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GH:

I totally understand your attachment to the Rams and the pleco - they are adorable fish with personality. This type of pleco stays actually fairly small with a max of 5 inches! you could keep a pair of rams with the pleco but be aware that you will have to perform regular water changes, twice a week 40% and provided that you have some plants and change your clean your filter once a month, you should be fine. Ah yes, get a small gravel cleaner and remove te detritus (uneaten food and fish poop with the water changes). Checking the water quality with a test kit for nitrates won't hurt. However, key to success are regular water changes and there are no excuses allowed.

Good luck!

didn't you read anything LHG said???? 1 King Tiger Pleco (got yesterday) "Too big for that tank, full stop. 3 times too big. This fish alone could overload the bioload limit of a ten gallon all on its own." and then your talking about keeping the king tiger pleco getting rid of a few fish and adding more to an already over stocked tank... are you thick headed???

This pleco (L 066) tops at 5 inches and is as such small! Not every pleco grows to tank buster size and not every one of them eats wood and produces ... you know what excessively because of the diet.

I'm still deciding, but a possible idea that I'm thinking about the moment is:

Removing:
4 Black Phantom Tetras
3 Gold Tetras
3 Pristela Tetras
2 Gold Rams
2 Peppered Cories
Possibly the 2 Neon Tetras

Adding:
1 or 2 Panda Cories

Also adding either:
1.More Neon Tetras if not removing the current 2 I already have

or

2. removing the 2 neons tetras and adding Cardinal Tetras

or

3. removing the 2 neons and adding Black Neons Tetras


4. Or do a combo of Black Neon Tetras/Cardinal Tetras


5. or Black Neon Tetras/Neon Tetras

Of those 5 choices, any one got any recommendations?

Most plecs are dietarily innefficient, be it algae, wafer, bogwood, doesnt matter, they all produce large quantities of waste though granted, a bogwood eater would be worse. It would have to be a tiny plec to be suitable for a ten gallon. The problem is this, you have an animal that may not poop daily making for a steady waste levle that the filter will be adapted for, the bacterial beds in an undergravel system are slow to respond to changes, and the plec might not poop for a week and then let it all go at once or over two days, meaning theres several grams of crap in the tank on top of a tank thats already heavily stocked, the result will be a small ammonia or nitrite spike lasting from an afternoon to several days, and this is when you start losing fish. The rams you keep will have their names liste at the top of the deathlist, just as the fire eel, an the shellfish did before them.

The latest suggested stocking would be

1 king tiger plec
2 bolivian rams
6 cories (two of which are peppered and quite large for a cory)
2 Marble Hatchets
2 German Blue Rams (will still be aggressive
2 Gold Rams
1 Wood Shrimp
1 african fan shrimp
4 Galaxy Rasboras
plus a shoal of as yet undecided tetras.

Thats still pretty much overstocked, by about double.

How about something like this.

1 pair blue rams / or the bolivian rams
6 cories
3 ottos

or

8-10 neon tetras/ or cardinals, 6 cories, 1 shrimp.


If you decide to keep the plec, then you can only keep one or two other fish maximum, but as I said before even a 10 cm plec wont find a 10 gal especially humane, there wont be much of a grazing territory for him. Plecs can be territorial themselves, and while not especially aggressive to fish not in direct competition with them, in a tank that small, he might take to bullying and body ramming the smaller fish, plus he may not develop normally. I know you want to keep lots of interesting species, but you just dont have the tanksize for that. Gotta be realistic about it. It might be wiser to put off having more fish until college days are over, after which time you can puch the boat out a bit. Your living in a transient situation, it isnt a good thing for the animals you keep. I was able to keep up my hobbies during college many years ago, because I rented an entire house, there was no stipulation about the animals I kept, and like hell was I ever going to go home for the holidays! So I knew that at the most i'd only have to move them once in three years, even then when I did have to move , it was a pain in the bracket, and I worried a lot about the animals.

Personally i'd ignore the college beaurocrats and get a 20 gallon if you wont to keep as many fish as you do, lets be honest here, it wont take up much more space. I'd rather obey the rules of nature, than some abstract housing rules. Theyll probably never notice anyway . Get a cubic tank, and they'll never notice A little bit of sneaking the tanks around by night, theyll never see it happen

Basically though, college and animals dont mix, just like children leaving their pets with their parents,when they go off to college, etc, its one of those phases when most people would be better off without too many pets. Especially ones that dont take moves well, like fish and herpetiles. In a year or three you can go crazy and indulge your hobbyism to its fullest extent, but until then, for the sake of the fish, tone it down before regretful things happen. Your goals and your situation are at odds. In retrospect in my own case, its rather a nice situation to be in, to say even when I was a teenager, I never made beginners mistakes and managed to kill my fish, or ever keep them in suboptimal conditions. I did the sensible thing.

