Questions:
1) I have a 10 gallon fresh water tropical community tank with two small cherry barbs another unknown barb (all~ 1 inch long) three black kuhli loaches, and a small Cory catfish that's 7 fish in all. I know the rule 1 inch of fish per gallon, but I clean ~ 15% of the water and gravel every week or so, and I'm thinking of double filtering. What should I do?

2) also my fish love eating from my hand (and I love it too) how often is it ok to do so with clean no chemical hands?

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20 gallon semi planted:
Filters: top fin 10 and 20 power filters.
Fish: 2 panda cories, 1 peppered Cory, 5 kuhli loaches, and 4 cherry barbs.

You can hand feed all the time if you want.

There is absolutely NO rule when it comes to stocking. There are a lot of factors that affect stocking. The biggest is water changes. If you do enough water changes to keep the nitrate under 20ppm then you are not chemically overstock. Then it is just a matter of having enough physical space in the tank for all the fish.

What is the nitrate concentration?

Stocking an Aquarium

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Biologist-Professional Aquarium Care-Published Author (Aquarium Fish International Magazine)

Stocking has NOTHING to do with tank volume, it is all about water changes.

Thanks for the quick response!
Nitrate: ~ 5 ppm
Nitrite: <0.5 ppm
Hardness: ~ 100ppm
Alkalinity: ~120ppm
pH: ~7.0

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20 gallon semi planted:
Filters: top fin 10 and 20 power filters.
Fish: 2 panda cories, 1 peppered Cory, 5 kuhli loaches, and 4 cherry barbs.

your tank is just fine for the amount of fish you have. if you want clearer or less smelly water add another filter, if your water is clean and you do frequent water changes than you most likely do not need another filter. I have my 55 gallon overstocked a bit with two filters and its doing great. maybe add some plants? and your nitrite and nitrate levels would be nice to know as well. good luck!

I just want to point out that adding filtration in no way compensates for water changes. You can have all the filtration you can fit in a tank, you still need to keep up a healthy weekly water change schedule.

Although we focus on nitrate when discussing water quality, there are many other things that build up over time and usually correlate with nitrate. However, live plants can remove nitrate but not these other things, skewing the water quality if you look at nitrate alone. So you still need to keep up a healthy water change schedule.

I do think that live plants are always a good thing though. I recommend trying out a couple and seeing how well they do for you.

__________________
Biologist-Professional Aquarium Care-Published Author (Aquarium Fish International Magazine)

Stocking has NOTHING to do with tank volume, it is all about water changes.