Overstocked? (10 Gal.)

[Man of fish]

One inch of fish per gallon.

BS

it's more about tank capacity and bioload. The inch per gallon means nothing IMO. I'd say you could do this:

6-8 neons
6 of a Small type of Cory (make sure you've got sand though)
2 assassins

 

[Ruthc1985]

Agree with most of the other comments here - the corys need to be in their own groups. tetras are lovely colourful fish and school when in larger numbers

had a similar issue myself recently when I ended up with 3 danios (of different varieties) and a cory - rehomed them and upped the numbers of my tetra's...I'm now really chuffed with my tank

 

[onidrase]

How exactly do you know when a tank is overstocked?

Tank is overstocked when you look at your tank and think "man, I think I have too many fish in here..."

Stocking is more of a self judgment thing, so long as your filtration is sufficient enough to keep the water happy and healthy, and all the fish aren't trying to kill each other. What one person (like the people who follow the bogus 1 inch per gallon rule) may call severely over stocked, a person like myself (who overstocks the tanks a boatload with a lot of overfiltration to boot) may say it has a bit of wiggle-room. All my fish still stay happy and healthy, there are just more of them in the tank.

 

[AceFish]

I think the cory things depends on your fishies tbh, we hae 3 peppered and 3 albino/gold corys - they have a whale of a time all together

That's how I feel about my different cories because they always eat together, sleep together, swim together, etc. I just hope that i can make them happy I think I might still rehome though?

 

[bmonki]

i my corys, they are one of my faves i could never ever get rid

 

[Llegmore]

Just because fish are shoaling fish, seeing them stick together isn't necessarily a good thing.

Your three different types of cory are probably hanging together because they are scared BECAUSE they haven't got other fish of their own type in the tank with them. Cories are active and adventurous little fish, and, when confident, really enjoy scooting about, exploring and playing. They also look so much better when there's a lot of the same kind.

 

[JohnDyer]

I never really liked cories, but imo they do look better when they are all of the same kind.
You can tell your tank is overstocked if the filter can't keep up with the ammonia being produced. Past that, it's a matter of opinion, and how full you want your tank to look.

 

[Bugdozer]

One inch of fish per gallon.

BS

it's more about tank capacity and bioload. The inch per gallon means nothing IMO.

I tried to make a thread assessing the importance of tank volume versus ability to filter the water of impurities but it was impossible to gather data from other forum posters because they kept trying to guess why I was asking the questions I was and shortcut them, and attempting to change the parameters of my examples. Personally I agree that if you have a filter that can remove 2ppm of ammonia in ten minutes flat, you can keep more fish in the water than if you have a filter that takes ten hours to do the same thing as long as each fish has enough personal space, which is species dependent. Two tanks of the same volume with the same fish in each can therefore be over or understocked depending on how much ammonia and nitrite their filters will take out in a given time scale.