stocking fish

[annetate]

i was wondering... when you stock a tank, instead of putting a large fish, for instance a blue tang, could you put in several smaller fish? would the bioload be the same? how do you determine the limit of how many fish you can have in a tank with corals and inverts?

 

[angelsj247]

it depends on the size of the fish. yes you can put more small fish in a tank then bigger ones. the rule of thumb is every gal per 2" of fish. so if you have a 20 gal.. you can keep 10" of fish in it total.
4- 1.5" fish.
1- 4" fish
or
2- 4" fish
1- 2" fish...

get the idea

 

[Avi]

That's a general rule of thumb, but depending on the amount and quality of your water purification methods...good skimmer, regular water changes, etc. you can keep more or less.

 

[JENnKerry]

The key thing here is to take into consideration the adult size of the fish.

 

[Swanwillow]

how bout we ask this: what size tank, and what are you looking at?

in say, a 100 gallon tank, you can have either one tang, two 'medium' fish like dwarf angels, and a couple of small fish

or a school of, say: 5 flasher wrasses, a dwarf angel, and a half dozen other 'small' fish.