Fish stocking

[swampy.1972]

I was looking for some advice on what's considered the max number of fish that can be housed in a standard 4ft tank? I don't want to overcrowd them but I'd like to maximise the appearance because it's my main display tank. It's well planted and has timber structure. The only other fish are 4 juv'BN and 8 Neons.
Thanks

[Matt15]

What is a standard 4ft tank these days? The height and depth of tanks varies all the time.

Rather than using your tanks width in deciding, calculate how many litres of water your tank holds.

Eg.
48 inches (4ft lenght)
x
18 inches (height)
x
18 inches (depth)
= 255 litres

From memory the general rules is 1 adult discus per 40-50 litres.

You must also take into account filtration which is vitally important as well as current stocking levels.

Also if you GOOGLE tank calculator litres you'll find loads of helpful sites to calculate these sums for u.

HTH

[swampy.1972]

Thanks so much for input. Your calculations have given me some confidence in my new setup (my fish are currently in a stand alone 4ft setup). The new one has two 4ft's in a wall unit plumbed in parallel off a common sump using a 3000lt/hr pump and the sump has 25lt of filter medium capacity - hopefully sufficient. The idea is for one tank to act as a display tank, the other as a breeding tank with a removable divider if I get them to that stage.
The flow rate is adjustable so the tanks don't receive excessive current and allows me to isolate either of them for treatment if needed. Any excess pump output is being redirected back over the filter medium to increase the effectiveness of the smallish sump capacity. I've seen this filtration setup on a large fish room (19 tanks) with massive stock numbers with great success.
I'm hoping my small setup will be equally successful. I'll post photo's when I happy that it's up and running properly.
Thanks again for your suggestion.

[Matt15]

Np at all. And be sure to post up some pics of your setup. Sounds like a good one.