Stocking Levels On Thinkfish.co.uk?

[Spishkey]

common sense plays a big part when stocking a tank.

i only ever use these online calculator things as a 'rough' guide. they are there to help, not to rule.

according to the think fish calculator, i am twice over my limit and more of what i should have in my tank. yet my fish are happy, my water stats perfect and it runs brilliantly. (ok so im going to be adding another filter shortly so i can drop daily sand vaccing but thats only short term until my life is a little less hectic or until some fish are sold, whichever happens first )
that calculator does not take into consideration my cleaning, maintenace, water changes or filter power etc

 

[Robot_Rooster]

common sense plays a big part when stocking a tank.

Thats the ultimate rule

 

[jnms]

I would personally stick to the inch per gallon rule for the first 6-8 months
and then extend this upto 1.5 inches per gallon afterwards if desired.
(note fish above 4 inches can't really be included in this method and I would be allocating an Angelfish about 10G for example)

That gives you 40 inches (101cm) for the first 6 months and then about 72inches (182cm) afterwards

The 1inch / 1.5inch rule is an old rule from the days of undergravel filters. Now, if you use the ThinkFish calculator and select 'Undergravel' for the filtration type on wilchil64's tank. guess what; it suggests a stocking level of 180cm!!

I think this gives even more validity to the accuracy of the ThinkFish calculator...

So does that mean that with a Juwel internal filter I can stock the tank with 250 cm?

Yes, you can stock your tank in the way ThinkFish says. But I would build up slowly.

 

[jnms]

Just checking the calculator, and it is actually showing 216cm of fish for your tank. Assuming has 180ltrs in it...

 

[Truck]

think fish relys soly on the waste produced by the fish, which IMO is ~~~~ as they need space too!

 

[wilchil64]

Just checking the calculator, and it is actually showing 216cm of fish for your tank. Assuming has 180ltrs in it...

Stange ... when I put in the measurements it came up with 246 cm. Ah well, I'm not going to put that much in anyway ....

Will see how it looks with a few more and take it very slowly.

 

[Tolak]

Stocking is just as much art as science. Any stocking calculator will only give you about half the answer.

 

[Corleone]

Something that occasionally gets mentioned when thinkfish stocking comes up is power cuts - the more highly a tank is stocked, the more quickly it can get out of control during a power outage. If you really want to push the stocking density on a tank, I'd look into some kind of backup power - an uninturruptible power supply from a computer store can run a filter for quite a while. I have one meant to run a PC and monitor for 45 minutes after a power outage, and it's run three filters for 5 hours and only had the top light on the meter go out.

As for the stocking themselves, like Tolak said: there's more art than science. I like the 1" per gallon rule because it makes a good starting point. It's generally safe out of a fishless cycle, and it makes a nice balance between a tank that "looks full" and is still easy to maintain, but still leaves room to expand as you're comfortable. When I play with ideas for a tank setup, I do three stocking lists. One is 1"/gallon, covers the shoaling "bulk" fish, and is what I aim to start out with. The next is around 1.5"/gallon, and is what I really want in the tank. The next is up around what Thinkfish says I can have, but only adds fish that I'd like, but might not be able to afford or find easily, or which I can really go without if the tank can't handle more fish.

 

[jnms]

Something that occasionally gets mentioned when thinkfish stocking comes up is power cuts - the more highly a tank is stocked, the more quickly it can get out of control during a power outage. If you really want to push the stocking density on a tank, I'd look into some kind of backup power - an uninturruptible power supply from a computer store can run a filter for quite a while. I have one meant to run a PC and monitor for 45 minutes after a power outage, and it's run three filters for 5 hours and only had the top light on the meter go out.

As for the stocking themselves, like Tolak said: there's more art than science. I like the 1" per gallon rule because it makes a good starting point. It's generally safe out of a fishless cycle, and it makes a nice balance between a tank that "looks full" and is still easy to maintain, but still leaves room to expand as you're comfortable. When I play with ideas for a tank setup, I do three stocking lists. One is 1"/gallon, covers the shoaling "bulk" fish, and is what I aim to start out with. The next is around 1.5"/gallon, and is what I really want in the tank. The next is up around what Thinkfish says I can have, but only adds fish that I'd like, but might not be able to afford or find easily, or which I can really go without if the tank can't handle more fish.

Hi Corleone, what size UPS do you have? I need to get myself one at some point...

 

[Corleone]

Hi Corleone, what size UPS do you have? I need to get myself one at some point...

An APC 45 minute, I'd have to find the documentation to get the wattage. APC make the best ones on the market, but they are a bit more expensive than some of the competition.

 

[Neo_ad]

Just been doing some research on fish stocking and came across this thread, I used to keep fish but had around a 5 year break.

This thread has confused me somewhat, the tank I am looking at will be a 300L which I should be getting over christmas (I will be doing a fishless cycle, for however long it takes)

My question is this, I have been reading over the info at thinkfish.co.uk and I used to use the old way of working out of stocking levels.

Using the new way I could stock the following

Now i understand this a 2 year old mature tank, and everything is running perfectly but is this not classed as over stocked?

it seems a huge jump from the old way (30 fish) to the new way (60+ fish)

and then I saw this

In our 120cm tank with a stocking level of 375cm of fish, based purely on the stocking level we could keep 125 Neon’s at about 3cm size or 8 or 9 fully grown 45cm Oscars. Keeping 125 Neon’s in a four foot tank is no problem at all, in fact you could probably keep a shoal of 200 or so quite easily.

And this is even more confusing....

 

[Tolak]

Surface area, width & length, decorations, maintenance frequency, and the actual filter plus more have to be taken into account. 120cm tells me one thing; two of the pieces of glass are 120cm long. This is not much to go on.

To me that is a fairly busy tank, but nothing impossible. To someone looking for a more casual decorative home accessory it may be a real pain for maintenance.

 

[pippoodle]

i get pm's from people saying that they think i am over socked in a lot of my tanks especially the 180l and the 130 lt but i never have any probs with test results etc
i do a gravel vac change everyweek in with a 50% water change - some tanks have 2 water changes cos they have fry in
my tanks that have quite a few fish in have more that adequate filtration and the fish all have plenty of room

ok it makes sense to me - lol having a bad brain day today



Sarah xx

 

[Neo_ad]

I will just use common sense as I used to

nobody worry I wont be adding 300 neons, would look pro tho