Overstocking

[Paul70]

I see a lot of questions on here about stock levels etc and I wonder what people's opinions are on this subject.

Some say that overstocking is bad but others say that if you have enough filtration and you are willing to water change enough to keep nitrates down it is not really a problem as long as the tank size is large enough for a particular fish (eg I wouldn't put a RED TAIL BLACK SHARK in a 30cm long tank)!!

if you are willing to do the water changes is there a proplem with overstocking??
just a question really

 

[lilfishie]

for an experiecened keeper i don't have a problem with overstocking, in fact most would say my 30 Gal is overstocked without knowing that its heavily planted and has 2 filters running on it.

it also depends alot on the fish, eg tetras have very little bio-load so you could have more than recommended.

i wouldn't recommend overstocking to a newer keeper as they would probably have trouble maintaining levels etc

 

[Paul70]

I have a juwel rekord 800 110litre running the juwel 400l/h filter, a fluval u3 and a small air powered filter which is good for 70litres capacity. These are all cycled and water stats are always
amm-0
nitrites-0
nitrates- around 40ppm
pH- 7.6
Ph high- 8.0

my stock is
1 red tail black shark
1 bristlenose plec
6 green tiger barbs
8 puntius partipentazona barbs
5 clown loaches (these will be moved to a much larger when they get a bit bigger)
6 cardinal tetra
2 dwarf aquatic frogs
1 opaline gourami
1 dwarf gourami
1 golden gourami
all fish are healthy and active and there are numerous live plants in my tank.
I change 24l water every 2-3 days.

 

[ZoddyZod]

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[Paul70]

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??

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Are your pontius partipentazona barbs the "five banded" barbs? How do they do in such a large community tank? Do they swim in a school in the midwater, or do they lay low?

Thanks!

 

[Paul70]

the partipentazona are similiar to the five banded barbs but the dorsal fin black line only goes partially down the body hence partipentazona-partial.

they tend to school nicely in mid tank but will go all over and they feel confident enough to head off on their own. they seem to have an affinity with the green tiger barbs and they look great when they are all together. like i say, all the fish get on great. i did introduce a pakistan loach a few weeks but it went mad attacking everything so he went back and i swapped him for the gold and opaline gourami'

apparently the partipentazona are quite a rare fish in captivity so i feel quite glad that i have them. they really are nice fish and seem to be quite tough cookies tbh.

 

[twodoctors]

I think you are overstock, but as you say it is quite subjective. If you are talking about the tank in your signature then I would try to reduce the stock or get a bigger tank soon. Reason? You have no real plants. Fast growing plants will use up the nitrate in your tank and you might find that your nitrate is zero even 2 weeks after water change (like mine). Only reason to change water then is to hoover up the fish poo (like mine). Also it looks like you have ocean rock in your tank. They can up your pH which is not so good for the cardinal tetras.

Adrian.

 

[Paul70]

it is the tank in the picture but it is an old pic.

all the rock is gone as it was reactive to vinegar and this has been replaced with 2 large pieces of bogwood. all the plants have been removed and I now have green cabomba, straight vallis and amazon swords in there and these grow real nice.

i will try to update my pic asap

 

[SchottayB]

I wouldn't overstock... the effort would be too much to handle with every day work and life! (Some people might have it easy day to day ) I'd rather upgrade the tank to a bigger tank and have less problems.

But thats just me

 

[StandbySetting]

Stocking is subjective, there's no real definition of over stocking, as the volume of Ammonia excretion isn't always relative to the size of the fish, common sense should prevail, from my perspective, once the Clown Loach's and the Red Tailed Black Shark have been removed I wouldn't say you're over stocked, I'd say you're on your limits however.