One inch of fish per gallon of water?

[Martin]

Hey all!  I was curious to know how heavily you guys stock your tanks.  I have always been told to follow the rule of "one inch of fish per gallon of tank", however when watching YouTube videos and/or seeing pictures of others' tanks, their tanks always seem overstocked by this standard.  Is this a conservative rule to follow or is it just there for newbies like me?

I just got my 10 gallon planted tank up and running and, ideally, I was aiming for about 5 shrimp, 2 nerites snails, and 8 neon tetras (or 6 guppies).  My plan was to introduce the animal life in stages and just watch how the tank/parameters do before adding more.  I think that's a pretty reasonable approach, but just wanted to solicit for your thoughts!

Edited January 30, 2021 by Martin

[HardeepTheLondoner]

Don’t go by inch per gallon, it’ll give you problems. I think most people stock tanks based on their level/experience.

For a newbie like yourself, I think you will experience success with-

5 Shrimp-Let the tank mature after cycling it before adding them in

1 Nerite Snail-2 will just lay eggs and be unnecessary

6/7 Guppies-Maybe stick to make only to avoid fry?

[Martin]

Thanks Hardeep!

Have you had a lot of decent experience with males only?  I've had more than one turn out to be an axe murderer and it has somewhat scarred me lol.  Not sure if it was simply the stress of having no females around.  Apparently my water is rather soft, so I was thinking that alone might inhibit fry?

[Maggie]

One of the many problems with that formula is the bulk of the fish isn't measured, only the length. So one inch of my tiny dwarf danios is less fish than one inch of my harlequin rasboras. Both of these fish are small, yet the rasboras are probably 3 times the weight of the danios per inch, if not more. Now look at the weight of one inch of a discus or angelfish in comparison and you see where it kind of all falls apart.

[HardeepTheLondoner]

1 minute ago, Martin said:

Thanks Hardeep!

Have you had a lot of decent experience with males only?  I've had more than one turn out to be an axe murderer and it has somewhat scarred me lol.  Not sure if it was simply the stress of having no females around.  Apparently my water is rather soft, so I was thinking that alone might inhibit fry?

I’ve honestly not kept Guppies, but I did consider it recently!😂 Don’t worry about a bit of chasing/nipping here and there, I was going to go for 125 or so Guppies in a male-only display tank. I’s a lot easier to deal with male only than population explosions, not to mention colour too.

I would bet Guppies breed in any water, so soft water wouldn’t make too much difference to them I don’t think.

You’re welcome 🙂

 

 

[Martin]

Thanks so much guys.  Maggie, that makes complete sense.  Hardeep, mine weren't nipping lol.  The couple I had STRAIGHT UP MURDERED some of the other fish.  To quote my 6 year old daughter, "Daddy I don't think that one fish is doing well... it lost it's head..."  and "Daddy, that one must be tired, he's been sleeping all day..."  🤣

[Kirsten]

That's wild. Never heard of guppies murdering each other. Cannibalizing the dead? Sure, who wouldn't? I mean...

Anyway! A lot of folks use https://aqadvisor.com for stocking guidelines. It's a little conservative for planted tanks but pretty good for a ballpark and for cross-referencing water parameters.

Me, I love livebearers, and they eat algae and are super adaptable, so I'd start with those, even if they're only male. Then add snails or shrimp if you need more help with the algae. It's hard to go slow when you have a new tank to fill, but it's worth it.

[Squeegee79]

So, you are correct that many experienced hobbyists will keep their tanks overstocked, often this is because they had fish spawn and are limited on room, or quite often because they are more aggressive fish and it helps curb damage to an individual

My rule of thumb for people just getting into the hobby has always been:
X² gallons of water, where X is the length of the fish.

So, if you are talking about 1" fish, then 1 gallon of water is very reasonable.

But if you are trying to find a place to put a 10" Oscar, obviously that isn't going to work very well in a 10 gallon tank. But, if you put it in 10² gallons, or 100 gallons, then that fish will be much happier.

And I am not saying that you can only put that one fish in the 100 gallon tank, just that you should probably have close to that much room for that fish. If it had 3 or 4 buddies that it doesn't want to kill, then that is fine.

[Martin]

3 hours ago, Kirsten said:

Anyway! A lot of folks use https://aqadvisor.com for stocking guidelines. It's a little conservative for planted tanks but pretty good for a ballpark and for cross-referencing water parameters.

Whoa, thanks!  That calculator is awesome!  

