Is there such a thing as too much space for a fish?

[sharkweek178]

I can give you another view on this. If you are limiting your question to the normal average community type tanks, then likely you can never go too big in terms of it being a healthier tank. However, If you breed fish or you have fish that breed and their babies survive, you will eventually need to catch them and rehome them (sell, trade or give away).

And then space matters. I can guarantee you that catching a tetra in a 100 gal. tank is a lot harder than catching one in a 50 gal. tank. And this is even more true when there is a lot of decor or heavy planting. And it is not only breeding which many necessitate catching fish, illness can also make this necessary. If you need to catch a sick or injured fish so you can move it to a Hospital tank to be treated, the same consideration applies.

I can tell you that in my very first tank, a 45 gal. which ultimately was also well planted, I had been sold flying foxes when I was trying to purchase Siamese Algae Eaters. So the Foxes had to go. I had to maake a bottle trap to catch them. However one refused to be trapped. It took me many months before i got it. And then it was dumb luck. I looked into the tank one day and saw that Fox inside the cave I had for plecos. So I grabbed a net, slipped it over the cave mouth and caught the fish.

That's the entire point of breeder tanks. They are wider to provide water volume but more shallow to make it easier to reach in and catch fish.

 

[sharkweek178]

My advice is to go look at local water bodies. Chances are, even in thriving ecosystems, that you won't see a lot of fish .

Most fish are social animals, and may not like living as individuals. They may need to be in groups. Others may need different types of hiding places or shelters. But if they have what they need, you can have one small group in a 120 gallon.

There are no rules for fish. It goes species by species. We have the rules - most people hate an empty looking tank.

Someone once made this point with zebras, but it can apply to fish. Look at something like a neon tetra. They don't blend into their environment very well. Just the opposite. That's because they haven't evolved to blend in with their environment. They are blending in with each other. When they school, a predator just sees a mass of red, blue and silver and can't focus on any single one of them.

 

[Back in the fold]

@JuiceBox52 I think she has a 55 with only two fish in it , one being a leaf fish if I remember right . She posted a picture once and it was cool seeing a big tank with just those two fish . That’s how I picture the wild . Sparsely populated.

 

[JuiceBox52]

@JuiceBox52 I think she has a 55 with only two fish in it , one being a leaf fish if I remember right . She posted a picture once and it was cool seeing a big tank with just those two fish . That’s how I picture the wild . Sparsely populated.

Yes I do! I love understocked tanks

 

[Fishmanic]

My 5 gallon tank has just one neon tetra (lone survivor) and two amano shrimp. The neon interacts with me more as there are no other fish to interact with. I'm the King Fish to him

My 29 gallon is down to 1 tiger barb, 3 black skirt tetras, one salt and pepper cory, and two BN Plecos.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

That's the entire point of breeder tanks. They are wider to provide water volume but more shallow to make it easier to reach in and catch fish.

I have not bred a huge variety of fish over the years, but the idea,ll tanks is definitely species specific. With the bottom feeders i have had spawn (about 10 species of plecos and 4 of corys) I work with 20L and 33L for the most part- shallow and long tanks. But with other fish height mattered as much as width. I have had a number of fish spawn in my tanks but not because I was intentionally trying to have the spawn: Angels, discus (eggs but never viable), assorted blue eyed rainbows and threadfins, a few danio species, rosy barbs, betta imbellis, farlowella, P. nichosli (I got them to be able to observe mouth brooding). My red cherry shrimp have been reproducing in a 5.5 gal now for over a decade. There are always a few small fish in there as well. I have blue dream shrimp as well spawning for about a year now in a 15 planted jungle tanks with amanos and a few white clouds.

Most of the time I am trying to get fry from a fish they are in a species tank. The "accidental" spawns occurred in tanks with multiple species and usually a bunch of live plants. Survival rates in such tanks are not very high.


For the angels and discus spawning, the depth mattered more than the length. I would never try to spawn angels or discus in a tank only 12 inches deep but I have bred 100s of pleccos that way. Species specific

 

[Sgooosh]

Thanks for your reply - can I ask, any reason you would get 8 and then 4 later rather than 12 at once?

personally adding a smaller shoal like 8 to 10 for me is more controllable, since my tank is very understocked and I don't want the cycle to be ruined.

 

[GaryE]

Setting up tanks raises questions, as you gain experience.

Too much space for you, or the fish is the big one.

A sparsely populated tank can be bad for US. Visitors tell us we have boring tanks, and we have to be patient to see our fish. They don't give us a big, in your face Las Vegas show. It can be harder to catch them, and aquascaping becomes more important if we don't stock heavily.

But as long as the fish are in appropriate numbers for the social needs of their species, they love it. The water is cleaner between water changes, there is less competition for food, and there are no squabbles over territory. You don't get as much of a 'can't miss it' show, but you get a better detailed pageant. Right now, I am drinking my morning coffee out on my back balcony with my sofa eating puppy, and a small group of white tailed deer are going about their lives in the back field. If they were a herd of 3000 caribou, they'd get boring. But with 2 or 3 deer showing up at a time, sparring, eating, and just being deer, they're interesting. There's a mother and fawn, and 2 jousting young males, and the puppy has even stopped chewing on everything that doesn't move to watch them. I like a tank that works like that. Maybe you look and just see plants, but in a minute if you relax and watch, things start to happen...

 

[anewbie]

Can there be too much space for a fish - well the question isn't posed quite right. An aquarium cannot be too large but there can be lacking of structure or hiding places for fishes that prefer to have safe retreats so in that sense the aquarium can be too open for some fishes - it all depends on the species and what they expect in terms of habitat - some want dense plants - others want nook and crannies (hard-scape) and still others want wide open area with no obstacles.