29 gallon stocking - blue acara and congo tetras?

[Ragnarok12]

Hey everyone, I would like some advice on stocking my 29 gallon. I know I want to do a school of congo tetras, but I read that electric blue acaras can actually work starting at 30 gallons. Does anyone think a school of congo tetras (like 8, maybe), a solo electric blue acara as a showpiece fish, and a school of something loachy (maybe 5 or 6) for the bottom would work out? It feels like a lot, but idk. I would be going heavily planted, including floating plants to pull out nitrates. Thoughts?

[sudofish]

I think it would work for a long time. I'm not sure how it would work out if everything reached their max potential size, but that would be a ways down the road. I feel like if the EBA got to 6 inches and the congos to 3.5 or so then I'd be more comfortable in like a 40 breeder. But maybe that's just me I dunno. Everybody has different comfort levels with tank stocking. I tend to be more conservative with stocking and fear overcrowding even if I had plenty of filtration. I'm thinking more of swimming space.

[Odd Duck]

The old “one inch of fish per gallon” rule of thumb is far too simple to cover every situation, but it’s not a horrible rule to follow when you’re unsure of what will work.  Always calculate on the inhabitants adult size, allow more for thick bodied, or extra long finned fish.  Tiny bodied fish like chili rasboras clearly don’t need even a gallon per inch.  Live plants and extra filtration give you more wiggle room on “the rule”.  A more mature, stable tank will also work fine for more fish than a new, barely cycled tank.

But there’s nothing *wrong* with starting at an inch of fish per gallon until you get a feel for how everybody is doing, how the tank is doing overall, etc.  You’ll not go wrong by understocking and overstocking can go horribly wrong.  Sometimes in subtle ways at first, then it tends to snowball.