course knocks the parasite load down. It does not guarantee full removal, and we will not pretend otherwise. Ich is only killed in its free-swimming stage, and a short treatment window can miss cysts entirely; worm burdens can survive a single dose. Clearing an animal takes the full quarantine window — 40 to 90 days depending on the species — which is exactly what the Quarantined listing is for. This tier buys you a lower parasite load and a fish we have watched eat, not a cleared animal.

We condition the fish on our end. Every animal we medicate is brought back onto prepared food on our own systems and is eating before it leaves — in practice it is rare for a lightly medicated fish to ship out and arrive sick. Do the same at your end: get it eating in your aquarium before you count it settled.

When it ships

Plan on 3–5 days on our systems for the treatment course, and it does not leave until it is eating. If the animal is not already in our systems we source it first — allow up to two weeks for it to reach us before that clock starts. From the day you order, plan on roughly two and a half weeks in total.

The guarantees

• Shipped orders: 24-hour live guarantee from confirmed delivery.
• In-store pickup: 7-day live guarantee — bring a water sample from your aquarium so we can test it before your livestock goes home with you.

Want the full program — treated, observed, confirmed eating, and covered for 28 days on pickup? That is the Quarantined listing. Run your own quarantine and just want the fish this week? The non-quarantined listing is cheaper still. The whole ladder is explained in Quarantined vs Non-Quarantined.

A selectively bred neon tetra where the iridophore layer responsible for that structural blue stripe spreads up and over the forehead, giving a metallic cap that catches light independently of the body stripe. It’s the same light-scattering mechanism behind the classic neon look — stacked guanine crystal plates acting as tiny mirrors, not pigment — just expressed in an unusual spot on the skull. Turn the fish and the cap flashes a different color than the stripe, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a shoal of these look lit from inside.

Overview

Underneath the jewelry this is still Paracheirodon innesi, one of the most forgiving schooling fish in the hobby and the reason half of us are in it at all. Peaceful to a fault, active in the middle of the water column, and completely uninterested in bothering anything it cannot fit in its mouth — which, at an inch and a half, is nothing you care about. The only real behavioral requirement is company: a neon kept in a group of three is a nervous fish hiding behind your heater, while the same fish in a group of twelve is a confident, tight-schooling display animal. This is not marketing. Shoaling is a predator-defense behavior, and the fish knows perfectly well when it does not have the numbers.

Setup considerations

Wild neons come from soft, tannin-stained blackwater, but decades of captive breeding have made them thoroughly unbothered by ordinary community-tank water — stable matters far more than matched. They show their best color over dark substrate under plants; over white sand in bright light, the fish washes out and so does the point of buying the diamond head form. Fifteen gallons is a sensible floor for a proper group. One honest warning from the shop floor: adult angelfish regard neon tetras as an hors d’oeuvre. They are wild-diet neighbors in the Amazon, and the wild diet is the neon. Plan the community accordingly.

Diet

An omnivore with a mouth the size of this hyphen. Quality micro-pellets or crushed flake as the staple, with frozen baby brine or daphnia when you want to watch the whole school switch on. They feed mid-water and lose interest once food hits the floor — that is what your corydoras are for.

Care level: Easy · Temperament: Peaceful, shoaling · Max size: ~1.5" · Min tank: 15 gal · Diet: Omnivore, flake/micro-pellet · Recommended group: 6 minimum, 12 looks like a fish tank