How many fish in a 64 litre and compatibility

[Ahellofagirlx14]

Hey guys so i am totally new to the hobby. I have a 64 litre with 1 betta (he is very docile actually) , 4 otocinclus, 4 female guppies, 2 danios, 6 platy with 1 baby platy. I was going to buy 4 shrimp and 3 endlers. Would this be overcrowding? Since i looked on a website and it said in a 64l you can have 34 fish and if i did have that amount then it would only be 25 fish. Also, my brother has a tank that he is forgetting about so i was wondering if i could put his 4 wcmm in my tank but i am aware theyre cold water. i would acclimatise them properly. So if i do go ahead it would be 29 of the maximum 34 and i wouldnt buy anymore. My betta is honestly a chilled guy. No hate, im a newbie just advice please.
Thanks!

 

[NickAu]

hi

Your tank is at its max stocking level now.

2 danios

you need at least 6 of these.

Since i looked on a website and it said in a 64l you can have 34 fish

No way the site telling you that hasn't got a clue about fish keeping.

1 betta

Male Bettas are solitary fish and do best on their own, He is not docile or happy and its only a matter of time before he snaps and starts killing the Guppies, or he will become withdrawn and hide a lot.

if i could put his 4 wcmm in my tank but i am aware they're cold water. i would acclimatise them properly

I would love to hear how you plan to acclimatise them because its not possible you are trying to change millions of years of evolution in a few days, all you will do is shorten their lives considerably

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

hi

Your tank is at its max stocking level now.


you need at least 6 of these.


No way the site telling you that hasn't got a clue about fish keeping.


Male Bettas are solitary fish and do best on their own, He is not docile or happy and its only a matter of time before he snaps and starts killing the Guppies, or he will become withdrawn and hide a lot.


I would love to hear how you plan to acclimatise them because its not possible you are trying to change millions of years of evolution in a few days, all you will do is shorten their lives considerably

Thanks for your reply, I have read the wcmm can live in tropical tanks so i was just wondering.. don't hate me lol. When i bought my betta from the LFS he was housed with Guppies - i bought them at the same time.
Thankyou for your input!

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

Thanks for your reply, I have read the wcmm can live in tropical tanks so i was just wondering.. don't hate me lol. When i bought my betta from the LFS he was housed with Guppies - i bought them at the same time.
Thankyou for your input!

hi

Your tank is at its max stocking level now.


you need at least 6 of these.


No way the site telling you that hasn't got a clue about fish keeping.


Male Bettas are solitary fish and do best on their own, He is not docile or happy and its only a matter of time before he snaps and starts killing the Guppies, or he will become withdrawn and hide a lot.


I would love to hear how you plan to acclimatise them because its not possible you are trying to change millions of years of evolution in a few days, all you will do is shorten their lives considerably

hi

Your tank is at its max stocking level now.


you need at least 6 of these.


No way the site telling you that hasn't got a clue about fish keeping.


Male Bettas are solitary fish and do best on their own, He is not docile or happy and its only a matter of time before he snaps and starts killing the Guppies, or he will become withdrawn and hide a lot.


I would love to hear how you plan to acclimatise them because its not possible you are trying to change millions of years of evolution in a few days, all you will do is shorten their lives considerably

 

[Essjay]

I'm afraid that you can't stock a tank by saying x litres means y fish, as NickAu says. Any site that says that doesn't know what they are talking about. There is a lot more to take into account - adult size of the fish (fish in shops are babies or juveniles and have more growing to do), tank size needed by the fish; water hardness needed by the fish; temperature need by the fish; temperament of the fish.

One of the first lessons that a newcomer to hobby learns is that a fish shop cannot be trusted. Just because they keep bettas with guppies does not mean we should do the same. I once saw a betta in with guppies which was herding the guppies one at a time into the corner and ripping chunks out of the their tails.

Bettas will be stressed by the guppies, even if they are the less flamboyant females, and they will also be stressed by fast swimming fish like zebra danios.
Danios need cooler water than the rest of your fish; they are such fast swimmers that they need a tank at least 90 cm long, preferable more; and they are shoaling fish which ned to be kept in groups of at least 6. If cool water fish are kept in water that is warmer than they like, it will drive their metabolism faster; they will live shorter lives and the stress of being too warm will make them more prone to illness. This applies to both danios and white clouds.

