I've got my environment up to Level 2, but only have $900 and my money is advancing really slowly so I can't get the new environment. All my good fish keep dying, somehow I managed to breed an oriental goldbulb as well as one with bright pink fins but they died straight away.
At the moment I have:
lots of golden goldbulbs,
some orange goldbulbs,
a speckled stickfish,
a speckled leaffish,
a greenfin, golden, orange and flagged leaffish
a hornet goldshark
What can I do with these fish to make some money while only have environment 2?!

I would concentrate on mass-producing those speckled leaffish for a little while. Keep on breeding them and selling them off and you should build up your bank account. The golden goldbulbs aren't bad for cash either if you don't have a mate for the leaffish.

thanks, i'll do that! it's just so annoying, reading about these cool fish and not being able to breed them! is Level 3 the highest fish environment?

Yup, three is the highest level for research. It makes a big difference when you finish level three. You can make anything after that. I didn't really start trying to accomplish too much until after that was finished. Have fun!!

In the mean time if you have the cash you can also use the growth hormone to rush the more fragile hybrids into adult hood. You can then sell them off before they die. You can also use LOTS of vitamins to keep rarer fish alive util you reach level 3.

yes, ditto on the vitamins. I've found that on level 1, 3/4 of your fish will die at age 5....OR live forever with multiple infusions of vitamins and/or growth serum. The only difference with level 2 is that these 3/4 of all species which died at age 5 will live to 19.99 years old, so usually one dose of vitamins will show you what they look like and all 3 doses will maybe let you breed them. But... usually if you don't have enough money to do the research, you don't have money for indefinite amounts of vities, so best to just breed commons and save your $ for researching environment.

And if I stop the time, will the research continue? Or does that stop too
Oh, and er what does the vitamin actually do?! i know so much

I'm pretty sure that research also stops when you stop time.

The vitamin improves fish health but, it will take LOTS to keep fragile hybrids alive for very long in lower environments.