Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => New Fishkeepers => Topic started by: Wild Rover on October 22, 2014, 10:43:23 PM
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I am trying to plan my new tank using the Community Creator but still there are Corys apart from the two tiddler varieties and I want Sterbai's Corys which are quite bigger. I substituted the Cory's with the Chain Loach as it was the only bottom dweller I could find about the same size. Will this be accurate? Also I messaged admin about the lack of popular Cory's last year but never got a reply.
I have read some critical reports on other sites about the calculator on this site being over generous in it's recommended levels which they say are way too high. Are you confident that they are correct within reason?
Thanks :)
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Cories used to be in the fish profiles before the site moved hosts a couple of years ago but for some reason they were not included on the new host.
Adding new fish to the profiles is now a bit problematic. The original site owner was Peter. He was a fish expert and is responsible for most of the fish information on here. But he handed the site over to Robert a few months ago. Robert is not a fish expert; he is a website expert.
Almost all forums criticise stocking calculators. They have to be very simple models and cannot possibly handle all the variables needed. When the site moved hosts, Peter did a lot of work on the CC resulting in fewer fish being allowed but it is still criticised for being overgenerous. One of the reasons is that most people use the 1 inch of fish per US gallon rule. In his article here (http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/article/stocking-levels-for-tropical-aquarium-fish) Peter explained that the true stocking guide is 2 inches of fish per US gallons but that the 1 inch rule came into popular belief over a confusion with another stocking guideline. He used the 2 inch rule in his original CC, but modified it to less than this in the new CC.
I have fish that not in the fish profiles, and I have to do some serious thinking to decide which fish to use as a substitute in the CC. Chain loaches are the same length as sterbai cories but they are less chunky. I think I would use chain loaches, but slightly more of them, so if you have 6 cories enter 7 or even 8 loaches.
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Stocking guides can only be a rough guide, useful for beginners to prevent gross overstocking, but not to be taken too literally. It's well worth reading the Thinkfish article on stocking levels, which points out at the end the factors that actually come into play
"Aquarium volume. Fish size. Fish weight. Feeding frequency. Feeding quantity. Protein content of food. Food type. Filter flow rate. Filter media surface area. Filter sponge size. Chemical filtration type and capacity. Water change frequency. Water change amount. Water temperature. Plant coverage. Plant growth rates. Carbon dioxide fertilisation. Additional aeration. And more..."
It's actually very easy to create your own calculator if you have the most basic knowledge of how to use a spreadsheet which is what I did. However, according to the guide my tanks are overstocked by about 1.1 - 1.2 times. I have no problems though, I suspect because I have mainly small shoaling fish which are not overactive or over messy, the temperature is only 22 - 23oC and the tanks are heavily planted. I only change 20% of my water every 5 weeks (I have quite hard water), but I do maintain my filters carefully.
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Both Richard and Sue have covered everything.
I like the CC as a guide - and I especially like the colours used with the stock levels. So I would be tempted to say to new fishkeepers - "keep it in the green" for a year until you've learnt your tank and nitrate levels etc, then increase slowly as required. Then, hopefully, one will have enough experience to spot what's going on.
So.... as Captain Barbosa would say, "it's more of a guideline, really".
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Thanks everyone, much obliged :)