How to determine fish quantity in reef tank...

[SumThinhWong]

do you have any ideas on what kind of fish you plan on getting. some fish are fine in smaller tanks but some like tangs are swimmers and most people don't recommend them for anything smaller then a 75 gallon or even 100 gallon. but without specifics on what your looking for and what size tank you plan on getting it kind of a shot in the dark in what your wanting to do. there's no correct answer to give you for you to calculate volume to fish without knowing a little bit more. there's also fish that need lots hiding places and fish that need sand. there's a whole lot to think about when buying fish. do you research on individual fish and go from there.

 

[bimmerzs]

Each tank is different and it really is not possible to have one formula that works for every tank. The size of the tank, actual water volume of your system, how much live rock, type of live rock, type of fish, size of fish (when fully grown), how much circulation/aeration your tank has, how much you feed, what you feed, skimmer efficiency etc., etc., will all factor in to answering your question.

Cheers,

 

[True Perc]

The main thing to keep in mind is that when a particular fish specie doubles in length its mass goes up 8 times. I've been explaining this to people for decades. It's simple geometry.

People believe in these inch-per-gallon formulas simply because for many years now these false wive's-tales have been repeated in aquarium book after aquarium book. It's sometimes hard to convince people otherwise when many of these books have been written by accredited authors. I guess these authors just keep repeating the same falsehoods over and over again because that is what they themselves read in the aquarium books before them.

You can have many small fish in a tank compared to very few large ones. Picture it like this, if a large volitan lionfish was made out of clay, how many dwarf angels could you mold out of this same amount of clay?

There is no simple formula on how many fish you can add to an aquarium. Like SaltNewbi and bimmerz have already stated above, there are too many factors involved.

 

[ReefNut2010]

Why don't you tell us a little more about your tank and what you intend to keep in it. Then perhaps you could get some more concrete answers. It's not really a formula but more of an educated guess.