Do you know if you have hard or soft water, or somewhere between? Guppies and platies are hard water fish, though guppies will be OK in softer water than platies. I know that you have all females but if any of them have been in a tank with a male for longer than about 10 seconds they will be carrying sperm and have babies once a month for another 6 months or so. That's a lot of fry!



I also need to ask, how long has the tank been set up and did you cycle it by adding ammonia before you got fish? If you set the tank up very recently and did not cycle it, you need to test for ammonia and nitrite daily, and do a water change whenever you get a reading above zero.

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

I'm afraid that you can't stock a tank by saying x litres means y fish, as NickAu says. Any site that says that doesn't know what they are talking about. There is a lot more to take into account - adult size of the fish (fish in shops are babies of juveniles and have more growing to do), tank size needed by the fish; water hardness needed by the fish; temperature need by the fish; temperament of the fish.

One of the first lessons that a newcomer to hobby learns is that a fish shop cannot be trusted. Just because they keep bettas with guppies does not mean we should do the same. I once saw a betta in with guppies a which was herding the guppies one at a time into the corner and ripping chunks out of the their tails.

Bettas will be stressed by the guppies, even if they are the less flamboyant females, and they will also be stressed by fast swimming fish like zebra danios.
Danios need cooler water than the rest of your fish; they are such fast swimmers that they need a tank at least 90 cm long, preferable more; and they are shoaling fish which ned to be kept in groups of at least 6. iI cool water fish are kept in water that is warmer than they like, it will drive their metabolism faster; they will live shorter lives and the stress of being too warm will make them more prone to illness. This applies to both danios and white clouds.

Do you know if you have hard or soft water, or somewhere between? Guppies and platies are hard water fish, though guppies will be OK in softer water than platies. I know that you have all females but if any of them have been in a tank with a male for longer than about 10 seconds they will be carrying sperm and have babies once a month for another 6 months or so. That's a lot of fry!



I also need to ask, how long has the tank been set up and did you cycle it by adding ammonia before you got fish? If you set the tank up very recently and did not cycle it, you need to test for ammonia and nitrite daily, and do a water change whenever you get a reading above zero.

Thankyou for your answer! My ammonia is 0, i used a test kit. The water isnt too hard but its not really soft either. I thought Zebra danios were cold water too, but they were sold as tropicals so i assumed that would be alright, theyre acting normal... sorry if i was wrong there though, i thought if they lived tropical before i bougjht them they would be ok since i did my reading and it all said they can live in tropical temps. I did have 6 Danios, but i bought an interpet heater which i set to 24 degrees, and when i got back from school it had gone all the way up to 85 farenheait, we took it back to the shop and got a totally new heater. That killed off 4 danios, 2 platys and 5 babies.
Thanks also for your input, you worded it in a friendly way which ive seen many people on this forum forget to do!
I'll ditch the idea of the WCMM .

 

[Essjay]

The trouble with so many shops is that they don't know or don't care. They hope the fish will only be with them a very short time - they need to sell them to earn money. And so many shops will tell you any rubbish in order to make a sale.

I'll give you the best website for looking up fish - it is written by fish experts not just people that keep fish, often in poor conditions.
http://www.seriouslyfish.com/knowledge-base/
I would believe this website over any other out there.



That's the trouble with some heaters - they can malfunction by sticking in the on position, with cheap imports from the far east being the worst for this.
Heaters also tend to be badly calibrated - the number on the dial is not the temperature they heat the water to. The safest way to set the heater is to set it for lower than you'd think, wait till the light switches off and see what temp the water is. If it's too low, turn the heater up a notch, and so on till the thermometer shows the right temp. Thermometers filled with liquid that go inside the tank are more accurate than the type that stick on the outside which are affected by fluctuations in the air temp.

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

The trouble with so many shops is that they don't know or don't care. They hope the fish will only be with them a very short time - they need to sell them to earn money. And so many shops will tell you any rubbish in order to make a sale.

I'll give you the best website for looking up fish - it is written by fish experts not just people that keep fish, often in poor conditions.
http://www.seriouslyfish.com/knowledge-base/
I would believe this website over any other out there.



