The calculator I was using to stock with changed????

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Abby256

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jul 13, 2012
Messages
42
Location
North Alabama
HI!!! I need some help/advice.

OK, so we had a 10 gallon with platties/cory cats and upgraded to a 29 gallon. This was back in February. We cycled the 29 gallon and moved everybody in. A few months went by and we had a massive fungal outbreak that we believe came from a contaminated piece of driftwood and/or rock we bought from a locally owned mom & pop fish store. We threw out the offending decorations and began treating our tank but unfortunately lost most of our stock. We moved the two surviving platties and one surviving cory cat into a spare 10 gallon and decided to start over with the 29 gallon. We cycled, went to a planted tank and did a ton of research to gather up a stocking plan. I used Intelligent Aquarium Advisor and entered in my dimensions, both filter brand/sizes, did all of that. Put in an underwater areator (we only run at night so as not to upset the plants with too much oxygen), got my plants going (fertilized once a week and they are coming along nicely), purchased new driftwood, the whole nine yards. We put in our six zebra danios first and let them stay in the tank a month. We put our initial five tiger barbs into our cycled quarrantine tank. We quarrantined for a month and added them to the tank, did the bristlenose pleco and now have all but the remaining seven fish to add. They have been in quarrantine for a week now and have a few more weeks to go. So, here is my problem. I checked and double checked and entered my tank dimensions, filters, all of that into Intelligent Aquarium Advisor to come up with my numbers. Our total stocking plan was:

6 zebra danios
5 tiger barbs
5 green tiger barbs
2 albino tiger barbs
1 bristlenose pleco/catfish

Two or three different times I entered this into the calculator and each time came up with 98% stocked. I was well over on my filtration capacity but obviously I don't want a massive water change schedule (for lack of stability as well as for the extra work it would be) and I don't want these guys to be stressed out and overcrowded.

We have provided a lot of live plants, hiding spaces, driftwood, rocks, etc... but still I thought this sounded a bit much so I did triple check this calculation making my husband measure the tank twice. We have chosen one local store to buy all of our fish from and have only bought big name/big company backed drfitwood/rocks. I spoke with my local fish guy who has earned our trust very much due to his vast knowledge of fish/live plants/etc... and he took a look at my tank pictures and said that he didn't think that would be overstocked at all and that I should be more than fine. Well, I was thinking about putting some ghost shrimp in just to help with food on the bottom but I wanted to do my homework first. My fish guy wasn't in so I was planning on checking back with him later. First I wanted to check the bioload so I went to the calculator and it's changed on me!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's now telling me that my stocking level is at 118% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is going on here? Has anyone had a similar experience!!! Any suggestions on whether my stocking level is OK or should I return two of the green tiger barbs I now have in quarrantine back to the store?
 
That calculator is always changing and being updated with new info and fixes. Use it as a guideline only and do your own research from there.
 
Good to know that I'm not going crazy. I've found it to be a really good tool and will continue to use but will take it with a grain of salt from now on. So, I'm interested in your opinion. Do you think stocking plan is OK or should I return twoof the barbs? I do a weekly water change about 30% each time. I can move sick fish to another tank when required and plus I just really do hate the idea of returning any of them. But, I'd rather return a few fish than be very overstocked. I'm not worried about going over a little as my plants are really shooting up and out and I am seriously over-filtered. Also, I am very serious about doing my weekly water changes? What do you honestly think?_
 
I think you will be fine. If at any point you feel overstocked, upgrade your filter. Don't know what you have now, but a good general guide is to go 6 times your tank size per hour. So with your tank size, you should be doing at least 175 gallons per hour. That would be the best way to combat an overstock bio-load along with your diligent 30% pwc.
 
Steelehawk I was trying to send you a thanks but I'm currently on my cell and I kept hitting an ad by mistake! So, thank you for the reply. I currently have two Aquaclear filters. One is a 50 and the other a 30. I think that's enough and there's good water movement plus it's just a regular shaped tanked so it's 30 inches long by 18 inches high by 12.5 inches deep. Do you think that's enough? If not I can move the 30 to the 10 gallon platty tank and put another 50 on the back of this one. I'm not too worried about it right now because they're all juveniles but I know the bristlenose is a big bioload and he's growing fast. Also do you have any advice as to the best media to put in the filters and what do you think about adding 3 to 5 ghost shrimp to help with any left behind bits of food? This is assuming they wouldn't get eaten by the tiger barbs.
 
