Hi,

New here... But we have a bit of an urgent situation. We currently have what will be over 250 inches of fish when full grown, several if not all are still young. We have a 125 gallon aquarium, our levels as of yesterday were still safe but someone had to get rid of about 16 more fish quickly and we took them yesterday. Below is a breakdown of what we now have:

5 kissing guaromies (sp?)
4 blue guaromies
2 golden guaromies
3 blood parrots
2 blackfin sharks
1 redtail
1 rainbow
1 roseline
3 clown loach
3 mollies
1 green severun
1 red spotted severun
1 standard pleco
1 albino bushy nose pleco
2 cory's
1 sand dollar
2 red hook sand dollars

Here's my questions... We have an aquarium store who will take the fish that we can't house... But my husband seems to think that we can keep what we have and upgrade to a larger, perhaps 220 gallon in about a year. Is that smart, or will our fish suffer until then, should we just give them to the retail store?

Thank you in advance for any thoughts on this... I don't want any of the fish to suffer and if we need to do something about this now, I am open to your thoughts on this.

What kind of filters do you have on the tank?

you are 2x more fish than recommended on the inch rule. While I understand is a general guildline. I have 46" of fish in a 29 and consider that WAY too many fish. If the same principles work at 125 as 29gal, I don't see how that can be a good idea.

I ask about the filters because if you don't have enough filtration, your water quality will go south quickly and fish will die because of that. Also adding 16 fish at once, you'll want to watch for a mini cycle.


Maybe someone will chime in with compability issues, and you can selectivily return some that may be too agressive with the other fish..

Good luck!

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100 Dirt + Stuff. To be Angel baby tank.
37 Planted. http://www.aquariumforum.com/f45/pla...nal-20774.html
29 Tall community tank. 5+ Years up and running.
15 Soon to be RCS tank.

Thank you, I know it's not a good idea :( We have a magnum 350 and another filter that I'm not familiar with that my husband says is good for up 55 gallons. So I guess we have filtration for up to 155 gallons total. As for the additional 16 fish, we took 8 last night and he's suppose to bring the others tonight. I know he has two additional common pleco's with what he's bringing tonight and another blackfin shark... Those three are definitely going to the retail aquarium store!

Husband wants to upgrade to a 220 g tank, but even then we are well over capacity :(

Okay, so I just called the aquarium store and discussed this with one of the guys there... He said that as long as they are still fairly young, we can sustain our tank with the current load so long as we up our cleaning ritual (we currently do it every two weeks). We will either need to upgrade our tank within a year or get a second tank, but for now he said we'll be fine. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Hello Cherry...

I like the idea of upgrading to keep all your fish. If you're like me, your fish are priceless. You have too much time and effort invested to give up your fish. I have several heavily stocked tanks and do upgrade as I can.

In the mean time, I would recommend large and frequent water changes to keep the water conditions stable. I remove and replace 60 to 70 percent of the water in my large, planted tanks every week, so the fish and plants have as clean an environment as possible.

B

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Low Tech Water Building Keeper

It was ironic that the 16 more fish we adopted were along the same lines as the fish we already have That makes giving them to the store that much harder. My husband went to talk to them today and they confirmed it again that we can safely keep the fish we have as long as we up the water changes to a little more frequency. We are also going to get some live plants to help the oxygen level... We have a snail that eats them as soon as we put any in there though :(

You said 250 after they grow up. I never count inches after they grow up. I look at where they are now. When you have a lot of fish, there will be some attrition as they grow. In a year, some of those fish just won't be there. Not because of stress but because of the law of averages. As long as your water is clean and the fish have enough room to swim around, you are probably good. Don't trade anything if you don't see problems coming soon.

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Live Coral and Care Instructions at aquaticcastle.com

If you are overstocked and doing water changes to counter the negative effects of it, you should be fine. You probably need to do 60-70% weekly. I would check nitrate levels just before your water changes to see what they are reaching up to to give you an idea of how much you should be changing.

You need to make sure you have a liquid test kit that test ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and ph at a minimum. I would recommend the API master test kit. Strips are not accurate enough and are known for giving faulty readings.