Plants and bioload

red devil

red devil

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Jan 7, 2003
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Shenzhen, China
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How does having plants in a tank affect the amount of fish you can have in it? Can you put more fish in the tank than the average number of inches of fish? I would like to put together a 20 or 30 gallon long tank with plants and lots of fish, to give children lots of visual stimulus.
 
It is my understanding that plants use some of the fish wastes as ferts and also consume Co2 that they give off, but I think it will only give you a leeway of a few more fish, not tons. If you want to overstock then you will have to do weekly water changes and siphon the gravel frequently.
 
Planting a lot will not effect the number of fish in tank. The plants will take some nutrients out of water. If you want lots of fish, do lots of water changes.
 
i think plants give you more of a buffer. if you over stock a planted tank you dont have to worry as much if there was no plants.

i would stick with small very active fish. i understand where your coming from. the short time i had a tank for the kids they were happy with the one fish in it. they would just sit and watch it. it wasnt active but they still liked it. i would do some Danios with live bearers like guppies. you would have active fish colorful fish and also teach about the life cycle of the fish with the fry from the guppies.
 
Thanks! I need to think this through...lots of water changes - frequent maintenance, in general, is against my life philosophy (read: lazy) I am going to have to consider whether my desire to give my students a lesson from the tank has enough benefits to outweigh the law of entropies that make me hate water to do work.
 
You should also put into consideration, that the more plants you add to the tank, the less open swimming space the fish will have.

Some fish will like this, tetras for example, other fish won't. Such as, maybe Angels?

Again that depends on the type of plants you have in mind.
 
Actually most schooling fish such as tetras prefer open areas. they will only retreat into plants when they feel very threatened. Angels on the other hand have no problem with plants as long as they also have some open areas for swimming.
 
If you have a smaller tank and get or have a Python or the like water changes should take 5 minutes.
 
Yes, python is good, or even better have it plumbed in for fully automated water change. But 5 minutes may be a little deceiving, it probably takes me 5 minutes to get it out and setup and hooked up. Overall my 75g is usually ~45 min for a 50% water change. I suppose your water pressure may effect the times significantly as well.
 
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