How much Fish I can keep together in my tank?

Howdy! Welcome to my review! If you are here then probably you are building a new aquarium or you already have an aquarium but you don’t know how much fish you can keep inside your aquarium! Every time you are visiting your nearest pet store, Seeing and exploring new fish species and having will inside your mind to get them but don’t know if you can keep them inside your aquarium or not, right?

If you are facing this type of confusion then I believe you have came to the best possible place for your problems solution!

Let’s dive into the main problem, shall we!

How much fish can you keep in your aquarium depends upon a lot of factors. Don’t get afraid my friend. I will explain these factors to you in a very easy way.

Firstly, you have to figure out what is the size of your aquarium tank which you have build with your emotions!

As for your knowledge, 1 US Gallon stands for 3.78541 Liter.

What is the gallon size of your aquarium tank? Regular aquarium size usually stands for 50 gallons. It’s the standard size of aquarium tanks if you are planning to get into aquarium hobby for a long period of time. You can also have or get smaller than 50 gallon tank.  Different gallon sizes can have different quantity of fish. 

Secondly, Too many fish at a time in a tank will only force your fish to get killed. You always have to keep in mind of the future grown size of your fish. In a 50 gallon tank you can keep fishes like Neon tetra, Tiger barb, Molly, Platty or guppies in quantity of 20 to 30. As these fishes are smaller and less than 1 inch in size when full grown (There might be some exception sometimes.)

But what if you have a wish of keeping bigger or exotic fish which sometimes can be under monster category, they will obviously need a bigger tank. Suppose you have a will of keeping Oscar fishes, ( If you wanna know about keeping Oscar fish from my personal experience, you can read my review here https://insideaquarium.com/contact/ ) you probably will require a 50 or more gallon tank where you can keep one Oscar fish. Hardly two Oscars. See the differences?

A lot depends upon the fish size. Let me share my personal experience with you. Once I had a 50 gallon tank, I had two Orenda fish here. In an easy words, Goldfishes , But eventually I started to visit my nearest pet store more often to decorate my tank more. But instead of decorating my tank, I started buying more and more fish. Every time while visiting the stores, I came up with buying a pair or two pairs of , Goldfish , or Blackmore, Or Pleco catfish. Which eventually came down to 10 pairs of fish in total 20 fishes! I started noticing that that my aquarium tank was looking like a mess and it was really crowded! And the fishes were producing a lot of wastes. So cleaning the tank was becoming a regular task for me. And it was also not a planted tank.  So the PH level was at a miserable stage. I hope you can imagine the condition of my fish tank. And eventually one after one, fishes died in this process. From this mistake of mine, I started to research how can I keep my fish in a perfect quantity. I didn’t get that much of idea back then. But I don’t want you to face the same, that’s why I am here to help you even if it’s a tiny bit!

Let me share another experience of my neighbors! As I was into keeping fish for a long period of time, nearly 9 years till now, My friends or neighbors always called me when they needed information about the fishes. My neighbors wanted to have a small sized fish tank, SO I went with them to buy them a fish tank and all other accessories. I helped them buy 2 pairs of small goldfish. But eventually as like myself, my neighbors started getting more and more fishes and eventually they found that some fishes jumped off their tank, some were killed, Some died. a horrible way to see your pet fish dying. These experience always force me to suggest you to keep your fish at quantity.

Another factor which no one else will recommend you I believe but I can recommend you from my personal experience is to keep the surface area simple. You can use sand, you can use gravel or rocks and live plants but what I am recommending you is to keep it simple. Not too much going on, Not too less going on! This will offer you a balanced and less traffic in your dream aquarium. In simple words this will provide you more space inside your aquarium for your fishes to roam around. It will look more nicer and try to keep proper live plants so that the PH level gets maintained. More fishes more waste.

So lastly, You can keep fishes under 1 inch in 20/30 quantities in a 50 gallon tank and if the size gets bigger of the fishes it will be very less in quantity. I have taken the standard size of 50 gallons let me give some more information

For a 50 gallon tank, you can keep 20/30 fishes under 1 inch in proper grown size

For a bigger fish , You can keep 2 or maximum 3 fishes in a 50 gallon tank

For a 40 gallon tank you can keep 15-18 fishes under 1 inch in proper grown size

And will be the best if you can afford a 100 gallon tank for keeping bigger fishes but incase of this bigger tanks , you might not find them regularly on stores, you might need to build them in custom way.

At the end , I have only wrote down these things based on my personal experience keeping in believe that it will work for you too! There might be some exceptional cases and in that case you can directly contact me through info@insideaquarium.com , Join my instagram account as I give my regular updates there.

Thank you for your precious time my friend. I hope that I will be helpful at least a little bit to you and it will be a big achievement for me.