Amount Of Fish?

[doresy]

Ok, so I know about cycling a filter and the 1" of fish to a gallon of water etc.

I question this rule of thumb.

Hypothetically, if you had a 10 gallon tank with a suitable filter (cycled) then it would hold enough bacteria to deal with the waste from, say, 5 Neon Tetras.

If you were to replace the filter with, say, a trickle filter with a great deal more media and fishless cycled using a higher degree of ammonia, then would it be fair to say that you could introduce and keep more fish than the 1" to a gallon rule?

I know the rule of thumb is, just that but surely, as long as you don't go crazy with the above in mind then a 10 gallon tank with, say 10-12 neons should be ok

Your comments please (and remember this IS a genuine, hypothetical question)

 

[dwarfgourami]

Yawn. This discussion comes up once a fortnight on every fish forum I visit and the answer is always the same. Yes, added filtration will give the room for more bioload. But then of course you have to think about swimming space etc etc. I can't see anyone (experienced) getting irate over the thought of keeping 10-12 neons in a 10 gallon tank, though, they would have plenty of room to swim. That sounds fine. In fact, given their low bioload, I doubt you'd even need any extra filtration for them.
And of course you do eventually come to a point where even massive filtration won't allow for any expansion of stocking: because it won't give the fish room to swim, because they will feel jam-packed and get aggressive, because you are getting to the level of filtration that will cause too much current in a small tank etc etc.

 

[vinylman]

The 1" of fish rule is, I'm sure, only intended for newcomers to the hobby, who would otherwise buy a 5 gallon tank and fill it with whatever fish caught their eye. As we know, many LFS wouldn't exactly discourage such a purchase. Most of us here know about the importance of filtration etc., on stocking. I think that's all that needs to be said on the subject, really.

 

[doresy]

I only asked as I have a number of fry that I will be transfering to my 34ltr once it has finished cycling to 'bring them on' a while.

It got me to thinking about boosting the filtration to accomodate them and future additions.......

Thanks for your er.............comments yawn indeed!