Will I be overstocked?

[reptileguy2727]

the biggest bleeding heart tetra i have ever seen was by itself most of its life. i had it in a 55 with assorted other fish over time, but it never had a school. many times fish will 'thrive' when under what really isnt considered ideal, but that doesnt make it okay. in fact many times when things are changed to the ideal conditions, you see how 'thriving' was really just really good. and true thriving should always be the goal. and single incidents should never be cited as support to do things varying from ideal.

 

[dorkfish]

Cleanup crews are not nessisary at all. Gravel vac's will remove excess food and fish, a sponge (or any other algae removal tool) will remove algae. I have seen many tanks without any form of "janitor" and maintained a few like that myself and they go for months, years without any problems arising due to a lack of scavangers.

 

[reptileguy2727]

you can compensate for their absence, but simplicity and nature are the best ways to go. and it is much better to have a cory eat and make use of that extra food that fell than for it to sit in the gravel and rot until mr fishkeeper gets around to a gravel vacuuming. and many types of algae are harnful and should be eaten by an herbivore rather than, again, wait for mr fishkeeper to get around to maintenance. there are few tanks where i would recommend no maintenance fish, and those are ones where they really wouldnt make it anyways (like big aggressive cichlids, or when there arent really any fish that will thrive in the water type, such as with african cichlids). one of the problems with fishkeeping is we cant always properly simulate nature. but by having maintenance fish we are one step closer to a complete system than we would have been without them, and that is a good thing. so although you dont NEED to have maintenance, they do no harm and bring the system that much closer to complete.