[themetalchurch]

So I'm rounding the corner on having my 20H fully stocked. As of right now I have:

8 black neon tetra
7 peppered Cory
1 bristlenose pleco
6-8 red cherry shrimp

This puts me at 117% stocking and 165% filtration with my eheim 2213

Now I would like to add 5 more of the black neons and that would be 130% stock/142% filtration. From what I understand as long as your filter capacity is above 100% that is fine, and my fish all seem to be doing well, just added 2 corys yesterday and they've never been more active. Does this seem reasonable to you all?

Edit: I also have an Aquaclear 50 HOB I could run along side the eheim

 

[Gavin Citrus]

I've heard this stated fairly simply and I love this statement.

Your stocking density is only capped by two things. 1. Level of comfort you can give the fishes in the space. The more hiding spaces and areas to claim as their own you can create the more you can stock.

and 2. The level of commitment to water changes you are willing to do.

As long as your filtration rate is enough to turn over the water most established tanks will have very little problem turning ammonia to nitrite to nitrate. It's removing the nitrate that you must concern yourself with.

The long winded answer is summed up like this. Add the Neon's they fit fine with what you already have, but be willing and able to step up the water changes and stay on top of them. If you don't do them for a long time you'll be at more risk to encounter problems.

 

[themetalchurch]

The long winded answer is summed up like this. Add the Neon's they fit fine with what you already have, but be willing and able to step up the water changes and stay on top of them. If you don't do them for a long time you'll be at more risk to encounter problems.

Gotcha. I do 50% pwc every week, every other week I vacuum the gravel during. I also have a filtermax II which I clean every water change, it gets a lot of the detritus and other grime for me. This sounds like the proper amount of upkeep right?

My nitrates usually run high, 40ppm or so, I have some frogbit on the way to try to cut it down. This is also something I've been trying to figure out in regards to fertilizer dosing. I've been doing standard EI, but with such a large bio load I'm not sure if I need to be dosing kno3 at least.

This is my first tank, I'm still green but am trying my best to keep learning every day!

 

[nel]

I would stop with KNO3 and dose only K2SO4 for potassium. Probably you don't need PO4 too (do you feed frozen food?). 40 ppm of NO3 is pretty risky. Any higher and problems with breathing may occur.

 

[themetalchurch]

Right now I dose kno3, kh2p04 and flourish for traces. I have csm+b and chelated iron in the mail right now. I feed frozen bloodworms Sunday's and nls pellets for the neons, omega one shrimp pellets for the corys every day, and hikari algae wafers 3x a week for the pleco. Bloodworm day I just feed that and the wafer for the plec

 

[nel]

Order some K2SO4, it's "safe", even big overdosing won't do much harm. With this feeding regime PO4 probably won't be too high, so you can dose some K2SO4 too.

 

[themetalchurch]

Order some K2SO4, it's "safe", even big overdosing won't do much harm. With this feeding regime PO4 probably won't be too high, so you can dose some K2SO4 too.

So dose k2s04 in conjunction with the kh2p04? Sorry if these are "dumb" questions still getting my bearings with this whole planted tank thing

 

[nel]

Oh, sorry misspell. It should be "order some K2SO4", but you can dose some KH2PO4 too" autocorrect did it's thing... I would dose K2SO4 and KH2PO4, just without KNO3