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I've just visited this website:

http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/

and was looking at it's calculators, entering my tank dimensions it thinks I can stock 134cm of fish (before I get the standard "that rule doesn't work", the site does qualify this as a guide and consider the individual fish making up that 134cm). Using the profiles section of this website, I would say that I'm a couple of cm above this (when all the fish are fully grown). I am probably getting another tank at xmas and was considering moving a few fish over to give my current tank a bit more 'breathing space'. Personally I feel my tank is stocked about right - finding out that I was a shade over didn't really surprise me.

However I then used their 'community creator' where you enter all your tank details and planned/actual stocking and it will let you know ideal water parameters, whether you have incompatible fish and a measure of it's stocking level. This appears to be a very useful tool, especially for beginners, however entering in my details, it claims that I have only used 87cm of my available 134cm. The following warning is given, so the site does appear to be knowledgeable/responsible:

"The advised stocking level is based on a stocking value expressed in cm for all your chosen fish. This value is different to the fishes size in cm, in order to account for differences in waste production amounts. The stocking level does not account for individual fishes which may grow too large for your aquarium - Please check each fishes aquarium requirements to find out the minimum suitable tank size."

I'd love to think that there is room in my tank for more fish (I think we all would), but as I said above, I think I'm about stocked. What does everyone else think, do I have nearly 50cm of fish available to stock? If I have what recommendations do you have?

My stocking (in a 30g tank) is:
2 DG (1m, 1f)
11 Green Neon Tetras
1 BN
4 Sterbai Corys
5 Dwarf Chain loaches
2 Kuhli loaches
5 Amano Shrimp

note: If I do have space, and you have recommendations, please take into account that the chain loaches have recently turned quite vicious, damaging the corys fins, ganging up on the DG (only the male for some reason), and fighting amongst themselves (one of them has lost an eye).

I think just by your final "note" you've said it all. If the fish are getting hostile when it's time (or past time) to stop

-Josh

Remove all the DCLs to start off with.
Aquariums where more is often not the best and can cause more problems usually water/bacterial which can lead to many sick or deaths in your tank .

The best rule to follow is experience and take every thing very slowly when it come to adding more fish.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Thanks for that - as I mentioned, the plan is to get another tank by xmas at the latest and to move the DCL's and probably the BN (which is the only thing they seem wary of - they will quite happily nip at my fingers if they enter the tank) into that.

'Vicious' was probably a bit harsh of me on them. Very boisterous might be a bit better. They have always been very playful, but I guess it's getting rougher as they get older (although one of them losing an eye shows the play has gone too far). Just watching them, they often chase usually with no actual attack/bite, just occasionally it goes a bit too far.

Anyway, dis-regarding the DCL's behaviour, do you think that the community creator on the above site is a useful guide? or is it encouraging me to overstock my tank as I first thought? I'm wondering if it would be useful to use after moving the DCL's.

Not a very useful guide at all. It's of little help and possibly even detrimental to your tank. You cannot stock a tank on just length of fish versus gallons of water or dimensions, or surface area. There dozens of other things to take into account. The inch per gallon rule which that calculator is based off of is often debated. Some think it's occasionally useful to help keep beginners from overstocking their tanks provided they do more research on the individual fish they choose and others think it's a complete waste that makes people think they can keep far more fish than they can. Overall it is not something you should rely on completely by any means and will lead to incompatible species and a severely overstocked tank in many cases. The rule was made to be applied only to slim bodied tetras where their length is much greater than their width, they are not overly active, and they are not agressive. It does not work with most of the fish out there.

This is 30 UK gallons, correct?

I'm surprised at your Pigmy Chain Loaches - in a 30 I'd have thought that they would settle in nicely. Do you have lots of caves for them to hang out in? Only part of the reason they're becoming fractious is that they might not have enough 'real estate' to partition amongst themselves and the other bottom dwellers.

If there is one thing that Botia-type loaches love in quantity, it's caves. Be those caves formed using rock, bogwood or even from a collection of garish aquarium ornaments, Loaches love caves. You can never have too many caves, ESPECIALLY if there are other bottom dwellers competing for space as well.

If you don't have much in the way of cave type furnishings in there, try providing more to begin with. You may find that this makes them settle down a bit more.

The one course of action I WOULD recommend, once this issue is sorted out, is increasing the number of Sterbai Corys to 6. They will be somewhat happier if you do this, and furthermore, could provide you with some nice spawning action.

However, when you do, make sure that they too have nice caves to hide in. If everyone has sufficient cave provision, this could go a LONG way toward preventing future fractiousness.

EDIT : just took a look at that stocking level calculator.

At the bottom it prints the following:

The figure suggested is based on correct maintenance, water quality monitoring, and feeding regimes and is based on small to medium sized fish. Unusual or large fish which may produce more waste will require more space. For instance an aquarium of around 150x45x45cm, which has a stocking level of between 300-600cm would house a pair of large oscars and a large catfish (about 120cm of stocking space) and no more. On the other hand, a shoal of 200 small Neons (stocking level 800cm) would have plenty of room in the same aquarium.

Can't find fault with that piece of text as it stands, even though I think 200 Neons might be pushing it in the aquarium cited. It does state correctly that three big fishes will eat up the space far more quickly than numerous small ones.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Well............ weather that site was correct or not, I enjoyed it. I put in the kind & no. of fish I eventually wanted when I was done stocking & it more or less came out just right. ................ according to them anyway. So of course I liked it! Ha Ha

The only problem I had was figuring out how to measure my tank. If you measure it from absolute top to bottom, that doesn't correctly give you the amount of gal. or liters because there is that top 1 1/2 " or so where the rim is & you don't fill the tank all the way to the top of the rim. Then you take up a lot of gal. or liter space with the gravel & decorations. So you end up with less water in there than you think you have. But it's all just an approximate thing anyway & was something fun to play with. It did warn me about some of my fish that might not get along together, which I already knew before I bought them, but for somebody that didn't know, I thought it was a nice thing to add to the site.

