Over stocked or room for one more ?

i cant think

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It’s funny when it’s a fowlr, it gets stocked to the brim with fish and everyone is ooohhh and aaahhh’s. But if it’s a reef tank. Two designer clowns, a wrasse and a tang only. Lol

one regal won’t cause his system to crash. His tank will adjust to the increased bioload. Stop overreacting.
Let me tell you now, the reason FOWLRs have more fish than a reef is because more fish are able to go into a FOWLR because there’s no issue of coral taking up the space.
Having corals and fish is harder because the corals are growing constantly and the fish need swim room - That tank is overstocked because of how active those fish are and will be.
It’s not always about bioload - although, that is also a big factor in how many fish can be put in a reef or FOWLR tank

also, it’s not 100% about it crashing, it’s also because a lot of the fish already in there (specifically Acanthurus leucosternon) are very aggressive, the PBT is in the top 5 worst tangs for aggression imo. I have owned a tang similar before, there has never been any more regret than that, it soon died from an ammonia spike when upgrading.
 
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Chris Spaulding

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Just an FYI the aqua scape was intentionally made to supply a lot of swimming room. My filtration system can handle a lot more bioload. Yes I have a Purple Tang and a Powder Blue . They do get along and fish are fead constantly throughout the day. This keeps aggression down. IMO a lot of aggression is from fish staking out territory protecting a food supply. If said food supply is not threatened this lowers aggression substantially.
Is there some flaring and such yes but by no means anywhere near a tank that fish are competing for food constantly.
As far as putting in a Regal I am not going to do it because of this fishes delicacy in early stage of introduction. If it was the first fish in there and adding the Purple and PBT last would be no problem.

I will do this with the new tank that is incoming . New 120" x 34" x 25" custom with 16' x16' attached fish room.
 

i cant think

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Just an FYI the aqua scape was intentionally made to supply a lot of swimming room. My filtration system can handle a lot more bioload. Yes I have a Purple Tang and a Powder Blue . They do get along and fish are fead constantly throughout the day. This keeps aggression down. IMO a lot of aggression is from fish staking out territory protecting a food supply. If said food supply is not threatened this lowers aggression substantially.
Is there some flaring and such yes but by no means anywhere near a tank that fish are competing for food constantly.
As far as putting in a Regal I am not going to do it because of this fishes delicacy in early stage of introduction. If it was the first fish in there and adding the Purple and PBT last would be no problem.

I will do this with the new tank that is incoming . New 120" x 34" x 25" custom with 16' x16' attached fish room.
Honestly, I would say that’s the smartest way of doing it - in a brand new tank I would say you can add all the fish from the old tank at once but let the regal settle first
I recommend trying to get a yellow belly and not a grey belly because the yellows do better than greys
 
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I do come to the boards it get opinions and I take all into consideration. It also makes me take a step back and rethink so impulse buys and knee jerk reactions are not taken. This current tank was an upgrade less than a year ago from a RS 250 which is now my Seahorse tank ,and Old 50 gallon Seahorse tank is now QT tank .This tank will remain in service even after this next upgrade.
 

i cant think

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I do come to the boards it get opinions and I take all into consideration. It also makes me take a step back and rethink so impulse buys and knee jerk reactions are not taken. This current tank was an upgrade less than a year ago from a RS 250 which is now my Seahorse tank ,and Old 50 gallon Seahorse tank is now QT tank .This tank will remain in service even after this next upgrade.
It’s always better to get opinions first then buy something, I’ve constantly come back to here to get opinions on a certain fish I like (The most recent was a Pintail fairy which I may actually leave and go with another wrasse, I mean I have a total of 4 fairy wrasse and no flasher wrasse)
 
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MnFish1

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It’s funny when it’s a fowlr, it gets stocked to the brim with fish and everyone is ooohhh and aaahhh’s. But if it’s a reef tank. Two designer clowns, a wrasse and a tang only. Lol

one regal won’t cause his system to crash. His tank will adjust to the increased bioload. Stop overreacting.
It was a joke. Speaking of overreacting? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 

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Half the time I see posts like this I wonder if it’s gonna be room for one more fish or one more fish tank.
 

i cant think

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Another way to see what a most people will say is If you have to ask then something in you knows it’s not going to work for long.
Here’s my question though, how long will it be before you can upgrade?
 

