Fish Ideas For A Tank of X Gallons

Honestly, it could have saved my fish when I first started the hobby :-/

 

I think this would be a daunting task, best accomplished by encouraging people who are stocking a tank to do alot of reseach. There are other threads from this (or other) forums on what type of fish go in certain size tanks, like what fish might make good nano-tank fish over others. There's also general guidelines to stocking fish, the best I've seen is 1 cubic inch of fish (at it's fully grown size) per 5 gallons for a lower nutrient reef tank. It takes some guesstimating, but a good guideline (because its so subjective). There's also the tang (and other, ie, sharks, eels, rays) debate, and how large gallon wise, or dimension wise, depending on who you talk to, is appropriate.

IMHO, there is not, nor should be, a set of rules. If someone comes into this hobby and picks a bunch of fish from a list, then we've failed them. Because ultimately, they will most likely fail, become discouraged, and quit. Success to this hobby, IMO, is directly related to the amount of research and understanding an individual has, finding out the "why" instead of the "what now?".

However, if your goal is to develop a sort of guideline, taking into account differing opinions, then I think it might be worthwhile. Just remember that I think we should be encouraging people to understand their decisions, not blindly follow a laundry list.

 

LOL and tell us what fish not to out in where such as a tang in a 30 gallon beacuse he looks small enough LOL

 

I cannot agree with that more, but I hope to gear this simple list to begginers. I think it could help people wondering if they could put a tang in a 20 gallon tank or not. This thread would not necessarily tell somebody whether they can put a kole tang in a 60 gallon tank Vs. a 75 gallon tank.

 

one cubic inch of fish per 5 gallons is innaccurate and outdated, it does not take into account how much swim room the fish needs, how much swim the tank provides it. according to this you could put 5 one inch damsels in a 25 gallon tank, or one 5 inch puffer fish that will produce more waste than all of the damsels combined.

 

I would think a list would be used a a guideline for the beginers which would have been nice when I started this.

 

yes i do agree that it is people opinions on what they should have in their tank and there should be no solid rules, but this is a set of guidelines. only to GUIDE a beginner aquarist

 

LOL, you just made my point. The goal of this "thread" should be to educate, not dicated, what someone should or should not do.

Soooo, I should take that powder blue tang out of my 29 biocube?... he's all by himself...

j/k

 

I think it's a good idea if based on others successes and failures, personal experience not conjecture.

For instance I had a 24 gallon aquapod, it had a pair of clowns, fire fish and a cherub angel fish, no clams and simple sps. It was a happy tank.

 

Good idea
SO personal experiance not specifically 'textbook' rules.
But, if personal experiances include that you had a pufferfish in a reef tank I think we should leave those out (In other words SPECIAL and RARE cases should be left out)
Once I hear back from Steve begin the official thread
JJL