Stocking Advice

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likesplants

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Mar 12, 2014
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Hi,

I'm new here so hello fish people.

I have a 10 gallon lo-tech heavily planted tank with good water quality. I keep 4 Red Cherry Shrimp,one Crystal Red shrimp, a quickly growing population of trumpet snails, + 1 assassin snail to keep things in check. For fish I keep 5 white cloud mountain minnow. They seem happy as a group of 5 although i've heard 6 is better so chances are i'll pick up one more. At the end of the day i'd also like to have around 10 of each type of shrimp. don't know how much that will affect the bio load but I though't i'd include it. Shrimp are great.

My question to you guys is--- Do you think I can also add 6 celestial pearl Danio? They're great looking fish and have the same water parameters as my white clouds! seems like an ideal tank mate if i can just squeeze em in. What do you think about 12 tiny fish plus all those inverts in a 10gal?

P.S. tank conditions are 70-72F, around 6.8pH.

Thanks for the advice.
 
As a rule of thumb, I stock tanks at 1" of adult fish length per gallon. If we assume your minnows at mature size are 1.5" long, they will require 9 gallons of water.

This leaves 1 gallon left over for all of your invertebrates.

You're tank appears appropriately stocked and adding more fishies may decrease the quality of life for all tank inhabitants.
 
Inch per gallon is absolutely irrelevant in the vast majority of cases (there are some situations where it would "work", but a broken clock is right twice a day). There are too many variables that go into stocking successfully to be simplified into a "rule".

Having kept both white clouds and celestial pearl danios for several years, I really would not recommend them as tank mates. White clouds can be quite boisterous, and I'm almost certain they would outcompete the CPDs for food.
 
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