How many fish could i put in my tank?

Question

Hi i have a saltwater fish tank 95 gallons. It currently holds 3 tangs, a niger trigger, flame angel, stars&stripes puffer, 6 damsells. i also have about 40 lbs of live rock. What are some fish that are could put in there that will make a great addition to my tank? Thanks in advanced from a new marine aquarist.

PS I know that I shouldn't have that many tangs but it is working out fine.

Answer 1

The going rate of fish in a tank is 1 fish for every gallon of water.

Answer 2

The rule of thumb is one inch of fish for every gallon of water

so if you can have lots of small fish or less of bigger fish it is up to you

Answer 3

The rule for saltwater is NOT the same rule as it is for freshwater.  The rule for saltwater is 1 inch of fish per 10 gallons of saltwater.  That is also counting the size it will become and not the size you bought it at.  Nearly all tangs reach sizes between 6 and 18 inches long depending on species.  Most likely you probably chose a yellow tang which reaches 6 inches and probably a blue hippo which reaches 11 inches.  Regardless which species you chose, you certainly overstocked that aquarium by far and I can assure you, problems will arise soon.  Tangs aka Surgeonfish are grazers and cover a large area in the ocean picking algae off of live rock.  A 95 gallon is not long enough to accomodate all those fish and their requirements.   Your amount of live rock is very little as it should be around 1.5 to 2 pounds per gallon.  With such little live rock, you are not providing your fish a continious supply of food in which they can graze on throughout the day.  Damsels depending on what species become very territorial and will eventually stress everything in the tank out including the angelfish and puffer.  The trigger will eventually cause  havoc as well as it will become territorial and start bullying all the other passive fish.  My advice is to either get yourself a larger tank, or get rid of agressive and make it a community tang or predator.  You cannot have both as you will soon find out.  Your choices that you have made were not well thought out as many of them clash.  You have predator with semi passive.  Overall, it is a disaster waiting to happen.

Answer 4

The most common is 1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water. This method is becoming less and less popular amongst aquarists because of the margin of error when dealing with different width of fish (slim v wide).

Another method is to use the surface area. This is width X Length of the aquarium. The rule with surface area is 1 inch of fish per 12 square inches of surface area. This means that if you have two aquariums that hold the same amount of water but one is wider and the other is taller, the wider aquarium would be able to hold more fish. However as with the 1 inch rule the surface area rule also does not account for fish thickness.

There is no perfect method but these are both acceptable guidelines to keep your fish healthy and your aquarium running smoothly.