DISCUSSION: "SW Inch per Gallon"....

[chadf]

Another thing to bring up is the amount of oxygen in the water. More/larger fish equals more oxygen being used up. Again with the power outage thing, (which IMO is why stocking levels are lower) when your power goes out gas exchange pretty much ceases. If you had a generator, backup equipment, and spent enough time with your tank you could really greatly overstock your tank compared the the "rule of thumb". So what I'm saying is basically if your tank runs at 100% 100% of the time you can add much more fish than 5"/gallon, the only thing you'd really have to worry about is nitrates, which can easily be dealt with with proper maintenance.

[Rychek]

You raise an excellent point chad. Uptime % does have a pretty much direct relationship to stocking levels, especially in a reef which brings us to differentiating between FO, FOWLR and Reef in regard to our rules of thumb.