Is This Overcrowding For A 20g

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spazzinout53

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2x german rams
1-2x mollys
2-3x guppies
3x otos
4x or more schooling fish
4x zebra danios
And some shrimp

overcrowding or notfor a 20 US gallon ? im expirienced and i could overfilter the water if i needed to, i just think its the perfect combo
 
I would make just two minor changes to that list if I were you.

Instead of 4 danios and 4 ohr schooling fish (?tetras/?rasboras) I would get 8 of the schooling fish. The reason is that danios are very active fish who work constantly on establishing a hierarchy- in such a small group this may result in aggression problems. Also, danios really prefer a 3 foot tank. Danios are lovely little fish, but when they appear on our problem pages, it is nearly always in the combination small tank-small group.

I would also test the water to see if it is better suited to German rams (soft acid) or mollies (hard alkaline). If it turns out to be soft/acid I would leave the mollies out as they can develop lots of health problems in that kind of water- I tried it myself 30 years ago, and they were permanently ich-ridden. If you've got hard water the mollies will be happy, and instead of German rams the better option would be Bolivian rams.
 
ok thanks, well i have a molly now in a 5 gallon, ( i no i shouldnt)
but hes been doing amazingly, so i take it i might have more hard water, i guess ill use bolivian rams insted then.

Could i do 6 schooling fish and 2 zebra danios then?
thanks
 
The thing about danios is they need to be in a sizeable group (6-8), because of the hierarchy thing I mentioned. If you keep just two, the dominant fish will only one other fish to show his dominance on and he will keep doing that non-stop, which may result in the non-dominant fish being stressed out, unable to feed and at the risk of disease or even death. So I would really advise against this. I kept danios years ago, and they are really very active. I would go for a school of 6 tetras or rasboras instead.
 
ok thanks so much, so gotta keep danios in big groups, thanks
 

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