How many Mid water and Bottom Dwellers?

[pipsqueak]

Hi, i know that theres a 'guide line' of one inch of fish per gallon or something like that, but what i'd like to know is if it's ok to keep say, 10 mid water dwellers like neon tetras and 10+ bottom dwellers like kuhlies and panda corydoras.


Note: I'm using a overhead filter currently (10L/min, intending to change to an internal one which filters at 10+L/min.

[David]

hi ps

as you have mentioned, the 1in of fish/1gal of water serves as a guideline but not the absolute. It also depends on how messy the fish is, and how effective is your filtration is. Effective not in the sense on the power of the flow-rate, but rather how much surface area one has to cultivate enough biological bacteria to take on the bio-load of the tank.

Then it also goes on the part of how territorial the fish that one has in mind....what you intend to keep looks okay to me, but do consider changing to an external canister filter and not an internal as the total area given in a canister for biological cultivation is much better than their internal counterpart.

[zac08]

I actually work on a 3 in per gallon rule..... the 1 in per gallon is meant for new tanks and also coldwater tanks....

[Allen_1971]

Regarding how many fishes we can put into a tank guess there are a couple of factors I can think of

1) Can you filter/plants handle the biological output... i.e. are your nitrates gonna start to pile up
2) Is there enough room for the fishes? Too many fishes itself is stressful.. For this I like to break my tank into 3 stratas... top, middle and bottom... I usually have fishes that fit into each strata and they seem quite happy.

[DEA]

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On 1/8/2003 11:24:14 AM

I actually work on a 3 in per gallon rule..... the 1 in per gallon is meant for new tanks and also coldwater tanks....
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well...
actually, this rule evolved from the hinterlands of fishkeeping where bare tanks were the norm and aeration was not too common
the actual rule of thumb was 1 in per 16 in2 of surface area
multiply by 3 for constant aeration

however, this rule of thumb isn't of much practical application IMO to determine the bioload you should have

this will depend on factors like filtration, plants, territoriality of fish, etc etc

pipsqueak, i would say yes, you can

[pipsqueak]

Hmm, thanks for the advice guys, a canister filter, ah, i'm still saving up for one of those babies, but then again, what are they to you but ordinary standard filters?
*sigh*

Oh yea, speaking of nitrate pile ups, i'm ashamed to say i've not learnt the balances between kh? co2? nitrates? plants break down nitrates right? gee, i dont even know what i'm talkign about, water parameters, yea i think thats it, i havent learnt those yet, kinda confusing..[]

[lsz]

what is your tank size?

but anyway compatability is not a problem with these fish.

the only limitation is of water quality. But with all the equipment avialable to us today, there is no excuse.

as said by DEA, the inch per gallon rule had been obselete for quite a while already. The more difficult issue nowadays with mixing fish is actually fish temperment.
if we follow the rule, we can have 10x12" Luohans in a 120 gallon tank. a feat!