how many fish is to many fish??

[reefobsessed]

Im a salty so this is for a friend. I saw her tank last night and about died. She has 15 to 20 in a 10 gallon tank and 25 to 30 LARGE fish in a 55 gallon. The 55 is fine but the fish in the 10 keep dying. She Does not own a test kit and cant figure out why her fish are dying. Well, In salt you can only have a certin number of inches per gallon. Is this true for fresh water as well???

 

[Tigerlily]

Holy overstocking Batman! 8O

The general rule in FW is 1" of adult fish per gallon. That rule is reserved usually for just smaller fish. Larger fish need more room. The example I see here a lot is the 10" (or even a little more) of guppies may do fine in a 10 gal, but you'd never want to put a 10" oscar in there.

I think the bioload in her 10 gal is probably what is causing the problems. She needs some testing kits! Is she a good friend? Christmas is coming... 8)

 

[sweetsuvvyb]

10 gallons are tough...it looks like you should be able to fit a lot in there, but really, because it's such a small system it's far more susceptible to "crashes"...and easing the bioload can lessen the chance of that.

I only have 3 fish in mine, but it's waaaay over stocked because of the type of fish that are in there. Consequently I have to really be on the ball about monitoring tank conditions, and do a heckuva lot of water changes. But when my Dad took a look at it, he wondered why I had so few fish in there, and thought we should go out and get a school of tetras! Ack! (thank goodness he didn't take the initiative to go get 'em himself...gift fish were how I got into trouble in the 1st place LOL)

 

[tkos]

For the 10 gallon setup: How often does she do a water change. With that many fish she should probably be doing it twice a week at least.

A big problem is that people go into fish stores and see smallish tank crammed with fish. Of course what they do not see is the giant sump system that most stores have, thus giving those small tank a huge water supply and constant water turn over.

As her fish die I hope she isn't replacing them.

The 1 inch rule works well for guppies, tetras, minnows, barbs etc... so it does tend to work well in smaller tanks where you should be keeping large fish anyway.

 

[madasafish]

**Seranko**: I've moved your question to its own thread, as this thread is on a slightly different topic. Hope you don't mind. The thread is called "Discus Question" and is still under "Freshwater/Brackish: General Discussion"