How many fish?

577 Views 3 Replies 4 Participants Last post by ralph50, Oct 29, 2007

DogTailRed2

Discussion Starter · Oct 29, 2007

Hi,

my Jewel 450 (450 litre) planted aquarium has settled down nicely.
Plants are doing well and params are;

Ammonia 0ppm, Nitrite 0ppm, Nitrate 5-10ppm, Co2 3 bubbles per second (although I doubt saturation reaches much above zero as gauge only starts to come off the blue, into bluey-green). I do 40% water change once a month. I would say 50% of the aquarium is taken up by vigourously growing plants. Inbuilt Jewel Filter. Overnight aeration to purge any Co2 and keep O2 levels high.

So far I have the following fish in my aquarium;
4 x Large Clowns. 4 x Chain loaches. 2 x Pakistani Loaches. 1 x unknown loach. 10 Pristilla tetras. 4 x Ancistrous. 5 x Mollies. 6 x Dwarf Neon Rainbows. 6 x Celebes Rainbows. 5 x Rummy Noses. 2 x Large Flying Foxes. 1 x Large Red Tail Shark. 4 x Threadfins.

I was wondering how many more fish could I safely add to the tank. I would like to add 2 more threadfins. 1 whiptail cat. 2 Corys. 4 Denisoni Barbs. 10 x Cardinals or Neons.

My current occupants are all in good health and most are brightly coloured, minimal respiration and some in breeding condition i.e the Threadfins and Pristillas.

Regards,

Dog.

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Nbot

· #2 · Oct 29, 2007

Dog,
I guess the general rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish to 1 gallon of water.

I'm interested to hear what people say though...I'm thinking if someone is doing weekly water changes for EI, then perhaps you can go above the 1"=1g rule. Your are doing monthly water changes so not as often... you'd think the plants help eat up fish waste products so maybe over stocking is allowed a little. Your nitrate's aren't too high, do you do fertilizers or just rely on the fish/fish food? I guess I'd do a search for similar questions probably some more good advice lingering in the old posts...

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ganjero

· #3 · Oct 29, 2007

Nbot said:
Dog,
I guess the general rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish to 1 gallon of water.

I'm interested to hear what people say though...I'm thinking if someone is doing weekly water changes for EI, then perhaps you can go above the 1"=1g rule. Your are doing monthly water changes so not as often... you'd think the plants help eat up fish waste products so maybe over stocking is allowed a little. Your nitrate's aren't too high, do you do fertilizers or just rely on the fish/fish food? I guess I'd do a search for similar questions probably some more good advice lingering in the old posts...

That rule is so wrong and outdated. You cannot put a 10” fish in a 10g, it just doesn’t work plus some fish produce more wasted than others, there a fish that need more room to swim, etc etc. First decide what type of fish you want, if you want schooling fish, or show fish like discus, or whatever you want and then people here can help you decide how many. Don’t ever listen to people at LFS, most of the time the don’t know anything.

When adding new fish go slowly too, don’t add the fish that you want to have all at once.

Dog,
You have a good amount of fish already, so how long has you tank been established? If it's been running for a while I don't see a problem adding the cardinal and maybe some of the other fish, but remember to add them slowly. ie. first the cardinal, then the corys, and so on.

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ralph50

· #4 · Oct 29, 2007

After some conversions I see your tank is a 120 gallon.

Bigger tanks are more forgiving than smaller ones.

The one inch/gallon works only on small fish.

I would just add the fish slowly as your built in filter will be your limiting factor.

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