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Yes I have a 5 Gallon Tank thats well Planted 6 Inch Air Stone a Good Bio-Wheel Filter I'm hearing different things from different sites I'm wondering how many fish I could put in my tank and what kind can anybody help

Welcome to the boards

A 5g you say? Well, around here we are pretty committed to giving fish lots of space.

I suspect you will get responses that tell you the only thing appropriate is a snail

I am not kidding..... I honestly do not know if a betta would be happy in that tank or not..... Problem is I am not au fait with emperial measurements and cannot picture a 5g, just know it is very small. I am not experienced with bettas but sit tight and a betta fan will be right along very soon.

Hope to see more of you around here /:'

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

The following fish i would put in a 5 gallon, seperately now; - 4 cherry barbs
- 1 male betta
- 2 female bettas
- 4-5 male guppies
- 4-5 Endlers livebearers
That all i can think of right now.

A general rule of thumb is about 1" of fish per gallon

Don't want to rain on your parade, Blazarro, but the 1" per gallon is not a good rule and really shouldn't be used.

For instance 10" of neon tetra's in a 10 gallon tank might be okay, but would you even consider keeping a 10" oscar in that same tank?

I understand that that particular "Rule" has been around for a long time, but it just doesn't apply in most cases. You have to take into consideration too many other variables to utilize just it.

Jim

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

Here are some threads that tackle the issue of five gallon (or otherwise small) tanks:

http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/32955.1.htm?11#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/32914.1.htm?6#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/32629.1.htm?6#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/32449.1.htm?4#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/31478.1.htm?5#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/30658.1.htm?3#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/30428.1.htm?2#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/28761.1.htm?13#
http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/28688.1.htm?21#

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

well I've very new at owning a fish tank so I wanted to Start Small so I started with a 5 gallon I plan on getting a 30 gallon some time in the near future.. so a couple of Small Tetra's should be ok in a five gallon if everything goes ok with the 5 gallon I'll move up to a bigger tank

Just remember antman, that a smaller volume tank is much more likely to have water parameter problems then a larger tank, so don't base your success/failure on this small of a setup. Due to the extremely small volume of water in a 5 gallon even the slightest change can upset the entire system.

Jim

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

I acctually hear that its better to start with a 20G then 5G.

Shrimp are cool...

10gallon: 8neons 5gallon: 1betta
1oto
2platys

There are a number of critters that can be kept in a 5 gal. setup. This is a rectangular tank, right, not a taller hex tank?
You could keep a male betta and a mystery snail, or a betta and a pair of African Dwarf Frogs. The frogs are great for a small setup and if you're lucky enough to get active ones that aren't too shy, they are extrememly silly and fun to watch.

A 5 gallon tank is large enough to start a colony of red cherry shrimp. All you need is a little bit of driftwood or rocks covered in java moss and about 6 shrimp to start with. Since the shrimp don't produce much waste and are a great cleaning crew, water quality usually isn't a problem as long as you don't overfeed them.

Another invertebrate option is dwarf crayfish. You probably won't find them in stores, but Aquabid.com has a number of sellers offering them, and my favorite site to visit is www.blueludo.com. Dwarf cryfish grow between 1.5-3 inches. There are a number of different varieties and color morphs. They are usually very easy to care for. Some are diggers who will constantly rearrange their environment, which can be fun to watch as they can be quite industrious. Others are plant-friendly scavengers that can even be kept with fish (as long as the fish won't eat them). The only thing with crays is to give them a small cave (or a few caves if you have more than one) to molt in, and you might consider adding a drop or two of marine liquid calcium and iodine to the water with each water change. Other than that, they'll eat just about anything and will live for up to two years.

Supposedly a bonded pair of Tanganyikan shelldwelling cichlids can be kept in a 5 gallon tank. Neolamprologus brevis are the best and most commonly available fish for this size. And with no competition for food or territory, they will likely breed for you in no time. Of course, then you need to figure out what to do with the fry...

Those are some of the more unusual tank setups for timy tanks. You could of course always get a few male fancy guppies or other small livebearer such as endlers. If you do get males and females, you will end up with fry and you can easily overstock your tank and cause it to crash if you don't have a plan to remove them. A betta is an ideal centerpiece fish for this size tank, and like the frogs and snail mentioned above, there are a few (very few) options for tankmates such as 5-6 dwarf cory cats (they are very sensitive, though, and may not be suitable for beginners).

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

OldTimer, I do agree with you. I wouldn't put a 10" fish in a 10 gal. tank either and it does not always apply. You must use common sense.
On a 5 gal. tank you are very limited, more than on a larger tank. IMO it also depends on where the fish hangout/swim, top, middle or bottom you might be able to squeeze a few more in there.

