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Stocking your tank
“How many fish can I put into my tank”, this is a question we get asked every day and as we tell our customers there is no hard and fast rule on how many fish can be successfully kept in a given body of water there are just to many variables that need to be considered, there is however an old rule of thumb that says 4 liters of water per 1” (25mm) of thin bodied fish now this is fine if we’re all going to keep a tank full of neon or glowlight tetras but what if you want to keep tiger barbs dose that mean because their body is 4 times as thick as a neon it needs 4 times the water, good question and this is just one of the variables, fish size, food consumption, waste produced this is all relevant and then there is filtration, plants or no plants, tank surface area and of cause there is you as their keeper do you do frequent water changes, gravel clean and regularly clean the filter so as I said there are just to many variables for anyone to say how many fish you can keep.
Testing your aquarium water for ph, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are a good way of telling if your tank is stocked correctly lets take for example a 60liter (2’x15”x15”) tank with adequate filtration a good stock of fast growing plants, 6 neon tetras, 6 black widow tetras, 6 serpae tetras and 2 bronze corydoras catfish, this tank will receive a 30% water change fortnightly, the fish will get feed once daily, because of the filtration the ammonia and nitrite levels should always be nil testing the ph and nitrate levels the day after a water change should show these levels to be well within the acceptable levels for the fish, testing the water a week later the ammonia and nitrite levels should still be nil this tells us the filter is working correctly, ph will have dropped a little but should still be at a acceptable level, nitrate has risen but this is a result of the biological filtration working correctly (read nitrogen cycle) but should still well within acceptable levels, all the test are carried out again the day before the fortnightly water change now the ammonia and nitrite should still be nil if there is any ammonia or nitrite present the filter will need cleaning, the ph should have dropped but should still be at an acceptable level for the fish this means the tank is stocked correctly if the ph has dropped well bellow acceptable levels the tank is over stocked this is also indicated be a sharp rise in nitrate levels.
Now with the water tests at one week showing you that the water parameters are still well within acceptable level but are well outside acceptable level at two week there is one of two things you can do, firstly you could reduce the number of fish or start to do weekly water changes, if however the water parameters are still well within acceptable levels after two weeks you could add some more fish but only add one or two at a time.
In summery as stated earlier there are just to many variables, so stocking an aquarium correctly is all about water quality so consistent water testing will ensure that not only is the tank stocked correctly but the filter is working properly and your tank maintenance is being done at correct intervals.
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