20g Stock Question

[Underthereef101]

Fish Stocking Question!

You guys think adding a royal gramma to a 20g with the following would be over stocking?:
- 1 x small snowflake clown (mid~top, 2”)
- 1 x small starry blenny (rock dwelling, <3”)
- 1 x Mural goby (sand sifting, max size 3”)

Will add pictures later of the setup.
Getting mixed opinions.

 

[Underthereef101]

 

[norfolkgarden]

Can't tell for sure if you have a sump. If not, than Heck no. [emoji17]

Looks like a good amount of live rock.

The "niche" habitat aspect of your fish choices looks like it will work.

A good rule of thumb for 3" fish is 6 to 7 gallons per fish stocking, maximum. 7 gallons per 3" fish in a tank smaller than 55 gallons.

I learned this the hard way several times.

Everything is fine until a power outage or lower O2 due to some other reason ('stale' water from a large water change, etc.)

But you will be at (most likely beyond) the upper limit O2 usage of that amount of water.

At the first bump in the road you will lose half or all of your fish.[emoji53]

Sorry about the bad news.

 

[Underthereef101]

Can't tell for sure if you have a sump. If not, than Heck no. [emoji17]

Looks like a good amount of live rock.

The "niche" habitat aspect of your fish choices looks like it will work.

A good rule of thumb for 3" fish is 6 to 7 gallons per fish stocking, maximum. 7 gallons per 3" fish in a tank smaller than 55 gallons.

I learned this the hard way several times.

Everything is fine until a power outage or lower O2 due to some other reason ('stale' water from a large water change, etc.)

But you will be at (most likely beyond) the upper limit O2 usage of that amount of water.

At the first bump in the road you will lose half or all of your fish.[emoji53]

Sorry about the bad news.

Hey thanks for the reply!

I appreciate you taking the time to respond and I can agree with it. I’m not massive over having another fish, I was more of curious if I could. I can live without it haha.

Otherwise to answer the rest, I have a HOB fuge that’s plumbed from a Phosban 150 (overkill I know). I have 2 nano powerheads for flow/agitation and a battery backup for my house but who knows how long they last. Apparently a few hours.

But that’s just for what I have currently.
Would you recommend any other fish otherwise? I’m guessing not. I’ll likely just try and find some kind of invert if anything to add instead

 

[norfolkgarden]

Max fish would be a blue neon cleaner goby or gold neon cleaner goby or something the same minuscule size.

But I don't know if that will work with your other fish.

Other than the different neon cleaner gobies, gobies and blennies are a total blind spot for me.
Pretty cool but outmatched by other stuff I wanted more.

Look at the Nano tank section on liveaquaria.com.

The other options are really cool inverts like a cleaner shrimp or a fire shrimp.
Supposedly inverts do not count against your fish stocking level.
I would also suggest a smaller banded serpent star but those usually get to be about 6" or 7" with a half inch to three quarter inch disc.
They are opportunist and mostly scavengers but as small as your fish might be it might be sketchy.

Maybe a shrimp/goby pair?

 

[norfolkgarden]

Banded serpent starfish

 

[Underthereef101]

Might just stay away from fish for now haha, just worried about territory and the extra bioload.

And I’m not too sure either.. my goby is borderline okay with my blenny, he gets ticked when the blenny is close to his home cave .. right at the front [emoji849]

And I definitely have looked at live Aquaria.. they’re ALL mainly gobies lol, can’t be doing that!

And I’m eh with serpent stars, I’m too worried it’d attack my fish. And yeah they grow way too big haha. I keep my tank very clean too. So like you said, I may just give a pistol shrimp a shot. Just again not sure how my weird goby would react, he’s got an interesting personality.

I also used to have a skunk cleaner, had to give him away as he was far too aggressive with cleaning my blenny. Surprising right?

Otherwise that’s a really cool serpent star, I’ve definitely never seen those at any of my LFS. Here in Canada, there ain’t jack crap for good livestock

 

[norfolkgarden]

The serpent star was a lucky find. I have 2 others that are just 2 tone Gray. Still cool, but nothing like this one.

 

[norfolkgarden]

Stick with a candy cane pistol shrimp that only gets to 2 inches.
Make sure it is not one of the other half dozen species that reach 3 or 4" and kills everything in your tank.

 

[Underthereef101]

Yeah I’m aware, I’ve done quite a bit of research on pistol shrimps but I’ve just been iffy about it. I still would like to try. Thankfully the Randall (or candy cane) are usually readily available here