On a note of fish stocking 'rules', it's better to dictate stocking by surface area. Tanks need oxygen to come in, and CO2 to escape. This occurs only at the surface of the water, and really is only efficient when the water is agitated. Generally it takes about 12 square inches of good surface area to sustain 1" of fish. And yes, this requires some common sense on the aquarists part. 1" of neon doesn't equal 1" of shovelnose. So going on what old timer started, a ten gallon tank can hold the same amount of fish in a tank that's say, 100 gallons, but is shaped like 10 ten gallons ontop of each other. This also makes 29g tanks only stockable to the limits of a standard 20g.

Brackish and saltwater tanks need even more surface area for gas exchange to be healthy.

One male betta would be perfect for your tank. You might even get lucky and have a LFS in your area that has crown tails. Add some small live plants like java fern or moss, a small cave (make sure it has no sharp edges)for the betta to swim around, a nice back ground, and you will have a lovely tank.
Most of the small tetras are schooling and need to be in groups of five or more; that pretty much rules out small fish. Bettas are jumpers however, and the tank will need a cover - plastic canvas cut to fit will work, with one inch of air space for the betta to come up for air.
A pair of dwarf African frogs would work, but from my experience, they do better by themselves with no fish.
Shrimp would work too. Ghost shrimp are tiny, but they need salt and the plants might not work with them. They are fasinating to watch however.

Well, it is true that the larger the tank the easier it is to maintain and better for the fish. A smaller volume of water will tend to spike very very easily and so will require more water changes. The up-side is that with the smaller tank its easier to do one.
As for stocking, mine had a lone male betta. They are tough yet beautiful guys and will be able to stand the fluctuations in the water parameters easily. Yes, there will be fluctuations in a five. Or perhaps once cycled a nice school of about six neons. I say once cycled because neons are not that hardy and will not survive the cycling process.

5 gallons are pretty much only good for invertabrates and bettas. If you put tetras in you can only put in 4 or 5 and they are shoaling fish, which means they should really be kept in groups of 6 or more...

Id agree with one of the esteemed offendes up there. I think a 20 gallon is an excellent size to start with, much easier.Gives you room for the inevitable errors without your fish dying in a few hours.

If youre not especially into siamese fighting fish, plant microhabitats, or snails, a 5 gallon can easily be the most boring thing you ever owned.

Even shrimp need better water quality than a beginner will manage to keep in a 5 gal.

My personal point of view, and possibly others might not agree, is that 5 gallons is basically a bucket, even if it does have glass sides.I dont keep living creatures with sentient brains in buckets. Its not fair. How is even a tiny fish supposed to stay fit in a 5 gal? More to the point it feels to me so inherently crap not to provide something bigger. I mean seriously , you have to be a homeless tramp not to be able to afford something bigger than a 5 gal, even if it means getting some glass together and a tube of sealant.

Im not really knocking people who can skillfully pull of a nanotank, some of them are very pretty,but most of the time I see a little bit of plastic tat with a rubbish fake plant in it, a droopy looking betta and I just think "bleearrgh". Even a betta looks so much better in a nice planted 20 gal.Yknow, with "luxuries" like a decent filter and oxygen.

While there are fish that could live in that setup since your a begginer with a tiny tank I would not suggest any of them except maybe the male betta. 5g tanks are tricky to keep stable even for more advanced aquarists. I really hate setting up anything under 10g because it requires so much attention and maintenance to keep it in good shape. Usually a tank under 10g I just use as a shrimp or snail breeding tank. There are some nice snail color variations and interesting easy to breed shrimp out there. You can actually make a bit of money if there's a store near you interested in shrimp and they are easy to maintain in small tanks. They pay me $.50 a cherry shrimp, sell them for $3 in the store, and my 10g was producing 200 shrimp of sellable size about every 1-2months. $100/month for hardly doing anything. Feed them 3 times a week, do water changes every other week, and watch them swim around. Now if only I had a bigger tank to devote to the shrimp..... What if I was producing 500 a month Shrimp and some fancy snails are about the only thing you can make money breeding. It's not a whole lot but it helps cover the expensives of keeping an aquarium.

like I said above I have a good power filter on it with an air stone I thought Betta's like still calm water??? I know some people keep those betta's in really small bowls so I think a 5 gallon would do fine it's just the fact that my tank has too much current for them??? One male betta and two females?? would they kill each other??? or shall I say the male kill the females???

also I was thinkin about what the guy above said some shrimp or even some small crabs???

You cannot keep a male and female together unless you have a really really big tank. Maybe in a well decorated/planted 55g. Otherwise the male will pick on the female to death especially if they manage to breed and he's gaurding a nest.

If you stick with the somewhat shorter finned betta varieties and not some of the really fancy ones you can get off aquabid.com then they usually adjust to a fair amount of current fine. You also need places to get away from the current. Plants work fine to break up the water flow and give the fish something to lean on. It sometimes takes them a couple days to figure out how to swim after being in those tiny bowl but when they do they can be quite active. I had one in a 29g running close to 400gph and he did fine. At first he wasn't sure how to use his fins and hid at the bottom but within a couple weeks he was even swimming right past the largest filter. He ruled the tank for about a year.

Good News I got a 30 Gallon Tank so the 5 Gallon tank will be for my Girlfriend and a few of her little fish