Bioload guides?

[msduncan]

Is there a link, faq, or something on the general guidelines to how much bioload your system has?

As in... how much fish/gallon, coral/gallon, inverts/gallon?

It's hard to tell when you have a mixture of all three how much bioload you can safely add to a tank.

[bertoni]

There are no useful, general guidlines because animals differ so much in the load they present to the filter system. My usual guess is something like three royal-gramma-sized fish in a 29g tank, for example. Posting your tank size and some suggested inhabitants is about all we can do.

For corals, the species with photosynthetic symbionts often present little load on the system. Other invertebrates vary wildly.

[dendro982]

I had read somewhere, 1 inch of fish per 5 gal for saltwater tank, comparing to 1 inch/fish per 1 gal freshwater, it's all.
This is generalization, each type of fish has own minimal tank size requirements, mentioned in description somewhere like peteducation.com. Invertebrates make less bioload then fish, corals too.
The most reliable way to figure bioload out (IME, of course) was take a look at tanks pictures, especially nano-systems - they are the real cases of survived load and compatibility. They can be found through image search, member tanks, or particular animal name.

[bertoni]

The problem with the inches per gallon rules is that the shape of fish variest greatly. That's a fairly conservative number, though.