Relative newbie requiring stocking advice

[Bastyman]

Hi there, I just wanted to say hello as I am new to this forum and I would like to pick your brains a little. I have a juwel rio 180 (180 litres or 47.5 us gallons, or 39.5 uk gallons) with the built in filter plus a fluval U2 and two air stones and various plants that are growing up, some quite rapidly. My tank is fully cycled and currently housing two white mollies, two black mollies, four assorted platys, two bronze catfish, two rabbit snails and one Siamese fighting fish. I would like to slowly add more fish until it is fully stocked but I am very wary of overstocking and guidelines I have found have been a little varied. I was considering adding 3 yellow mollies and 3 or 4 boesemani rainbow fish. My question is this, would those fish all go together? Also would that be a fully stocked tank or could I add 8/10 neon tetras and would they also live well with the current inhabitants? Any help would be greatly appreciated as all the information I find seems to vary.

 

[TXaggie]

Welcome to the forums!

Have you checked out the AqAdvisor - Intelligent Freshwater Tropical Fish Aquarium Stocking Calculator and Aquarium Tank/Filter Advisor website? It's not a set in stone law for stocking, but it can give you a good idea of where you're at based on your aquarium's footprint and filtration. I've seen people on this forum who say you should overstock and people who say you should understock based on the aqadvisor, so it probably has a +/- 20% variability. But it's nice because it takes in to account your filtration, your fishes' bioload, and does some basic species compatibility recommendations.

Sorry I can't give you more specific recommendations, my only tank is a smaller than yours and there's others on this forum with much more knowledge than I!

 

[NYgiantsRP]

You have good filtration, and the plants are beneficial. Good luck with there growth! All of the livebearers (molly/platty/swoardtails)can breed and you can become over stocked. You might want to have a plan for that. You could do a school of neons. So assuming you will have 10 neons, 8 livebearers, 2 bronze corys, and 1 algae eater. I would add another 4 to your cory cat school, and then you could also do the 5 bosemani rainbows. That would be a very nice setup!