That's the trouble with some heaters - they can malfunction by sticking in the on position, with cheap imports from the far east being the worst for this.
Heaters also tend to be badly calibrated - the number on the dial is not the temperature they heat the water to. The safest way to set the heater is to set it for lower than you'd think, wait till the light switches off and see what temp the water is. If it's too low, turn the heater up a notch, and so on till the thermometer shows the right temp. Thermometers filled with liquid that go inside the tank are more accurate than the type that stick on the outside which are affected by fluctuations in the air temp.

Yes my heater is a submersive (is that thr right word?) one so its all under water. i understand what youre saying so will try that. Isn't fish keeping meant to be peaceful? maybe i should have kept to cold water! Also i will check out that website.
Many thanks!,

 

[Essjay]

It is getting your head round all the information coming at you form all directions that is hard at the start. Once you have had the tank running a while, it does become peaceful. I still have tanks after 20 years so it can't be all bad

The word is submersible
Unless the room where the tank is never falls below about 18 deg C in the middle of the coldest winter night (right now if you are in the UK!) cold water tanks still need a heater. The only true cold water fish in the UK are pond fish like common goldfish and koi. The rest sold as cold water are actually temperate fish rather than cold water, which means they need some heat just not as much as tropical fish.

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

It is getting your head round all the information coming at you form all directions that is hard at the start. Once you have had the tank running a while, it does become peaceful. I still have tanks after 20 years so it can't be all bad

The word is submersible
Unless the room where the tank is never falls below about 18 deg C in the middle of the coldest winter night (right now if you are in the UK!) cold water tanks still need a heater. The only true cold water fish in the UK are pond fish like common goldfish and koi. The rest sold as cold water are actually temperate fish rather than cold water, which means they need some heat just not as much as tropical fish.

Yes! I should've stuck to the good ol' goldfish Did you find it hard in the beginning? I'm only 14 hahah!

 

[Essjay]

When I first had fish they were fairground goldfish that my teenaged sons won throwing darts at the fair. They turned up with 4 fish in bags and these poor fish spent their first night in a large mixing bowl in undechlorinated water. One didn't make it. We didn't have broadband back then, only dial up (You probably don't know what that was! It used the phone line connection rather than a broadband connection and charged the same as a phone call so research on-line was expensive. And no mobile internet back then either) I had to use out of date books from the library. The three surviving fish grew so quickly that 9 months later we gave them away to someone with a pond, I bought a heater and replaced them with tropical fish. We eventually got broadband (we were down low on the list of places that had priority) and I started looking on-line and educating myself. I still am.
When I think back to those poor goldfish.... We were told 60 litres was fine for 3 of them; that a small filter which was underpowered for the tank was suitable; shopkeepers and the library books never mentioned cycling or even testing the water. I know goldfish are hardy but it's a miracle they made it through those 9 months.

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

When I first had fish they were fairground goldfish that my teenaged sons won throwing darts at the fair. They turned up with 4 fish in bags and these poor fish spent their first night in a large mixing bowl in undechlorinated water. One didn't make it. We didn't have broadband back then, only dial up (You probably don't know what that was! It used the phone line connection rather than a broadband connection and charged the same as a phone call so research on-line was expensive. And no mobile internet back then either) I had to use out of date books from the library. The three surviving fish grew so quickly that 9 months later we gave them away to someone with a pond, I bought a heater and replaced them with tropical fish. We eventually got broadband (we were down low on the list of places that had priority) and I started looking on-line and educating myself. I still am.
When I think back to those poor goldfish.... We were told 60 litres was fine for 3 of them; that a small filter which was underpowered for the tank was suitable; shopkeepers and the library books never mentioned cycling or even testing the water. I know goldfish are hardy but it's a miracle they made it through those 9 months.

Oh wow! Ive never liked the idea of fairground goldfish. What are your tanks like?

 

[Essjay]

This is what my 180 litre tank looked like in May last year - it's been rearranged a bit since then. The betta's tank is similar, just smaller.


And a fuzzy photo of my current betta just after I bought him I bought 4 months ago. He's grown since I took that photo.

 

[Ahellofagirlx14]

This is what my 180 litre tank looked like in May last year - it's been rearranged a bit since then. The betta's tanks tank is similar, just smaller.

View attachment 86734



And a fuzzy photo of my current betta which I bought 4 months ago. he's grown since I took that photo.


View attachment 86735

oh wow it looks so nice!! My room is too small for a big tank plus im a beginner How do you clean it out, it looks so big!

 

[Essjay]

I clean both tanks the same way - with a siphon and buckets. The big tank takes longer though