Adding Fish To Your Aquarium
How many fish can my aquarium hold?
When you're determining how many fish your aquarium can hold, there are some wives' tales that have some practical common sense that you can use. One of the old wives' tales out there is “an inch of fish per gallon of water”. Unfortunately, that doesn't work because how much you feed a fish and how often you change part of your water totally factors into how many fish you can have, because it affects the water chemistry. If you don't have great water chemistry, you can't keep one fish, let alone more than one. You can use that as a guideline - the whole one inch per thing. However, it's better to just look at the type of fish that you want. Ask an expert what he recommends and then you can get a better idea of how many fish you typically can put into a tank. You can put anywhere from one fish in a 20 gallon to 20 fish, depending on the type of fish, the size and a few other things that go into it.
How many fish should I add to a new aquarium?
When you're adding fish to a brand new aquarium, you can't add too many. You might have a tank that ultimately can hold 50 fish, but when you are starting off that tank and getting it cycled and ready to go, you have to slowly build your way up to that total number. You may start with three fish, or six fish, or ten fish. It's really going to depend on the type of system you have, salt or fresh, and how many gallons it is and how big the tank is. That's going to determine how many fish you can start with, and ultimately how many fish you can build up to.