Just for clarity, the guppies didn't go after other guppies, but they made short work of my four tetras and one danio.  Never saw it coming either; they had all been in the tank together happily for about a month, then all of the sudden it was "the butler in the library with the crowbar".  It took me a while to figure out what was going on too.  I thought I had taken care of everything when I witnessed one of them attacking a tetra.  I isolated him and the next day, the danio was dead.  I kept watching and realized I had a Thelma & Louise going on.  Ugh.

[Koi]

My general rule for stocking is find out how many times you want to change water in a week then find the number that fits that haha.I personally find that guppies display better color with a mix of female and males but I understand you may not want to deal with fry. I'll mention if you think the males are ruthless then you definitely don't want a big female.

[gardenman]

By any "normal" rule my fifty gallon is horrifically overstocked. I didn't overstock it, the fish did that through breeding. They're happy and healthy so I leave things be. I did move some stock to other tanks in case the tank crashes at some point, but so far, so good. It's got about thirty (or so)  Super Red Bristlenose plecos in lengths from 2"-5". (they break the inch per gallon rule by themselves.) God only knows how many Neon Swordtails. Way more than fifty though and many are about five inches in length (not counting the swords) so they're not being stunted. It's very heavily planted and the surface is covered in floating plants that get a big bowl removed every Saturday, but by the next Saturday you'd never know I'd removed any. It's got a big sponge filter, and a canister filter for filtration. I just added one of the K1 style biofilters in the back right corner a couple of weeks ago for some extra biofiltration. It's so heavily planted I can't see the substrate. But it all works. The fish are very healthy, happy, and hungry. They're always hungry. Every time I walk by there's a rush to the glass as they all beg for food. I could have just fed them five minutes earlier and you'd think I'd never fed them. There are always new fry in the tank. Survival is challenging for them these days with so many hungry adults in the tank, but a few make it. It's a "Don't do this at home" style of tank for newbies, but it works for me. Oh, and there are about a million pond snails in there also. It's an absurd bio-load for a fifty gallon tank but it works. It's found a balance and everything in there is very happy so I just largely leave it be. Every week I remove about half the floating plants and by the next week they're all back. The tank is in a natural balance even though no one just looking at it would say it was. Even I look at it and say, "That's way too many fish" but it works.

[Martin]

That's amazing gardenman!  Would love to see a photo of that if you are willing.  Overstocked tanks just seem so beautiful and lively!

[Daniel]

The inch a gallon rule is somewhat imprecise. By this rule:

• Three 6 inch goldfish in a 20 gallon
• Fifty 1 inch neon tetras in a 20 gallon

would say the goldfish tank is stocked properly and the neon tetra tank is overstocked, when just the opposite is arguably true.

The more likely answer to any stocking question is 'it depends'.

[gardenman]

12 minutes ago, Martin said:

That's amazing gardenman!  Would love to see a photo of that if you are willing.  Overstocked tanks just seem so beautiful and lively!

Here you go. The breeder box on the front is holding a red ramshorn snail that came with a plant shipment. I have him/her in there so I don't lose it in the tank. My plecos tend to spawn every six weeks or so and they'll be due for another spawning in a few days/weeks, so if they kick the eggs out of their cave, as they're prone to doing, I'll use it for them. 

 

[lefty o]

the 1" of fish per gallon came from long ago when most aquariums had at most an air stone. no filtration etc, they didnt count plants, or anything else. it was simply the absolute bare minimum. with filtration, and plants a person can exceed that by a large margin. where it does sort of come into play is planning for prolonged power outages. in a prolonged power outage, the level of over stocking determines how rapidly the aquarium deteriorates. 

[Martin]

8 minutes ago, gardenman said:

Here you go. The breeder box on the front is holding a red ramshorn snail that came with a plant shipment. I have him/her in there so I don't lose it in the tank. My plecos tend to spawn every six weeks or so and they'll be due for another spawning in a few days/weeks, so if they kick the eggs out of their cave, as they're prone to doing, I'll use it for them.

Whoa!  That IS a lot of fish!  It's awesome that you have that balanced out so well!

[gardenman]

And if things go wrong in an overcrowded tank they go seriously wrong quickly. That's why I moved some fish from that vastly overcrowded tank to other aquariums as reserve fish in the event of a major crash. If the power goes out I have a relatively narrow window (maybe a few hours?) before the tank crashes and the fish die. All of the rest of my tanks are much less overcrowded than the fifty gallon tank. One cardinal tetra in a 120 gallon tank could live its whole lifetime with no filtration, water changes, etc. It's a very small bio-load. I've got an absurd bio-load in the fifty. But, the fish are very happy, healthy and doing great, so I leave things be. I do keep about twenty gallons of water ready in plastic containers in the event of something does go horribly wrong so I can do powerless water changes until the power comes back on.

