how many fish can my tank hold?

[Hailey]

hey!
so i've got a new question...i have a 35 gal tank, and right now i have about 17 fish in it. there are :
2male gourami's
9neon tetra's
1 plecko
1 female beta
2 angel fish
1 male guppie
and one light blueish one (not sure of the name)
anyways, i was wondering how many more fish would fit comfortably in my tank, so they can still grow and be healthy. my tank just seems so empty!
thanx

 

[BobK]

Hi Hailey and welcome. What kind of pleco do you have? If it is a common pleco it will get large, 18"+. Mine is almost 12" and they are very messy and put a big bio-load on your filter. If you have a common pleco you might be close to fully stocked. I don't know how big the gourami's get but the angels can get large also. Can you give more information?

 

[Hailey]

thanks, i figured it was getting full . my tank is 3ft wide, by 12" wide and 19" high, and i mostly just have plants(most are fake, but i have 1 type of grass thats live) and rocks on the bottom, so they have lots of room to swim around, and also places to hide. yesterday i went out and got a new angel, and its pretty big already and i also got a little guy, but at the moment i cant remember the name of him, its a long one. and then i gave my boyfriend 4 of my neon tetras and one of my angels because the new one and the much smaller white one that was in the tank before werent gettin along very well. the type of filter that i have is a whisper something or other, the size required for my tank size.
i have a couple new questions also, i was wondering if there was anything that i could do to make my water more clear??i have a couple things that are suposed to do the job, but they dont seem to work that great, do u know of something that will work for sure? i live in the country so there are no chemicals in my water, just mayb mineral and metal stuff.
also, my one gourami is acting funny, he just sits on the bottom and doesnt really move, when normally he is all over the tank, and he breaths heavy, and when he does manage to move around a bit, air bubbles come out of his gills, last week he was also (when i changed the water) so i got some new stuff for the water, its called, "cycle", tis suposed to reduce fish loss. it has more nutrifiers, it keeps the aquarium healthy, and is suposed to rapidly mature new aquariums, so i put some of that in and it semed to help, but now hes being weird again, so i put more of the cycle stuf in, hoping that it will help
i think that i mgiht have jumped into having a fish tank to quickly, it jsut seems that im not doing a good job of it. or is this a normal thing? stuff always going wrong??

 

[nino]

did you cycle your tank?

 

[Hailey]

do u mean like when i first set it up and stuff?? i let it run on its own for about 2 weeks, then i added one female beta, then a about another 2 weeks later i got the gourami's and another female beta

 

[gale]

How long has it been set up? Letting it run fishless for 2 weeks won't cycle it unless you add something that will create ammonia (like fish, ammonia or fish food). With fish it would take around a month to cycle so it really depends on how long it's had fish in it. As far as adding something (like cycle) to cycle quicker, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions on that whether it works or not.

Do you have a test kit?

 

[BobK]

Hi Hailey. Read this article, it should help. Your problems are not unusual yet they are avoidable if the people in the LFS would explain it to beginners.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=10099

 

[sylvia]

Try feeding your gourami a shelled pea and don't add any more fish or you'll be over-stocked. Angelfish will eat neons.