I wasnt going to bother, but Okay, lets run this down from the top;
Firstly, TOS is a lady, not a guy. Dont mix these up, itll cause you no end of issue here and in life. Im sure she would be offended to be reffered to as such, since its on the profile to the left of all her posts.
The "observation" she made about your tank was quite true, i too have never seen such a strange stocking. I appreciate your comments on "they've been fine for the last 9 months, however; define "fine". Have you studied these fish in the wild, and made a comparison to their behaviour in AND out of their natural habitat? No? Then how do you know they are "fine".
Im not saying we know any better than you, but we get things as close to nature as possible, so to have single number for a species that lives in such MASSIVE numbers, is simply, strange. Hence TOS's comment.
You them proceeded to make the comment "im sorry it doesnt fit in with your idea of a perfect tank". There is no pefect tank, none of use have a perfect tank (
we often claim "Wow ive done it" to but we quickly find something else we want), but we (the majority) make dam n sure that we get as close to their natural habitat as possible. What you have is so far removed from their natural habitat im suprised they havent already died of stress, so on this part, congrats.
Im glad Pablo took the time to bother responding, (And i quote ["While TOS's response was perhaps not the most gentle one, it wasn't an inaccurate one. Stocking advice may not have been the advice you were looking for, but it's the advice you need"]) and im sure if you were to read the post back from the start again having read this, you'll likely see that it was infact yourself that was too quick to jump the gun. I notice, despite Pablo's eagerness to help, that you negated the above line from him.
I dont think there is much else to sa. If you want advice, ask for it, sometimes (like in TOS's case) it may be freely offered (I can tell you she would likely have happily helped put a stocklist together to help out, had she not got the response she did) but it will always be honest, even if its not what you want to here.
We have nothing to gain or lose by offering you advice. Its for the good of the fish.