Stocking Question

[ZebraDanioFan]

I have 7 tiger barbs, 4 silver hatchets, 6 scissortails(Rasbora trilineata), 1 african featherfin catfish, and a bolivian ram

i have a 55 gallon and doing about 30 gallons weekly water change

given the amount of gallons i have, the amount i waterchange, the type of fish i have: can i add some more tiger barbs or am i already overstocked?

my nitrates at the end of the week go up to around 20ppm...i feed them daily at times but mostly every other day to sometimes every 3 days.

 

[airbusa1]

First of all the most important thing is that you only need to do a 10-20% weekly water change and every month a 20-30% water change which for you is:
Weekly- 5.5 - 11 gallons
Monthly- 11 - 16.5 gallons
This should be done while siphoning out the gravel too nuch of a water change will stress out the fish way too much and will remove some of the beneficial bacteria.

Secondly, becuase you have so much fish I would feed sparingly 2-3 times a day because doing it rondomly every 1-2-3 days is bad for the fish as it will overload their stomachs in food becuase you probably, feeding them every 3 days will give them a lot of food which is bad for their stomachs. it will make them feel very ill

Now the rule of thumb you probably know this is 1 inch of fish for every 3 to 4 gallons of water.
so the tiger barbs will grow to a maximum of 2.8 inches so that X 7 is 19.6 inches.
19.6 X 3 is 58.8 that means at 55 gallons you have too many fish!
If i were you I would be happy with my stock and leave it like that!

 

[holidayinn]

I would try to find the ram a partner and observe the breeding behaviour.

The present tankmates will probably clear the eggs for you if you don't want fry.

 

[Twinklecaz]

I thought it was 1 inch of fish per gallon of water?

 

[ZebraDanioFan]

I guess what I am really asking is dependent on my water changes, current nitrates, and stocking: how many more tiger barbs do you think I can add where the nitrates will stay in a safe range and all the full grown sizes of the fish...safe range being around 80-100ppm at the end of the week?

 

[Wills]

Inch per gallon is just a guide dont focus to much attention on it. I would disagree with airbua1 about the water changes keep up with the 30g ones, large water changes are always a good thing IMO.

With the stocking, Im quite surprised your getting a reading of 20 per week after that size water change. Do you have any plants and how often do you change your filter media/ clean out the filter? I would drop your estimation of 80-100 being safe I have always gone with 50ppm max. Have you tested your tap water for nitrate? Just wondering what that is like....

As far as your stocking goes I think you should be able to go quite a bit further... Once we get down to the cause of your nitrate possibly consider

1 x Featherfin Catfish
2 or 3 x Bolivian Rams
6 x Scissortail Rasbora
10 x Silver Hatchets
10 x Tiger Barbs

I would consider that a good stocking for a 55g, but I would still be tempted to try a medium sized feature fish in the middle somewhere. Maybe somekind of gourami? Maybe an orange thick lipped or two? But if the present stock is causing 20 ppm nitrate we kind of need to work out whats going on atm. If all of the above I mentioned is fine perhaps try adding a few more like the hatchets and tigers and see what effect the nitrates do?

Wills

 

[ian]

Secondly, becuase you have so much fish I would feed sparingly 2-3 times a day because doing it rondomly every 1-2-3 days is bad for the fish as it will overload their stomachs in food becuase you probably, feeding them every 3 days will give them a lot of food which is bad for their stomachs. it will make them feel very ill

how do you think fish get on in the wild?

Fish don't need to be fed 2-3 times a day, they can go a couple of days without food easy. It may even benifit your tank by cutting down the feeding to every 2 days or so.

 

[ZebraDanioFan]

Inch per gallon is just a guide dont focus to much attention on it. I would disagree with airbua1 about the water changes keep up with the 30g ones, large water changes are always a good thing IMO.

With the stocking, Im quite surprised your getting a reading of 20 per week after that size water change. Do you have any plants and how often do you change your filter media/ clean out the filter? I would drop your estimation of 80-100 being safe I have always gone with 50ppm max. Have you tested your tap water for nitrate? Just wondering what that is like....

As far as your stocking goes I think you should be able to go quite a bit further... Once we get down to the cause of your nitrate possibly consider

1 x Featherfin Catfish
2 or 3 x Bolivian Rams
6 x Scissortail Rasbora
10 x Silver Hatchets
10 x Tiger Barbs

I would consider that a good stocking for a 55g, but I would still be tempted to try a medium sized feature fish in the middle somewhere. Maybe somekind of gourami? Maybe an orange thick lipped or two? But if the present stock is causing 20 ppm nitrate we kind of need to work out whats going on atm. If all of the above I mentioned is fine perhaps try adding a few more like the hatchets and tigers and see what effect the nitrates do?

Wills

thanks for the replies guys.

In my tank, i do not have any live plant. I did not retest for the nitrate levels after I started varying their feedings from daily to 1 to 3 days. I was overfeeding when i fed daily because i wanted to fish to grow faster, which may have been the reason why nitrates were so high. right now, i still overfeed but i just dont feed them daily all week(i find that the bolivian ram tends to eat better when i give extra food because if i underfeed, all the fish will just eat everything before the ram)

I'm running aquaclear 110 and if there is leftover food at the bottom of the filter, i will try to clear the food off. In the filter, instead of wasting money on the carbon/ammonia crap i just put in another sponge. the sponge does get some slimy dark green grime on it but i try not to touch the sponge.

I just tested today(water change due in 2 days) and the nitrate was at 10ppm, even without the gravel vacuum(some weeks i get lazy but make sure it gets done every other week at the least but i usually vacuum weekly) tap water nitrates = 0ppm

I realized that hatchets were a mistake because i originally got 6 of em and had to rebuy a few times from them going on suicide missions and jumping out even with me being careful during waterchanges and keeping most the top closed(one jumped out of the filter water runoff onto the top and under the light to be fried...how the hell?) I dont want to invest in any more hatchets

I wanted a decent size shoal(or school?) of tiger barbs because i like how they look at the pet stores. Im open to another type of fish too though