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I am so tired of having people repeating ancient dogma about how many fish you can have in a tank when the info is so old and misinformed. I'm a pediatrician. Everyday I get parents asking me how much weight lifting does their son/daughter need to do to get their maximum strength for such and such sport. The current dogma is a work out every other day. So I looked into this to find where this info came from. Found a medical article that explained that around the late "60"s when weight building started to become popular there was a flurry of studies on this topic. They analyzed 28 studies done in that period. ONE study found the optimum was every other day. ALL THE OTHER STUDIES found that once a week was sufficient and optimum and that every other day only added 2%! It seems to be the nature of Americans that we are bound by the most extreme and cumbersome choices. Back to the issue at hand. I have a 1945 copy of Dr Ennis's Encyclopedia of Exotic Fishes (the earliest Bible of fish keeping) and in it he discusses the origin of this "standard". It was done in the early 20's, on goldfish, a particularly filthy fish. Filtration consisted of water changes and keeping plants alive with electric light bulbs. (And yes, when my father gave me my first 5 gallon tank in 1952 when he moved up to a 10 gallon, thats what we had. Plants were very important then). It's your tank. It's a hobby and hobbies are personal and for YOUR enjoyment. What's important? How OLD is your tank. How faast do you add fish? Slowly please. What kind of filtration? The stores and websites push a lot of modern gimmicks but a lot of live rock well aged and/or sand turned over by gobies etc, adding aeration via bubblers and pumps. Does your livestock complement each other? (a big CUC and fish that don't pollute a lot vs lionfish that dump tons of ammonia and needs lots of food.) How much food do you use? Lighting in your tank. It's all about experimentation and pushing limits and having alternatives (quarantine tanks, sumps) in case of crashes or mistakes.
 

i cant think

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I am so tired of having people repeating ancient dogma about how many fish you can have in a tank when the info is so old and misinformed. I'm a pediatrician. Everyday I get parents asking me how much weight lifting does their son/daughter need to do to get their maximum strength for such and such sport. The current dogma is a work out every other day. So I looked into this to find where this info came from. Found a medical article that explained that around the late "60"s when weight building started to become popular there was a flurry of studies on this topic. They analyzed 28 studies done in that period. ONE study found the optimum was every other day. ALL THE OTHER STUDIES found that once a week was sufficient and optimum and that every other day only added 2%! It seems to be the nature of Americans that we are bound by the most extreme and cumbersome choices. Back to the issue at hand. I have a 1945 copy of Dr Ennis's Encyclopedia of Exotic Fishes (the earliest Bible of fish keeping) and in it he discusses the origin of this "standard". It was done in the early 20's, on goldfish, a particularly filthy fish. Filtration consisted of water changes and keeping plants alive with electric light bulbs. (And yes, when my father gave me my first 5 gallon tank in 1952 when he moved up to a 10 gallon, thats what we had. Plants were very important then). It's your tank. It's a hobby and hobbies are personal and for YOUR enjoyment. What's important? How OLD is your tank. How faast do you add fish? Slowly please. What kind of filtration? The stores and websites push a lot of modern gimmicks but a lot of live rock well aged and/or sand turned over by gobies etc, adding aeration via bubblers and pumps. Does your livestock complement each other? (a big CUC and fish that don't pollute a lot vs lionfish that dump tons of ammonia and needs lots of food.) How much food do you use? Lighting in your tank. It's all about experimentation and pushing limits and having alternatives (quarantine tanks, sumps) in case of crashes or mistakes.
Honestly this is true and I have remembered my tank is only a 4x2x2 with a main “wall” like rockwork that’s open in with caves. It has 10 fish (5 wrasse, 4 fish that get to 8”+ in the wild) so I honestly shouldn’t be against adding another fish. Along with how I am going to end up adding another 3 fish into the tank. The only reason I think I’ll get away with 3 more fish is because they’re all planned to be small wrasse that stay around 3-4”.
One thing I will note is how tangs and angels are high bioload fish and whatever you put in comes out.
 

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It’s not only about filtration. It’s about fish aggression. It’s a lot of fish, and a regal angel is one of the most difficult angels to care for because they are very finicky eaters, and won’t fare well with aggressive tank mates.

You can try adding the angel, but note that you are having the odds of success working against you.
 

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How mature are the fish (are they near 50-70% maximum size)? If they are mature and there is no aggression, go for it! If your fish are still very small, either find someone willing to take your fish if aggression occurs in 1-2 years or wait until your fish have grown a bit more.
 

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@Sleepingtiger felt that I was criticizing him for saying 'upgrade the filtration system'. I will categorically state - You could keep 30 tangs in a 50 gallon aquarium if you had a 500 gallon sump with filtration - so there is no question that adding more filtration/water volume, etc is a viable option.
 
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Chris Spaulding

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How mature are the fish (are they near 50-70% maximum size)? If they are mature and there is no aggression, go for it! If your fish are still very small, either find someone willing to take your fish if aggression occurs in 1-2 years or wait until your fish have grown a bit more.
PBT is about 6” , Purple Tang 6” and at least 4 years old as I have had him that long. Female Swallow tail 4” ,fox face 5.5“ Tomini 4” at least 4 years CBB 3.5 at least 2.5years .blood clown 3” 4.5 years. Hawaiian cleaner wrasse 2.5” 4 years at least .Melanarius wrasse 3” 3 years. Fusiliers and Anthis at least a year various sizes.
Beta 5” at least 4.5 years. All in this one tank together for a year now .
 
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Chris Spaulding

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@Sleepingtiger felt that I was criticizing him for saying 'upgrade the filtration system'. I will categorically state - You could keep 30 tangs in a 50 gallon aquarium if you had a 500 gallon sump with filtration - so there is no question that adding more filtration/water volume, etc is a viable option.
My filter System more than adequate total system roughly 200 gallons.
 

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