How to gauge how many fish load?

[taysh75]

Hi,

I am having a 2 ft planted tank. I had introduced 4SAE and 2 Oto for cleaning purposes.

Is it too much or too little? Keep seeing they "dump" alot. Will it leads to too much nitrate?

Advice pls.

[gummynut]

The more appropriate way would be to get test kits for Nitrate and ammonia.
A crude way to gauge is probably fish fatality or algae bloom. i think your current bio load is OK.

[wasabi8888]

taysh

currently bioload definitely ok... try to keep max about 10-15 fishes the size of large cardinal tertras...

then again, very debatable as different people will have different experiences.

also depend on what filter you have

[Weirong]

If your tank is heavily planted, then the bioload is fine.

[taysh75]

taysh

currently bioload definitely ok... try to keep max about 10-15 fishes the size of large cardinal tertras...

then again, very debatable as different people will have different experiences.

also depend on what filter you have

Thanks! BTW, when u say filter i suppose u meant either internal or external canister type. How would that affect the number of fish load? Any rule of thumb for ppl to follow?

[tonylai]

Thanks! BTW, when u say filter i suppose u meant either internal or external canister type. How would that affect the number of fish load? Any rule of thumb for ppl to follow?

Normal recommendation is 1 inch of fish per gallon of water. But again if your bio filtration is good, you probably can go much higher.