[plantbrain]

Well, there's a point when you use lots of fast growing plants, have good trimming, well run bio filter, good current etc.

There's a lot of cover for the fish.

But it's not the final home for these fish.

I'm a strong advocate of reasonable homes for the entire life of the fish and if not, then generally as a test case.

Ultimately, I have a plan for any fish I might buy for my tanks.
But it's nice to test things out and see.

Ghost shrimp are excellent model critters, they are cheap and can be added slowly and progressively to see how far you can push a tank with bioloading.

I had about 250 when I manged the crash a tank and get GW algae.
There was lower plant biomass than my tank today however, about 40-50% less.

I care less about losing a few ghost shrimp at 10 cent each vs a cardinal, human judgment, but I really never wanted to keep 250 ghost shrimp either, it was more of a test to see what aspects under high light+CO2+ high fish loading would cause algae and if so, which types and how long.

Regards,
Tom Barr