II suppose if you are measuring a tank for how much space it takes up in the house, you measure the WHOLE tank. But if you want to measure how much water it holds (empty) then you would just measure the glass part?

Thanks for giving us that site waldena! It looked like it would come in handy for other things too!

Well, when I filled my aquarium for the very first time, I used graduated containers that allowed me to determine how much water I was using to fill the aquarium.

Thus I know how much water is in my aquarium.

The problem of course with using that calculator is this. Two aquaria can have the same holding capacity for water volume, but be very different geometrically, and thus have different fish hoolding capacities. For example, if we have Aquarium A, which is 200 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm (length x width x height), this has a theoretical maximum water volume of 180 litres. Aquarium B, which is 100cm x 30 cm x 60 cm, has the same maximum theoretical capacity - 180 litres. However, aquarium A has a surface area of 200 x 30 = 6,000 square centimetres, while Aquarium B has a surface area of only 100 x 30 = 3,000 square centimetres. Therefore Aquarium A, with twice the surface area, has twice the gas exchange capacity of Aquarium B. This means that Aquarium A will be able to house more fishes than Aquarium B, before oxygen depletion of the water becomes a serious issue. Additionally, the shallower water depth in Aquarium A will place fewer mechanical loads upon motors used to pump the water in motorised filtration systems, and will facilitate quicker turnover of water from the bottom to the top of the aquarium, increasing gas exchange efficiency still further. However, Aquarium B would be a better choice for Angel Fishes because of their body morphology.

While volume dictates such things as total oxygen holding capacity, and the degree to which pollutants produced by the fishes will be diluted, surface area dictates how efficiently gas exchange takes place, and how quickly new oxygen from the atmosphere can be exchanged for the fishes' carbon dioxide. If the gas exchange rate is low, because of modest surface area (i.e., goldfish bowls) then the fish holding capacity of the aquarium is limited by that factor, which becomes the dominant factor when determining stocking. If the surface area is large, facilitating efficient gas exchange, then volume assumes a greater importance, but only because in larger systems, the ability to keep larger populations of small fishes, or larger fishes, becomes a possibility, and volume considerations become important when thinking about larger fishes. Even in a very large aquarium, surface area will still limit the holding capacity from the standpoint of efficiency of gas exchange, because that gas exchange not only has to provide oxygen for the fishes, but for the filter bacteria too. The classic nitrogen cycle cannot complete unless the bacteria have oxygen to work with. Which is why, in the past, marine aquarists turned to trickle bed filters to solve the problem, because in a trickle bed filter, the bacteria obtain their oxygen from the atmosphere directly and take almost none from the water. Trickle bed filters became superseded by live rock because a trickle bed on its own, without something like an algal bed scrubber to remove the nitrates, results in nitrate values soaring in the marine aquarium environment. In a freshwater aquarium with copious plant life, this issue is less important of course, because the higher plant life will soak up some of the nitrates (and again, one can put together a coupled aquarium system in which the main display aquarium with fishes is coupled to a tank full of rampantly growing plants acting as a 'vegetable filter'. But I digress ... Ultimately, long, wide, shallow aquaria are preferred over tall, narrow aquaria for the majority of aquarium fishes, because the long, wide, shallow aquaria have much greater surface area, and therefore a much greater gas exchange capacity. Tall aquaria have their uses of course - Angel Fishes, Discus and those unusual Cichlids of the Genus Uaru spring to mind as needing taller than normal aquaria, as do Monodactylus argenteus, Monodactylus sebae and to a lesser extent Scats. A half filled tall aquarium, with the space above the water populated with branches to provide a 'gunnery range' is also favoured for keeping Archer Fishes, so that they can be fed live insects and provide a display of their natural marksmanship.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

When I set up my Betta tank I also measured the amount of water that went into the tank it is very supprising how much space the substrate, rocks, driftwood, filter and heater take up especially in a small 11g tank.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Thanks for all of this. It seems the end idea is that the calculator isn't that much use. As I mentioned at the top, I did feel that my tank was stocked, but all of my knowledge on what a stocked tank is, came from reading on this site. For all I know my tank may have looked empty compared to some of the others on here (although I doubt it!). I know that the inch per gallon rule is only a guide/starting point, but I was willing to give this calculator more weight because it was asking about the different fish making up the tank. It would be great if someone could compute an accurate equation taking into account the fish and size of tank.

Calilasseia - I'm surprised by the loaches too. Every profile that I can find describes them as peaceful. They just seem to get over excited if they think there is going to be a feeding (namely if I go anywhere near the tank) - possibly to make sure the way is clear for them to get first picks on the food? The tank has a pile of slate creating a few caves, a couple of pieces of driftwood and 2 plant pots to create caves. It is quite well planted (it was heavily planted but the shrimp decimated the lighter weight plants) so there should be enough hiding places for everyone. I'm hoping that in the new tank with less of a population that they will settle down as I don't really want to give them up - I really enjoy their antics (when they're not biting).

I do want to increase the cory's to 6, but I've held off so far due to the stocking. The sterbai are quite difficult to find as well. I saw some today for the first time in a long time - and they were £15 each!!!! I bought mine for £6 about 10 months ago.