Which do you prefer?

I for one like to "understock" and may only keep a small pair of cichlids per a 25 gallon, or a small group in a 55. As for less territoral species. use good judgement and avoid crowding them into stressful conditions, go pick up a couple books and magazines for crying out loud! I have found understocking to work out well, then again, who am I to comment on the care of tropical fish? Hahahahaha!

I just love when you see at Walmart on the box that holds a 30 gallon setup 20 neons and maybe a dozen gouramis in the tank in the picture on the box!!! Youchers! The agression in that tank would be rather nasty!

I had an Oscar, it was a cool fish. I could hand feedi it and pet it! And if you put a ping pong ball in it would swim up and pop it out of the tank!

I was at a lps up north and they had an almost full sized pacu in a 200 gallon tank! (it might have been bigger) The poor fish was stuck with a large catfish and a pleco from hell!!! Pretty much he could turn around and move forward and backward maybe 3 feet! It was really sad. And he had horrible hole in the head issues...They got shut down and I wonder what happened to that fish. Can you imagine moving a full grown pacu? I wouldn't even know where to begin!

There's a rather nice aquarium store in my area that for a while was keeping a full grown (3 ft.) black pleco. This fish had been dropped off by an owner and had a deformed lip from hitting the side of its old tank when it tried to turn around. It lived at the store for a while and then was gone one day, I think someone must have bought or adopted him. So anyway, he was somehow moved at least once. Now they have an adult porcupine puffer, who is about 3 feet long and 1 foot wide, in a 435 gallon with a bamboo shark. Then they're sellilng babies for $29.95 around the corner. Oh well.

Anyway, my husband* has been talking endlessly about putting a 10 gallon sump under our 29 gallon, which should help everyone out water quality wise until we can upgrade.

Erin B.

* A man, who in repsonse to this thread, said "At the risk of sounding like a soccer mom, I just want a bunch of pretty fish. Is that so wrong?" I usually just let him 'have' the fish tank as far as choosing stock goes.

Well you leaved out a couple of cihclid on that list, i preffer cichlid from lake Tanganyikan, and yes water quailty is always an issue, but if you use a sump under your tank you can add a couple more gallon depend on the size of the sump and how much bio media you have in the sump(wet/dry trickle)tower. I have a three large tanks starting with 140,375 and a 600, and each one has atleast a 55 gallonsump under it, some have two (375 and 600) the 600 will end up with anoth er55 for a couple of FBF(sand or beads) to help out hte bioload, which might not be needed but just to help stock the tank with more cihclids. but this is only my opinion,i rather be save than sorry, the small tank i have been told you need to turn them over 7-10 times an hour but once you get place the 120 gallon you can go down to 5-7 times, but this also has to do wha t you have in the tank, some spices love the water movement some dont. sorry about htis bein glong,

"Anyway, my husband* has been talking endlessly about putting a 10 gallon sump under our 29 gallon, which should help everyone out water quality wise until we can upgrade."

We just finished our sump under our 90 gallon saltwater. It has all these different levels and compartments. It was a pain in the but to put together however it sure does the trick when it comes to water quality. We have all sorts of little things flourishing in our tank now. In a few months we will probably be selling corals to the pet store or local aquarists.

It's a crazy hobby!

I voted for the FW species tank but I would have to clarify it a bit. Not really a speceis tank but a community tank of Plecos. One of my SW distributors has a tank that is 4X8X2. I am so tempted. As a stand alone tank in the center of a room this would be incredible for plecos. Plenty of floor space but not all the wasted height. My 8X3X3 would be nice too if I could afford to set it up. the only problem would be getting in to clean it. Then again with all those plecos I probably wouldn't have to worry about algae. Then again the 4x8x2 would be a nice tank to fill with live rock rubble and load up with gobies, blennies and shrimp also

As far ast the debate on over stocking a tank. I would simply add that about the only way you could possibly get by with major overstocking that seems to be implied here would be with a continuous flow system. Even the biggest filter will not remove nitrates and with a very densely populated tank the nitrates would soon reach a critical level. Massive regular (I mean daily) water changes would be needed. In a continuous flow system nitrates would not be a problem, but then for the majority of people a continuous flow system is not practical. Of course, you would have to clarify what you mean by overstocking. I doubt if you could keep 5 full grown oscars in a 10 gallon even with a continouous flow system. You could however, probably keep 5-5 inch oscars in a 10 gallon with a continuous flow system whereas I doubt even the largest filtration system would support this load. Of course, 5-5" oscars in a 10 gallon with a 250 gallon sump might work. Water changes would still be needed though.

Missy: which store up north. If I am not mistaken you are from the Stevens Point area correct.

Erin: Very few porcupine puffers will reach those lengths. I agree that selling fish that reach unmanageable proportions is unethical. That said, unlike reptiles, ultimate fish size can be controled somewhat by the size of the tank it is kept in. I am not saying that keeping a 1 inch oscar in a 10 gallon tank will keep that fish from outgrowing the tank, but porcupine puffers can do very well in tanks as small as 75 gallons (although I would recomend a 125 at least)

The store up north was in Wausau but they have since closed down.

Updates on my saltwater: We have a red algae problem growing in our tank. blagh! So we are ordering some more snails and Scott wants an Reverse Osmosis purifier. But the tank is doing well our anenomes keep splitting and we have a pair of clownfish that seem to be nesting. And I just picked up a scooter blenny that is fattening up off all of our bristle worms!

I've heard that up north from us in Rhinelander at the Fosters and Smith store that they are going to set up a coral farm. This should be pretty nice since it can be hard around here to get decent corals.

On a more fresh point, I bought myself a 2 gallon tank for my office. I set it up at home just to get her started. Well I was given a pair of snails and since the only tank that didn't have snail eating fish was mine I popped them in with my betta. And now wouldn't ya know it but I have a million snails! So I guess it's my feeder tank for the snail eating loaches.

Scott decided to try his hand at breeding convicts. So we have a small pair of those in a 20 gallon set up. It just seems like my house is turning into an aquarium. Relatives come over and just stare at our fish and I am starting to think that I need to charge admission. That makes it over 200 gallons in our house not counting sumps and overflow containers, let alone all the tanks for the reptiles!

I actualyl love all fish and would love a salty tank but I have Oscars, thats what I can afford so thats what we have and I do love oscars, Im not much for little fish but Id love to one day own a HUGE salty tank with large salt water fish!

They do say that bigger is better with saltwater tanks and they are easier to care for. My thing is that there aren't many medium sized fish so you'd have to go rather big or all small. That and many of the larger fish eat other fish and corals. I had a friend, we'll just call him stupid, who had a wonderful reef setup with dwarf angels and pseudochromis and all these cool little fish. Stupid went and bought a trigger fish and a lionfish for his tank. Stupid woke up the next day noticing that he was missing fish. He also added some hermit crabs he got offshore while in florida the next week. Stupid started noticing his rock and corals were looking picked on. Duh.

But if you go larger then you need more money for all the salt and equipment and the space. Although it would look cool to have one in a wall.