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how many fish


Dog-eating Tetra

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i have a 75ltr tank and allready have 3 neon tetras 3 glowlight tetras and 2 bristlenose and i was wondering if anyone could tell me about how many more fish i could have? i was looking at 2 pearl gouramis, 2 dwarf gouramis, 2 chocolate gouramis and 5 guppies. would this be too much and do i really need the bristlenose's in?

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What Micheal is saying is that there is no hard and fast RULE about how many fish you can have.

Things that limit the number of fish are.

Your filters ability to to process their waste. You can test for ammonia and nitrite to check this, if you are getting traces of these in an establised tank, then you need better filtration.

How fast Nitrate builds up in the tank. More fish, more nitrate. At some point the nitrate will build up faster than your water changes can remove it. You either have to do huge water changes, or get a bigger tank ;) Testing for nitrate is how you judge this.

The amount of oxygen in the water, fish need to breathe, you can increase the O2 in the water by circulating it better, airstones, spraybars etc.

The physical space in the tank, even if you go crazy one everything else , the fish still need room to swim :o

The type of fish, some need to have much better water conditions and high O2 content in the water, they will get sick in water that other fish can still thrive in :-?

Now remember to, if you set your tank up with the Max fish it can support, you have much less margin for error. A blocked filter or a missed water change can be fatal, where in a lower stocked tank you may notice the problem and fix it before things get too bad. Also, fish tend to get bigger, you stock the tank with 2" fish, 6 months later they are 4" fish and you are overstocked.

filtration? all i know is its an aquaone tanks that has a filter built into the hood and i do water change every fortnight.

Thats probably OK for a sensible number of fish, but testing the water is the only way to know for sure.

Back to the original question, my gut feeling is that you will be fine with the number of fish you plan on. Check the size that they might grow to though. If you add another filter and extra aeration it should improve the tanks water quality if you have it heavily stocked.

No you dont NEED a bristlenose, but they are cute and do a good job cleaning up algae and eating leftover food. If you get rid of them you will have no bottom dwelling fish at all. Seems a bit of a waste if nothing actually lives in that bottom 1/4 of the tank.

Cheers

Ian

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