Starting A New Tank

Looks like you've done your research, Baz.  All these fish would go together within the water conditions you've created.  As you say not all at the same time (though even that would be possible if you're willing to do around 25% water changes each day).  I guess you're going with one group of barbs and a group of tetras with the corys at one time.  If you are you may as well increase the barbs and corys by 1 each for happier fish.

I agree with marquismirage, if you have all the fish in the tank the community creator puts that at 112% stocked. And I prefer to stock a bit less than the CC says you can have, maybe 90% at the most.

The cories would do better with more than 5, so I would drop one of the species and get more cories. The bloodfin tetras take up more stocking allowance than the other species so if this was my tank, that would be the species I would drop.

If you are doing a fishless cycle using ammonia as per the method on here, you can add everything except the cories as soon as the cycle has finished. I would wait a few weeks before getting cories though as they tend to be more delicate.
And just to check - you do have sand or smooth gravel on the bottom of the tank? Rough gravel can cut cories barbels and allow infections in if the gravel is not kept nice and clean.




Did you know there is a yellow colour morph of cherry barb? The males are orange and the females yellow. The only place I've ever seen them is Maidenhead Aquatics though.

Ah, I used internal filter, which explains it. And even with a standard external and increasing the cories to 10 it still comes to only 80%.

Personally, I prefer tanks with fewer species that in your list.

Stocking a tank is a personal thing; we tend to fall into one of two groups - minimum numbers of lots of species or fewer species but lots of each. I used to be in the first group but I'm now in the second. When I restocked my tank 8 months ago after the occupants were wiped out, I had just 2 shoals in 180 litres (15 hengels rasboras and 18 rice fish) plus 2 smaller non-shoaling groups. Ignore the cories, boraras and shrimps in my signature, they weren't supposed to be in this tank. I had to close the tank they were in and they had to go somewhere.

@Baz have you been round all your local shops yet? If not, you may well see fish you like the looks of as well as the ones on your wish list. But don't mention the fishless cycle as most shops don't believe in them.

This is something we all go through, trying to choose the fish we want 

Even Littlefish with her severe multi-tank syndrome (we've lost count of just how many tanks she has) has problems narrowing down the choice for her next tank 

I don't think the stocking calculator on this website is the best one.  Below I'll demonstrate using the maximum size your fish would reach.

5 x Cherry Barbs = 5 x 5 cm = 25 cm
10 x Bloodfin Tetras = 10 x 5.5 cm = 55 cm
10 x Cardinal Tetras = 10 x 3.5 cm = 35 cm
5 x Panda Corys = 5 x 5 cm - 25 cm
10 x Rosy Tetras = 10 x 4 cm =40cm

Total cm = 180

120 l/180 cm = 0.66 l per cm of fish

That's the equivalent of giving each cm of fish two cans of coke to swim around in.  That's not very much.  However, you could argue that the living space of the fish is fluid (sorry, bad pun) and they have the whole length and breadth of the tank to swim in.  So what it really boils down to is that each cm of fish has 660 cl of water to poop in and poop means ammonia and nitrites and nitrates and all the not good for fish things.   That's why I recommended lots of water changes if you wanted to keep all of those fish at once.

I find a better stocking calculator is aqadvisor.com as it takes more factors into account (i.e. how dirty a particular fish is).  Using this calculator your aquarium would be at 135% stocked.

Ay Carumba!

AqAdvisor has an aggressive stocking policy.
I just ran it for my 500litre tank with a sump stocked with a potential 230cm full grown length and it says I am at 120% and I need to increase my filter capacity, that was with the tanks 140 litres of biological media in the custom filter section.
Seems a little conservative even if I only allow for a conventional internal filter and 1cm/litre.
There are a lot of warnings for a for a tank with every fin and scale in perfect condition - but I would argue about there being warnings given they are Cichlids.
It got the temperature, pH and hardness spot on though.

@marquismirage I did briefly consider flowrate, but it asked for US gallons so I entered a volume. I reasoned that the amount of media is the more important factor for a filters capacity than the flow (that's important as well but not strictly for bio load reasons)
I fully agree on the bio load of the fish being important in system sizing, in fact that is why I went with a sump.

Anyhoo, the tank is clean and running like it is at 50% rather than 120% so I'm happy either way

I think you could have all those, with a few more of eveything except the cardinals as you already list 10 of those. The smaller cories do like to be in a shoal bigger than 6.

10 cardinals and 10 cories, with 8 cherry barbs and 8 rosy tetras would be easily do-able in my opinion. That would only be pusing it to the limit if you had a standard internal filter, an external allows for the higher numbers.

Hi,

Okay, I think I will stay with my four choices and decide, using Sue's advice, on the quantities and which species to have, either all four or maybe only three? This I can do at "my leisure" whilst my tank is cycling, which seems to be taking a long time to start, almost five days now and no apparent change in the ammonia level of 3 - 4ppm?

Thanks once again for all the input