Stocking Calculator Methods

Hi everyone. Relatively new to tropical freshwater.

My tank is 70cmx35xx40cm, been up and running 2 months and now gradually adding fish.
So far I have 6 neon tetra, 4 balloon mollie, 2 honey gourami and 2 platy.
All seem well (infact the balloon mollie had babies and they are now 6 days old with no special attention, so I'm assuming things are good)

I've come across a few different calculation methods for calculating stocking levels. Typical methods being inches of fish per gallon or square inch of suface area. In my case, they both come out with around the same answer of about 27-32 inches of fish.

However I came across this formula to work out the surface area requirement of a particular fish
fish requirement = (2 + 2 x length of fish) x length of fish
so for example a 1 inch fish would need (2+2x1)x1 = 4 square inches
a 2inch fish would need (2+2x2)x2 = 12 square inches

so in the case of my tank this would recommend I could have at maximum 95 one inch fish, or 32 two inch fish, or 16 three inch fish or 9 four inch fish

This seems a lot more sensible to me.

Whats everyone else's thoughts

There is no one way to stock a tank, there are many smaller ways like, fish's temperature requirement, size, bioload, territory, activity ness, schooling or not, aggresive or not, strata (level in tank)
For example I have
1 male Betta
11 neon tetras
6 Pygmy cories
3 kuhli loaches
This is not only 15 inches of fish it is more like I believe that this is around 40 inches of fish......

dazbud said:

My tank is 70cmx35xx40cm, been up and running 2 months and now gradually adding fish.
So far I have 6 neon tetra, 4 balloon mollie, 2 honey gourami and 2 platy.
All seem well (infact the balloon mollie had babies and they are now 6 days old with no special attention, so I'm assuming things are good)

Click to expand...

Mollies can easily reach 10cm if not longer (esepecially females, like with many livebearing fish), a 3-foot tank is needed. Having twos of both Honey Gourami and Platies can be very risky, especially in a smaller tank, one of each type is likely to become a dominant bully and stress the other one to death (with some injuries along the way).