Yet another Stocking thread

[Smitty]

Howdy!

I have a 55g tank with a XP2 Canister filter. Right now a couple plants, but I'm adding more (1 10k bulb and 2 6500 bulbs at 40 watt).

Right now I have:
4 Tiger Barbs
4 Tinfoil Barbs
4 Rainbow fish (All Bosemani of one type or another)
4 Cory Cats
1 Pleco
1 otto (there was a problem and I lost the rest, plan on getting 5 more)

I also have 7 random shrimp running around that have been in there for a while (I used to have an eel and they were never eaten before I sold the eel).

I want to get some more fish, but don't want to get too many. I was at the LPS today and saw this really neat schooling fish that was about 3/4 to 1" long and was told they won't get much bigger. I forget the name though.... I wanted to add like 6 or more of these because they were the size of a neon basically. Is this too much?

 

[miniflea84]

Two things: one, I'd get more tiger barbs. They tend to do better in larger groups, not to mention they're a lot less likely to bother other fish in the tank when they have each other to nip at. You can even get a color morph, for example if you've got all regular you can get some greens and they will all school together. Second, (apologies if you already know this) tinfoil barbs can grow very large, over a foot.

 

[Smitty]

I don't mind more tiger barbs because I love them. How many would you recommend? 6? 8? There is a local dentist with a 120g that has 80 of them and that is it!

Yea, I know the tin foils can get really big (the LPS has a bunch that are in the 8" range). I will sell them back to the store when they get too big.

 

[miniflea84]

I've seen people recommend at least 8. I'm a big fan of the little guys myself, so I'd say as many as you've got room for. I'd love to see that tank, I bet it looks great. There's a shop near me that has a tank with at least that many, but it's way smaller than 120 so they have no room to swim. They also have a couple of tanks that are periodically filled, and I mean filled, with neon tetras. The tanks are only 20-40 gallons or so and there's got to be at least a couple thousand of them elbow to figurative elbow. The tanks are hooked up to a central filtration system, so I guess it's ok? I dunno, they don't really swim, just sort of hover in place. But I digress.

 

[Smitty]

How many fish can comfortably be in my 55g? I did want to add more types like a said, and I don't want to overload it with 8 tigers and 8 of these other small fish, plus all the others.