Stocking Questions and help

[Coolbeans5]

I have always kept bettas and don’t have a lot of experience with community tanks. I recently knew a man who passed away and I rescued his fish. In order for things to be balanced and healthy I need increase the school numbers. For instance this man only had one tiger barb. I was given a sea clear 40 gallon tank as a gift and I worry it’s not big enough to increase the numbers. It currently has 4 scissor tail rasboras, a tiger barb, two platys, a molly, two zebra danios, two serpae tetras, two smaller tetras, and a clown pleco. I have a large sponge filter and an aqua clear 70. I’m mostly concerned about the tiger barb, and would like to add 5 more. Is this overstocked? Looking at the tank it doesn’t look like it’s overstocked, but I’m worried and aqua advisor told me it’s too much. Any advice would be appreciated!
I do have a 20 and a 20L I can set up if necessary, I just really would like to avoid doing this as I have limited space.

 

[Linda1234]

There are a few problems with the stocking but as to your specific question I believe it is fine to add 5 more tiger barbs. Tiger barbs do not get that large and a 40 has decent amount of swimming area.

 

[FishFiendSP]

As far as I can tell, you're not going to get too overstocked as you have a decent filter on the aquarium. I'd definitely suggest bumping up the numbers of all the schooling fish since they won't feel too comfortable without proper numbers (I've had a neon tetra who comitted genecide after he lost two of his brethren to ich). When you add all the fish up after having say five in each group, that's 29 fish which should be fine in your tank.