how often can i...

yongpanda

New member
I was just curious as to how often i can buy and put fish in my tank. for example I herd you should only put 1 fish at a time but what if i'm trying to put a school or shoal of chromis?

just looking for a rule of thumb kind of thing. maybe 1 fish per week, 2 fish per week...so on.

thanks!
 
Rule of thumb doesn't always work. that usually applies to new tanks that haven't been established with enough bacteria yet to handle a sudden increase in bioload. How new is your tank?
 
well i've been having a 30 gallon for aroudn 4 months, then moved everything in it to a 29 gallon which i had for 3 months then recently moved it to a 50 gallon tank with a 29 gallon sump. i just added 2 clowns and i thought that some chromis would brighten their spirit and encourage them to move aroud and eat since they aren't eating that well and all the food that isn't eaten (most) is probably going to become a nutrience problem.
 
Sometimes you have to introduce multiple fish at the same time to help keep one from becoming too dominate(doesn't always work though).
 
Just an fyi..clowns in general aren't really big swimmers in my experience..mine pretty much hang out in one area of the tank. As far as feeding..is this a recent move to the new tank..maybe they just aren't used to the larger tank yet..
 
I think it really depends on the fish, clowns I added 2 when I put them in. When I added the hippo tang I only added one.
 
It depends upon how ling your system has been running and how big it is. Its always a good idea to only put in one or two at a time but if the system is larger it can probably stand to have more in at once.
 
So as of putting fish in I should do it accordingly to my tank and system while as of my clowns I should just wait since they might not be accostomed to being in a spacy tank compared to the plenty clowns they were with at the lfs? How long does it take anyways...it's been only two days. Maybe some live brine will bring out their apperite?
 
I was just curious as to how often i can buy and put fish in my tank. for example I herd you should only put 1 fish at a time but what if i'm trying to put a school or shoal of chromis?

just looking for a rule of thumb kind of thing. maybe 1 fish per week, 2 fish per week...so on.

thanks!

As for as handling ammonia from livestock is concerned, it all depends on how you cycled your tank (more precisely how you cycled the filtration medium intended for your tank).

If you had cycled your tank robustly using a source of ammonia that can achieve enough ammonia during the cycle, then within a window of about three weeks after the cycle at least, your tank should be able to handle the ammonia from a rather high bioload at once.

If you used the silly gradual method to "cycle", you will have to stock slowly. The need to stock slowly for concern over ammonia also means that your livestock is exposed to some low level of ammonia. This should be avoided if significant and possible. If you have just one unit of bioload, going to two unit will be significant. If you have 9 units of bioload, going to ten will not be a serious problem regardless. 1/2 vs 9/10.

Newbies should stock slowly for other reasons other than concern over ammonia for a "new" tank. I believe newbies should stock slowly mostly to learn the ropes in disease control.

It is easy even for newbies to make sure that at the end of a cycle, for at least three weeks, there is very dense and active nitrification bacteria to process all ammonia from livestock.

Later, long after the cycle, you can bump up the nitrification capacity of any tank to accomodate any sudden increase in bioload.

Sometimes sudden increase in bioload is unavoidable, such as in the stocking of a single very large fish into a tank that was cycled a year previously. One has to prepare in advance so that there is no re-cycling that won't be mini at all. Otherwise, that very large fish and its tankmates will go belly up.

If you had made preparation in advance, the rate of stocking of fish should be based on issues other than having enough nitrification bacteria.

Compatibility, disease control, etc are all factors, not nitrification, ideally.
 
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as of the robust cycling, i am not too sure but i haven't used any media except a AquaClear filter for the tanks utill the 50 gallon. i have two eels in there too which i gave away. and eels from what i know and form what i've read are big bioloads so i'm going to assume this robust cycling plus with the addition of a skimmer, my tank should be ready to go. but i agree with you wooden_reefer, that stocking fish is a matter of disease control and learning process especially for a person pretty enw to the whole reefing/saltwater aquarium hobby.

thanks a bunch
 
as of the robust cycling, i am not too sure but i haven't used any media except a AquaClear filter for the tanks utill the 50 gallon. i have two eels in there too which i gave away. and eels from what i know and form what i've read are big bioloads so i'm going to assume this robust cycling plus with the addition of a skimmer, my tank should be ready to go. but i agree with you wooden_reefer, that stocking fish is a matter of disease control and learning process especially for a person pretty enw to the whole reefing/saltwater aquarium hobby.

thanks a bunch

If the eel has been there for a long time and has been removed not more then a few weeks earlier, the nitrification capacity should not have dropped by much.

Safest is as follows: recharge a portion of the medium using a separate container. Use the same power filter and allow the portion of medium to process some ammonia for a week or two before getting new fish. You transfer the recharged medium, making sure that there is no residual ammonia from recharging by rinsing the medium with tank water. With a few small fish you may well don't have to go thru this exercise.
 
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