You have a 29 gallon, correct? I'm on my iPad so it's not that easy to check your measurement for gals., but a 50 and a 30 should be plenty, check the packages or long online at the manufactures website for the number of gallons per hour each filter does. My tank is a 55 gal and I do 450 per hour which is 8 times my tank size and I'm pleased with the filtering. Good luck, keep us posted as to how things are going.
 
Yes, it's a 29 gallon. I wouldn't have gone with so many fish but my husband wanted a super active tank and we both loved the tiger barbs so I decided to push our stocking to as close to 100% as I could without overstocking it - or at least that was the goal. My husband originally wanted a red tailed shark - I said no too big/aggressive really. Then he wanted cichlids (I know I'm probably misspelling right now). I said no too big/aggressive for the size tank. Then he wanted oscars. Well... you get the pattern. So I felt like I owed him a couple of extra barbs...

I am going to take your advice and stick with our seven in quarrantine and leave the filters alone. I'll check on the gallons per hour tomorrow to see how much water it's running through. I'm going to keep an eye on it and perform more water testing than I normally would especially when these guys start growing. I really don't like the filter I have on the 10 gallon platty tank right now anyway so once the barbs start to mature and get bigger it may very well be time for a filter swap out and a filter upgrade on the 29 gallon. My sister-in-law has offerred to give us her 55 gallon, stand and all (she's tired of it but says her one remaining goldfish is refusing to die just to tick her off) but I don't have anywhere to set it up right now. I'm thinking of storing it and then worst case scenario find a spot, set up and move everybody in there but won't my husband be disappointed if that happens!!! He wants a cichilid tank pretty badly :)
 
Good morning, hope all is well. I took the time to look up your filters this morning, the Aquaclear 30 does 50 gph and the Aquaclear 50 does 66 gph, giving you 111 gph or 3.8 times your tank size. Hmmm, think your idea of going with 2 would be a better option. Or maybe a different brand and size, something that will give you at least 180 gph.let us know.
 
AC30 is 150gph. AC50 is 200gph.

Not too sure on the stock as I am not familiar with Barbs, sorry. I think you may be fine though.
 
They can be adjusted. The numbers you posted are the minimum if you adjust them down all the way.
 
Ok, I need to look at that website again, I hate to make that mistake again. Makes me look dumb, and I'm real good at doing that....lol.
 
Abby for a 29g you are fine, You can add more if you wanted. All those fish are fairly small and don't create much of a bio load. The best thing to do is really rely on yourself to judge where your capacity is at. Test your water from time to time if what you have isn't effecting your parameters at all you could add a couple more and see what it does. By no means are you near being overloaded on a 29g tank. A quick note about the driftwood from the mom and pop shop. All driftwood can grow the white fungus that you experienced in my experience it is random from piece to piece. I have used lots of driftwood and sometimes one will get a little fungus, some will get a lot and some none at all. I have seen this all happen within the same tank at the same time. Just didnt want you to think it was something that was wrong with the wood to begin with. Mom and pop or petsmart doesnt really matter it's just hit or miss with that stuff. Good luck! :fish1:
 
Thank you for the info. on the filters. No, that doesn't make you look dumb.They're my filters and I couldn't remember what the packaging had said but then I didn't originally buy the 30 for this tank and I wasn't scared I had overstocked until last night so hadn't really given it much thought. I was also wondering about the adjustability on the filters and how that would affect the gph so your misunderstanding actually helped me out and is one that I could see myself making. I have one of the filters up full blast - the 30 and the 50 is down all the way. One of the reasons we went with the danios, tiger barbs, & bristlenose is because my husband wanted an active, vibrant tank and I wanted plants and movement and those species are supposed to like current and movement. I feel so much better now that I'm hearing my stocking is OK. The only reason I turned the 50 down was because my new small plants were getting blown around a little much. I think now that they've been in a few months and have really started growing I'll turn up the 50. Oh it took us forever to figure out it was the decor making them sick. It also was hidden on the underside of the driftwood. I haven't seen anything like it before. I had the normal white funky stuff grow on my other pieces of driftwood. My fish ate on it like a lunch buffett. This stuff was like white lumps or some sort of cluster or colony. I love shopping mom and pop stores and love buying handcrafted items but since that experience we've mentioned the experience talking about just what happened and each time the other person called out the name of the store. They have a bad reputation we've found out. We had no idea they're fish all looked healthy and what we were told by our fish guy who has really helped us out is that from what he's been told is that one week the tanks might look good and the next everything in the tanks are sick, dead, or dying. Such a shame since that's the only locally owned fish store that's freshwater that we can find. Fortunately one of the big box chain fish stores only has staff on hand that keep and know fish. Unfortunately none of their driftwood pieces are really outstanding as the contaminated piece is. I still can't bring myself to throw it away but every time I look at it I get mad and also upset about losing my two favorite platties and my lonely little Cory cat who lost all of his buddies. Whatever that stuff was it was aggressive and kept rearing it's ugly head as soon as I thought everything was safe. I think we might be out of the woods now so maybe another week or so just to be safe and the fry will get moved in.
 