Makes ya feel good. Nobody says you cant have fish, but a sensible approach that avoids animal suffering is a good thing. Its a personal integrity thing, and when you pass the test as it were, especially during those teenage years when one is apt to make the odd mistake at the whim of ones new and growing ego in the face of new freedoms, its a great point to move on from. College is a time of self maturity, where there is much more to be learned than what is strictly on the corriculum. Overstocking is a childs error, the "i want everything phase" is a common enough and tricky attitude to shake,and to overcome that takes the maturity of a young adult.

Go on- do the right thing. Create a safe and beautiful tank for your college years companions. Sensible stocking, some nice plants, and fish in rude health, no water issues. Thats the way to go .

I dont think ol general hague there isnt listening, but I know he doesnt want to hear it, but im sure the reasoning behind sensible stocking once explained will take, so theres not a need to be aggressive in this situation. He loves fish, but doesnt have the experience or a suitable situation in which to keep the fish he chooses, I see it every day, and remember the urges myself, so im not gonna slam.

But when the urge to keep more fish in a small tank is the source of a problem, and potential fish deaths and loss of faith in ones own abilities, and animal suffering are the result, im pretty sure that this fishtank, which is a little slice of a new home away from home for him, wil be changed to be more safe and stable, and a happy home for the fish as he would wish it to be .

After all in this case the happiness of the fish reflects on the happiness of the keeper. The two are linked, his rooms will seem less hospitable with a fishy death tank in them. He already knows how to care for fish , or they would be dead already, but he just needs to take a final step to maturity and ensure the fish are happy, to transpose the will of caring over self indulgence and then all will be well. A couple of days is a short time to have your fishkeeping sensibilities realigned after all.

Am I right Mr Hague?

(then after a small and strange phase of psychobabble the lhg returns .lol)

(waggles finger) Go and sort it out dude, the info is yours, now run with it . Good luck with whatever you choose, but get those numbers down, or the tank capacity up. There is no middle ground that will not make you lose some fish . I know you dont want a tank that is boring, but youll have to suck it up if you want the fish to live. The situation makes the rules, not the will of the keeper, pushing it only hurts the fish.

90% of the posts I read in this thread say, and I agree with, that you are currently extremely overstocked for a 10 gallon tank.

And the solution is to get rid of the majority of your fish.

Your responses have been to get rid of a small number of your fish but then to add some back?? I understand you want to fix the schooling problem, but your PRIMARY issue is overstocking.

Fish create waste. The filter is designed to compensate for that waste. HOWEVER. The filter has a limited capacity to deal with waste.

Look at it this way. Your dorm room has a certain number of beds in it. It has a capacity to sleep X number of people due to the number of beds. You can increase the number of people sleeping in the room by adding sleeping bags, pallets on the floor, futons, couches, etc, but at some point you simply run out of room. Now imagine if you couldn't open the window, didn't have air conditioning/heating, and the door stayed shut all the time. It would get a little hot in there, and it would start to stink, wouldn't it? Plus, the air would get a little stale and you'd have trouble breathing? The more people in the room, the faster the air quality would degrade.

It's even worse in a fish tank, because the fish's bodies and waste output ammonia, which is toxic to them. Toxic meaning it will kill them dead. The more fish, the more ammonia.

What you have there, is 30 people in a room with 2 beds.

At the VERY least, you need to purchase a hang on back filter designed for a 10-20 gallon tank AS A TEMPORARY MEASURE until you decide which fish you will rehome. And when you rehome fish/get a larger tank, do not, for any reason, add more fish.

Listen! Do you smell that?

Hello everyone,

These two last posts by Longhairedgit and Lysaer are amazing! Full of great information, insight and wisdom. Kudos you two, thats a great perspective on things.

I started out with a ten gallon tank just like yourself General, macavrously overstocked, partly due to inexperience, partly from listening to bad advice by the LFS. Slowly but surely and thanks to the great members of this site, I've managed to learn about appropiate fish keeping and the benefits of granting my fish proper conditions. Thanks to The Divine, I had the capacity and space to upgrade my tank size and tank numbers in order to keep the fish I so dearly loved. I felt compelled to keep them all since I took it as my personal responsability and duty to provide the necessary means of life for my newly acquired pets and the fact that there is no return or guarantee policy from the store was also a limitant. Nontheless, if the situation was otherwise, I would not have hesitated to return the fish to the store or find them a better home, proven that I would not be able to give them proper conditions.

