Is the load too much?

Marcus Fox wrote in message
...

"Cplus" wrote in message
e.rogers.com...
The two remaining mollies (had another black one die on me this morning)
that I had in 20g tank I moved to my daughter's 10 gallon tank (because
the
20g is high in nitrites still). I moved them because their back fin
(not
sure of the specific name) was starting to curl in (they're lyretail
mollies).


The 10G tank already houses :
1 guppy
2 angels
5 tetras (2 glow light, 3 pristella)
a pleco

and now I've added the mollies. Will that be too big of a load? It
doesn't
seem like it when I write it down but it seems busy in the tank.

I thought a good rule of thumb was one inch of fish per square inch of
surface. And I thought angelfish ate tetras?

Marcus



One fairly common standard (but not fully accurate) is one inch of fish per
gallon of water. That equates to about one inch of fish for every twenty
square inches of surface.
Using a standard 15 gallon tank with a surface of 12" x 24", that's 288
square inches, or more than twenty feet of fish using your rule.
Not all angels eat all tetras. A better statement would be almost all fish
will eat fish small enough to fit in their mouth.

Jim