sooooooo overstocked

It can be done and done very well.

Unfortunately for the 1 tank that is successful long term, 100's fail.

It's a beautiful tank I will say that.

Attention to detail and the equipment make it or break it. Could I go away for a 2 week vacation and leave a tank like that and feel comfortable no way. In fact I used to have a house sitter just to watch my old tank when I went away.

 

Off the top of my head he had 4 or 5 big dwarf angeles,9 tangs fairly large,had to be 15 wrasses,2 big foxfaces and a rabbitfish,probably 10-15 psuedos,4 clownns,atleast 15 blennies/gobys(4 mandarins,pair of red and pair of green),school of 8 chromis,school of 4 pj cardinals.....im probably missing some. I couldn't believe it I actually had to sit down to start adding up all the fish lol...he also has a neptune apex controller controlling the tank does everything but feed the fish and buy salt lol

 

Overstocking is a relative term. What is overstocked to one person is another's normal. It heavily depends on filtration and maintenance.

As Corrailine mentions, as you get closer to what most of us would consider overstocked, it's something that requires more attention and not a system you can walk away from for even a moderate length vacation.

As an aside, the guys at Worldwide Corals had an extremely "overstocked" 300 gallon display tank in their front area. This tank had more fish concentration than any tank I've ever seen. On top of that, sps were going nuts in it. More on top of that, they had multiple zebrasoma tangs together and other fish that should have been battling in an normal tank, much less an "overstocked" one.

Their formula? Heavy skimming, numerous water changes, heavy flow, bare bottom and what most of us would consider over feeding (taken care of by the heavy skimming and flow). The heavy feeding kept all the fish fat and happy which is how fish that should have been beating each other up were living peaceably side by side.

Of note is that this tank was 36" wide. It was an absolutely amazing tank to look at with the myriad of sps branching everywhere and amazing collection of fish. Definitely not a tank you can walk away from for even a few days. Too many things for even a moderately skilled fish sitter to screw up.

Note that I talk about the tank in past tense. They just broke it down in prep for their new 10' sps display to replace it. That will be something to behold.

 

Sweet. Aparently he does infact leavd his tank fir vacations just using sevral automatic feeders and the internet....he said his tank sitter would come every few days to refill the feeders but other then that its a hands off tank.ill be getting his advice for my tank ....not sure ill be packing it out as fast as him or as much but I do know my tank will be fairly heavily stocked.

As a side note he is adding 2 jem tangs into the tank at the end of the month don't know where he's gettn umm but he says he's got a guy with 2 in qt for him

 

ive seen this often, i saw a guy that had 4 full size angels in a 55 gallon tank along with a 1 foot sailfin tang and a foxface, it was up for 5 years and he has a large carpet anemone and only sps in the tank, he has hardcore overkill filtration tho.

 

Looks like ill be upgradding my skimmer soon lol