It is simply the fair and just thing to do for these animals that have given up their life in the wild to provide us with their love and divine prescence in our homes. They deserve it...

Take it from a person that has been there: overly stocked ten gallon tank with unassociated, non-compatible species. It'll prove to be better for both you and the fish in the long run. Less maintenance, less expenses, less hassle all together. Most importantly less stress on the fish, resulting in a healthier life for your pets and thus a better happier life for the owner.

I wish you all the best,

James

I don't have anything more to add, I think longhairedgit and lysaer wrapped it up nicely... So, as you continue to work with this tank and seek recommendations, do what git and lys are telling you... They know what they are talking about. I've gone against git's recommendations before and he's turned out to be right...

I share your enthusiasm for having all these great fish and what not but it's a classic case of 10 pounds of stuff in a two pound sack and all you'll do is harm and/or kill these fish you claim to love and enjoy so much!

So, take what they're telling you to heart! Good luck and enjoy your fishkeeping!

My suggestion would be if you like cichlids to get one pair of the cichlids you like and return all other fish. Just 2 blue rams when they reach adult size can look a little cramped in a 10g. They will most definitely slaughter everything in that tank possibly even the pleco when they breed. Apistos would be the same. They will kill absolutely everything else in the tank. A 10g is not a community tank. You cannot put multiple species in it and expect them to be happy especially when we're dealing with cichlids. Practically all cichlids would go on a killing spree in that cramped of space. A 10g is also not long enough to give hardly any schooling fish a proper swimming area. If you want schoolers then you need to stick with one school of the smallest tetras, with at least 5-6 of the same species, and no cichlids. Same with the cories. If you put cories in there you are pretty much only going to have cories. 1 school, same species, no cichlids. A 10g is just not big enough for multiple species to happily coexist. You need to pick your favorite species out of what fish you have or want and keep that. Then we may be able to tell you 1 other species that might get along with them after you return all the other fish but if it's the cichlids you want to keep most likely the cichlids are all your going to have unless you like watching your fish die.

I have to say that I do not completely agree that a King Tiger Pleco in a 10 gallon is inhumane; I myself would keep a pleco in a 10 gallon and not feel any worse about it. These types of plecs have even been bred in aquaria as small as 30 gallons, with two or more plecs in a single aquarium. Definitely a bigger tank is ALWAYS better, but a 10 gallon is quite enough for a small pleco. Plecs are generally inactive and do not need swimming space. On top of this, King Tiger Plecs are a preferentially carnivorous species; in our aquarium, we do not have a lot of benthic organisms crawling around, so its main food source is not due to grazing territory, but rather, like most other fish, the food that we ourselves put in. IMO, keeping a king tiger plec in a 10 gallon aquarium is not only not inhumane, but such a plec can be quite healthy in such a set-up.

That said, I agree with longhairedgit in that a King Tiger Pleco would only be appropriate with perhaps two other non-schooling fish in a 10 gallon aquarium. As an aquarist myself in college, I'd say ditch the community and just try to keep the few fish that you really want (and I myself would keep the King Tiger, though I am a catfish/plec freak of sorts). I personally have a mudskipper in a 10 gallon (though I'm at home right now for the summer). Awesome fish, and IMO anymore fish would be unnecessary.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

I would think the pleco and 2 rams would be ok if lots of water changes are done. Also make sure to stay on top of the pleco poop as soon as it starts to pile up. May require a tiny gravel vac every couple days. I had to do that with my royal. I'd just stick the gravel vac tube in and suck up the waste then top the tank off with the 1g or less that I removed. The rams probably wouldn't feel too cramped with that even if they spawn. There is still a slight risk though.

Id just like to add, obviously that we feed the plecs, but its about their innate behaviour as regards territory, and a grazing area defines that territory, and whether you feed them or not, they will still want it, and that you can do nothing about in a 10 gal, if it kicks off, dont say I didnt tell you so. Unless you have a species that will shoal,(or at least do the feeding rows, and nomadic feeding thing), and has the numbers and the space to do so as a few of the bigger plecs do, there is no benthopelagic behaviour that can be indulged, so the only alternative for the plec is to hold a small territory, and become a more or less stationary benthic fish. Makes no difference if its primarily a scavenger, algae eater, or predator, not that I would ever describe a plec as a truly predatory fish, they might lean towards being a detritivore and scavenger,possibly even a micropredator, but predation is a bit of a strong word for it..