rob rensen wrote:One of the issue's of fishkeeping is enjoying the natural behaviour....in a overstocked tank there's no room for natural behaviour. In my opinion you're nothing more then a stamp collector.
People have many reasons for keeping fish, some enjoy the narutal behaviours, others like the pretty colours (some even like things like blood parrots and flowerhorns!), and some like what you would call "stamp collecting". Not everyones goal for the hobby is to have fish breed, I know mine certainly isn't (although I do like seeing more natural behaviour from my fish), and I know many people love the challenge of keeping a heavily stocked tank. Look at the "JDM-style" tanks that are popular in places like Japan and Singapore where people simply don't have space for multiple huge aquariums, there are some out there that make this one seem understocked! From a purists point of view this tank may seem cringe-worthy, but at the end of the day, all the fish appear to be healthy and doing well, fins intact, feeding and growing. The tank looks far cleaner than my less-heavily stocked 400L tank! Its not my cup of tea in terms of the heavy stocking and mix of rift lake cichlids and SA catfish, but it still looks like a well-kept and healthy tank to me, and the fact that there is a plan to upgrade to something substantially bigger is reassuring that the poster does care about his fish.
Say what you will, but IMO there are far worse crimes in the aquarium hobby than putting too many fish in a well filtered and well maintained aquarium...
