Questions About Adding Future Fish To 55 Gallon

Hey so I have a 55 gallon that’s almost cycled, I have 6 Cory cats, 6 guppies and 7 rasboras, they are all doing well, my ph is at 7.0 and my ammonia is at 0.0ppm. I’m about to go back to school. I’ll be able to keep up with my water changes every few weeks, and Filter cleaning every month. My question is, come spring break and summer, will I be able to add more fish if I keep up with general tank maintenance. Or is there something I should know or do to keep things stable when I do add more fish. My 55 gallon has 19 fish total. So I’m not even fully stocked yet. Any feedback and information would be great!

 

So, it's actually recommended to do 25-50% water changes once every week. I'd also clean the filter media once a week in separated aquarium water. What species of cory cats and rasboras do you have?

 

Peppered Cory cats and harlequin rasboras. And yes I’ll take the extra tank maintenance into account. I just wanna know if I keep things going smoothly now till spring/summer if I could add fish after a gap of not adding anything to the tank. aquatickeeper

By anything I mean fish

 

I'm not sure what kind of filtration you have on the tank, but if you are only able to change the water every few weeks (rather than every week) then not sure it makes sense to add to the bioload until you can do that. Things might be stable right now but the more fish you add, the more you will need to do weekly maintenance.

I would think if the tank is stable when you are done school, you could progressively add more fish, but the same as any other cycled tank - not too many at once or you could crash your cycle.

 

I’m gonna do tank maintenance every week for now. When my spring semester really gets moving, every other week. I have a marine land penguin bio filter 350. When I do get around to adding fish I’ll step up the water changes and slowly add more fish CraniumRex do you think that would work?

 

Well I'm no expert FishGeek117 but I'm hesitant to say that an every other week schedule will be successful in an "almost" cycled tank. I hope it is!! Do you have any live plants? They might help with water condition. Beyond that, don't be in a hurry to add more fish.

Before that, I would intuitively suggest 2 smaller water changes 2 days in a row if you can do that in the every other week scenario. Is there no one who can do the water changes while you are gone?

You also haven't mentioned your nitrites or nitrates levels - how are they doing?

As far as adding fish goes, I personally would add maybe 3 at a time (depending on bioload) and test my water daily to see if my BB could keep up to the new additions. Let the BB grow for a month or longer (not sure of the minimum amount of time, I think that would be dependent on how stable you can keep things) then add more once you know it's matured. More media = more BB and I don't know the GPH on your filter but I believe HOB's should have something like bare minimum 8-10 x water exchange per hour with more being better so you are a bit underfiltered at the moment, though understocked you might be okay. If you add more stock I would recommend having the 10 x water exchange. Hope that helps.

 

If the tank is fully cycled you'll have 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrite. Water changes are needed to keep the Nitrates below 40 (or more ideally, 20). The number and size of fish you've got will determine how fast your Nitrates rise.

With a 55 and your stocking level I would think that 10%-15% once per week should be sufficient to keep the Nitrates in check. will give some advice on both stocking level and water changes.

With regard to adding stock it's a simple equation- the more stocked you are the faster the water parameters change, the more often water changes will be necessary (and the faster things can go wrong and either directly affect the health of your fish or allow opportunistic diseases to take hold.) If you're in school or have a busy life you may want to consider how stocked you keep your tank because it becomes a quality of life issue for both you and your pets. You don't want it to become a chore. Done right tank maintenance may not be an absolute joy, but it can be fun.

If you do decide to add more fish I would suggest a quarantine tank to be sure you're not adding any disease to a healthy tank. A bare bones 20 gallon bought at a 'Dollar a Gallon' sale could be set up for quite a reasonable sum, actually less than two or three rounds of meds for a 55.