Letters of a Betta Addict

Inspired by the Thread: I think I’m just venting…

Thread begun by: AlyeskaGirl

In her first post AlyeskaGirl asked the following questions.

1) What is the average size aqarium?

2) What makes an appropirate sized tank?

3) What happens to fish kept in too small a tank?

4) What happens in a tank that is too croweded?

The posts that followed focused on the traditional fish keeper responce. Which is that the fish release hormones into the water that in certian consentrations inhibite their growth. However this inhibition was limited to the outside of the fish and eventually the fish dies as it’s internal organs continue to grow and eventually run out of room. However as this thread progressed we came to realise that we had no scientific proof that this was actually what happened. One reason for this is that most growth study research is done on commercial fisheries and aquaculture related species.

However I thought that this was a very interesting series of questions so I’ve decided to try and find an answer to each of them. This may be a bit tricky since I’m a 3 hour drive each way from the university library but I’ll do my best. For the ease of research I’ll be breaking this “article” into 3 parts (not including this). The first part will focus on the first two questions. What is the “average size aquarium”, and how do we define an “appropriate” aquarium size? Part two is going to look at the effects of tank size and stocking density on fish growth. Lastly I’ll post the conclusion in part three and bring both of these idea’s togeather, and how they affect the aquarist and fishkeeping.