Overstocked?

[I Punched Your Family]

Greetings. New user here with a question.

I am fairly new to fish keeping but I have managed to pick up enough to have what I believe to be a very successful community freshwater tank.

At present my situation is thus.
156l (44g) tank 3/2/2apx.
Fluval i4 filter
temp 24-26c
pH: 6.8-7
soft water
planted deep substrate with successful swords and hairgrass pot.

The stock I currently have.
15 neons
4 glowlights
4 black skirts
5 yellow tail congos
1 small bristlenose cat.
several nondescript snails.

I was on another forum looking for advice. As I mostly have smaller tetras I am looking to get some feature fish after I move (possibly a small school of larger Congos)and I was trying to discern whether this would be a good option with my current stock. The most important thing for me however is to keep a happy environment and not to overstock. What little response I got from users on the other forum indicated that I was already well and truly overstocked.

From my perspective the tank looks a little empty if anything and the fish are certainly not unhappy. It is my plan to add more plants when I move so they have more flora to interact with but my hands are tied until I get to my new house. I do regular water changes of about 10% twice weekly and test for ammonia, nitrates and nitrites almost obsessively to ensure that I do not get any spikes.

I would appreciate it if some people could help me out here. Stocking guides indicate that every case is different and are therefore often impossible to understand or do not apply. I am aware that fish do grow but I have had my current set up for almost 9 months now and none of my fish are above an inch and a half in length.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Uriel]

By my maths your pretty much 1cm of fish to 1l of water using there fully grown sizes. But i would think that you have a bit of head room as tetras are quite a low bioload fish.
Overstocking comes more down to your filtration and how often and how much water you are willing to change. You need adequate filtration to ensure that all ammonia is converted into nitrite and then nitrate. As long as this is the case then the more fish you have the more often you need to change water and the bigger the water changes you need to do to keep your nitrate within 40pmm of your tap water.

 

[Aqua Tom]

Your tank is 200 litre, not 156.

Being picky I know.

 

[Carlovel1]

Hello 'I Punched Your Family', you are not overstocked. I would add some bottom-dwellers like corys

Nice user name

Carl

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum.
You have mostly soft water fish but almost any snail will do far better in hard water than soft water. they really need the hard water calcium to form their shells. A snail in soft water often will have their shell slowly thin over a period of time and there is no way they can regrow a shell since it only really grows along the shell's leading edge. Most of your fish are indeed soft water fish although I have bristlenose plecs breeding in my relatively hard water.