The 1 inch per gallon was never more then a guideline. The poop factor of a fish also needs to be considered and like stated the activity level, swimming room needed and compatability between fish, planted or not, decorartions etc all need to be taken into account. But that is why people ask these questions. Fish have individual personalities as well and what works in one set up may not work in another identical one. Everyone should research the fish they would like to add to their aquarium, find out who is the best for cycling and how to add them one by one so the less aggressive one can establish a territory first. That of course only happens in the perfect world, hence we have Walgreens, lol.
Most people buy an aquarium, listen to the LFS clerk and throw a bunch of fish into the tank. After loosing many, the remaining fish may get lucky if their owner tries to find out what went wrong by reading and asking questions in a forum like this one and may thus save the lucky ones.
I know I started out this way 2 years ago. Now 11 tanks later, I am breeding fish and like to think all my critters are happy. But it took a lot of research and we should not tell people to go to a different site just because they use the inch per gallon guideline. If they do that, it's at least a step in the right direction, the rest of this complex hobby needs to be explained but everyone needs to start somewhere.
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