Hey PC1 what do you think about ghost shrimp? The ones they had in stock were pretty big. Do you think the barbs would eat them? So far the danios have been more aggressive than the barbs. Also we ended up with too many male danios. Do you think we could add some more females and how many more and be safe on our stocking levels do you think? What does everybody else think?
 
On the driftwood that bad, try making it better. If its small enough, place it in a bot of water and boil it. If small enough find small kind of pot to put on the grill, if not, put it in the bathtub and pour boiling water over it and let it soak. Rinse and boil again. Most driftwood can be made usable in this method. Please do not use and chemicals because they will soak into the wood. Soaking in plain water and boiling the wood will kill your parasites.
 
Steelhawke said:
On the driftwood that bad, try making it better. If its small enough, place it in a bot of water and boil it. If small enough find small kind of pot to put on the grill, if not, put it in the bathtub and pour boiling water over it and let it soak. Rinse and boil again. Most driftwood can be made usable in this method. Please do not use and chemicals because they will soak into the wood. Soaking in plain water and boiling the wood will kill your parasites.

+1
I would suggest boiling it also. Might get the funk out or at least kill it off.
 
LOL.... this would happen only to me. Believe it or not we did that. It's a huge piece shaped like a cave and that's how the fish used it. My husband had to boil it twice once per side overlapping so the middle got boiled twice. It still stained the water with tannins like mad and little chunks broke off here and there. Because we boiled it we suspected it last if all as the source of contamination. But we had added no new fish and nothing else had changed. I kept medicating then after a few weeks of this would stop to not cause damage to the fish. I tried different meds talked to people asked questions online and quit counting how much money I had spent on meds after a certain point and I'm ashamed to say how much. When my favorite platty died I ripped the tank apart and found all that stuff. That's when we started asking around to see if anyone had heard of anything like this before. I tried fungal meds bacterial meds parasite meds and I would be at the end of a treatment and the fish would get worse and one would die. We pulled the driftwood out and they started getting better again. Then two of the three catfish died. I pulled his body out and with a pair of tweezers started examining his gills. They were packed with a cloudy off white colored stuff so I assumed either parasite or fungus. That's what it looked like from online photos. I treated with a fungal medicine again but this time of course without the driftwood in the tank which we broke down. The fish we moved into the 10 gallon. They are doing fine now. We bleached boiled and threw away components of the 29 gallon, reset it back up and started cycling and planting and the quarantine. Sorry didn't mean to write a book it's just that we've been through tank h--- with that tank and those poor little platties/Cory cat.
 
Just FYI... Meds should really only be used once you have ascertained for certain what the illness is. Medications can cause much stress to the fish and if you are using the wrong med then things can just get worse real fast. Most of the time keeping the water extra clean with daily PWCs does the trick. Research the symptoms and ask on this forum what others recommend. Pics of the sick fish can also be very helpful.
 
Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble with a very peaceful past time, I agree with the idea of staying away from the meds, they can cause more problems then solve sometimes. Extra water changes and a quarantine tank will help out so much. It's real strange you are having so many problems centered around that driftwood, boiling usually does the trick on that stuff. Don't give up on driftwood all together, try a different piece. You may have a piece of wood that has an opening somewhere with some type of spore in there. Is anyway you can let it soak for a few week outside to see if anything develops?
 
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