Help -- Overstocked

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Neptunius

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Dec 16, 2011
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Boston, MA
As I've mentioned in past threads I'm rather new at all of this and most of the fish I got from my mom when she got tired of having an aquarium. I recently moved from a 20 gallon to a 30 gallon, which is as large as I can go for now. I've set up a planted tank, I've cycled it, and I transferred the fish from the 20 to the 30. Then the fun began.

I went out of town last week and left one of my housemates in charge of feeding the fish and taking care of the tank. The fish all did well and survived, BUT my housemates took it upon themselves to go out and buy me more fish because they felt the tank looked too empty. Fortunately they built upon the fish I already had but now I have way too many fish for a 30 gallon. I currently have:

7 black skirt tetras
8 red eye tetras
2 Orange Sword tails
4 Phantom tetras
2 Bronze Corys
3 Spotted Corys
1 pink tetra (pretty sure it was dyed)

They added to my black skirts, red eyes and added the phantom school as well as the spotted corys. Obviously the bioload is too large for my current tank, but I don't know what to do. I considered returning the black skirts and red eyes, but apart from one or two really small ones I can't tell which are the new ones and which were there before.

I've been testing the water parameters and ammonia, ph nitrites and nitrates have all remained normal.

Any thoughts on what I should do?
 

Jannika

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Hmm.. I actually don't think it's badly overstocked for a 30 gallon, as long as you have good filtration. The tetras are fairly small ones except for the blackskirts.
 

Neptunius

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Dec 16, 2011
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Boston, MA
But what about 1 inch per gallon? If all the fish grow to full size I'll have more than 30 inches of fish.

As far as Filtration I'm running 2 30 gallon aquaclear filters
 

Manafel

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Oct 10, 2011
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1 inch per gallon is actually a pretty unaccurate way to stock. you have to take into thought if any of your fish are big waste producers, your filtration, and aggression. Also it depends on how much work your wanting to put into the tank(water changes, etc) in order to keep everything balanced.
 

bradlgt21

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May 9, 2009
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The inch per gallon rule is stupid and doesn't apply. By that rule you could have a foot long fish in a 10 gallon tank. It can go wrong the other way too. Schooling fish don't take up that much room.

I just ran your fish into aqadvisor and while it isn't perfect it shows your just at about 100%. I actually like the fact that they completed your schools. Tetras shouldn't be single or pairs they should be in schools. What is your filtration though, with being 100% stocked you should be overfiltering a good amount. Something like a 50 gallon rated filter for a 30 gallon tank.
 

iheartbettas

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Sep 9, 2010
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as others have said, that tank isn't terribly stocked. The black skirts will get considerably larger. the corys will stick to the bottom area. If' I were to change one thing, I would have made the corys all the same and remove that lone pink tetra or whatever it is. But it's not like your roommates stocked it with goldfish, cichlids, pirahna, or fish that were clearly incompatible with the ones you had in there. If it makes you feel more comfortable, have them take out the phantom tetras, either of the cory speices and the pink tetra.
 

Neptunius

AC Members
Dec 16, 2011
141
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Boston, MA
Thanks for all the insights. As you can all tell I'm still pretty new at all of this. So is 2 30 gallon aquaclear filters good enough for this set up or should I be using a different sort of filtration?
 

Star_Rider

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Dec 21, 2005
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I don't always agree that more filtration = better for heavily stocked tanks.

adding more filtration to a tank that is adequately filtered will not really help much since it will not remove waste but store it in the filtration housing.
doing more water changes will actually have more impact on water condition.
 

schapman1886

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Sep 24, 2010
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So how DO you guys figure your stock?

My tank stock as it is now is, and will eventually be in my 36gal bowfront:

1 Plakat Male betta,
8 Rasboras (3 in main tank, 5 in QT)
10 Glowlight Tetras
4 Otos (in QT)

I still wanted to add a single or pair of Bolivian Rams, would this still be resonable or no? My gut tell me no, but I'm no expert.
 
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