[MDoc]

10 minutes ago, gardenman said:

The breeder box on the front is holding a red ramshorn snail that came with a plant shipment. I have him/her in there so I don't lose it in the tank.

That one snail absolutely living the life. 😂😂

[gardenman]

1 minute ago, Martin said:

Whoa!  That IS a lot of fish!  It's awesome that you have that balanced out so well!

Yeah. It's not so much something I've done in balancing the tank, the fish and plants do that. I just try not to mess it up. I'd like to go in and remove about half the plants and replant it, but doing so would disturb the balance and I'm not going to take that chance. I read once of a koi farmer in Japan who joked that if you couldn't walk across a pond without getting wet there weren't enough koi in the pond. Some of the density they keep koi in is pretty close to that level. Mind you they have mountain streams feeding fresh water in constantly to help out, but they can stock their ponds/holding tanks pretty densely.

[Tanked]

Let common sense be your guide.  If you can maintain the water quality with more fish, go for it.  You probably don't like living in cramped conditions, neither do the fish.  They need space to swim, chase, school, be alone, hide...

[Levi_Aquatics]

The plan you have in mind sounds great. The one inch per gallon rule works in some cases but not others so your best bet is to ask an employee at your lfs what would work and use common sense. I hope your aquarium turns out great!

 

[JettsPapa]

There are so many variables in stocking a tank that no one formula will ever work.  I have a couple of tanks that are wildly overstocked by following the inch per gallon rule, but they're working fine.

(An angelfish, 11 Lake Kutubu rainbowfish, 11 black neon tetras, 20 lemon tetras, 10 panda corys and 2 bristle nose plecos in a 65, and 9 pearl gouramis, 15 serpae tetras, 10 pristella tetras, and 9 trilineatus corys in a 40 gallon breeder, in case anyone is curious.) 

[AquaAggie]

I agree with a lot of the above. The honest answer is that it all depends.  You have to take into consideration waste accumulation (nitrate build up and need for water changes), physical space, where in the tank fish occupy, do you have plants, etc.

Also going slow is a great idea.  I am jonesing to add more to my 60 gallon.  The calculators all say I am overstocked, but my nitrates are under good control.  My fish are all happy and seem to have space, no one is fighting, but adding more can always upset the balance

 

AqAdvisor is very helpful, but is still pretty conservative.  

I have found this site ( https://www.thinkfish.co.uk/article/community-creator ) helpful as well.  It tends to be a little less conservative, and is more graphical.  It is from the UK so it is in metric.  But looking at both of those sites may give some more insight as well.  Good luck, go slow, and test your water.

[Chiclid addict]

On 1/30/2021 at 3:02 PM, Martin said:

Hey all!  I was curious to know how heavily you guys stock your tanks.  I have always been told to follow the rule of "one inch of fish per gallon of tank", however when watching YouTube videos and/or seeing pictures of others' tanks, their tanks always seem overstocked by this standard.  Is this a conservative rule to follow or is it just there for newbies like me?

I just got my 10 gallon planted tank up and running and, ideally, I was aiming for about 5 shrimp, 2 nerites snails, and 8 neon tetras (or 6 guppies).  My plan was to introduce the animal life in stages and just watch how the tank/parameters do before adding more.  I think that's a pretty reasonable approach, but just wanted to solicit for 

On 1/30/2021 at 3:02 PM, Martin said:

Hey all!  I was curious to know how heavily you guys stock your tanks.  I have always been told to follow the rule of "one inch of fish per gallon of tank", however when watching YouTube videos and/or seeing pictures of others' tanks, their tanks always seem overstocked by this standard.  Is this a conservative rule to follow or is it just there for newbies like me?

I just got my 10 gallon planted tank up and running and, ideally, I was aiming for about 5 shrimp, 2 nerites snails, and 8 neon tetras (or 6 guppies).  My plan was to introduce the animal life in stages and just watch how the tank/parameters do before adding more.  I think that's a pretty reasonable approach, but j wanted to solicit for your thoughts!

I know this has probably Ben said but this angel I rescued was kept In a ten gallon he’s only about 9 inches tall but this is what happens when they don’t have room 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Angelfishlover