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I have been looking at this for a while and have seen calculators and ratios but mostly for media based systems. I need to get fish for my system and do not want to over stock or under stock and try to get close. I can always add more fish but hard to eat small fingerlings if I have to many.

Here is what I have built. I have 2 systems and I am describing one side and the other is slightly larger but real close.

1000 gallon fish tank with 2 - 725 gallon DWC rafts, 2 - 75 gallon media beds. A total of 2600 gallons.

The system has 1- 4'x8'x6" constant flow media bed bio-filter that gravity feeds into 2 - 4'x4'x1.5' media bio-filters on auto siphons that gravity feed out to the DWC rafts and media beds. So there is about 358 gallons of water in the bio-filters minus the media displacement or maybe 150 gallons. Not growing anything in these bio-filters.

I am getting a DO test strip kit in a couple of days to check this so I can't say yet what I have in the fish tanks and rafts but I have 2 large Sweetwater air pumps going on this setup with 10 - 10" air stones in the fish tanks and 150 feet of soak-er hose in each raft. The reason for so many 10" air stones is 1. I am in Colorado at an elevation of almost 6,000 feet. 2. the tank is 4.5 feet deep, so I have to push a lot of air in this setup along with the altitude.

I plan on growing leafy greens and herbs in about a 6" spacing in the rafts.

I was told on another post to start out with 100 fish per 1000 gallon fish tank to be safe. I was hoping to get 250 in each tank because of cost savings. Will 250 be to many fish? Or is it just better to start smaller and see how things go first?

If I go with 100 how will I know if I can add more fish? How long would I go before I knew that things are working and I can add more? Will I know by good plant growth and no dead fish or are their other things that will tell me I am doing good?

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You can always build the beds a bit smaller or narrower, you don't have to use every last centimeter of liner, you can have a little more overlap on the edges or make the bed a little taller.

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