About Sid

Hi — I’m Sid, the fishkeeper behind Tank Logic. I’ve spent the last six-plus years with my hands wet: breeding fish, rebuilding substrates, killing a few plants I shouldn’t have, and slowly learning what actually keeps a tank alive versus what just sounds good on a forum. Tank Logic is where I put the lessons that survived contact with reality.

How I got here

Like most people, I started by doing nearly everything wrong. My sharpest early lesson came from a tank that was genuinely thriving — a low-tech, self-sustaining setup that had found its balance — until I got greedy. I tore out the guppies, added African cichlids, and watched the whole quiet ecosystem come apart. By the end I had one stubborn common bristlenose male, Hank, holding down an empty tank. That tank taught me more than any guide had: stocking is a system, not a shopping list, and the maths underneath a tank matters as much as the livestock on top of it.

Almost everything on this site traces back to that kind of hands-on, occasionally expensive learning.

What I actually specialise in

I don’t claim to know every fish in the hobby. The areas where I do have real, repeated, hands-on experience are:

• Bristlenose pleco breeding. I breed bristlenose (Ancistrus) and have spent a long time working toward stable albino long-fin lines (I’ve written up the details in my full bristlenose care & breeding guide) — which means a working understanding of their genetics, conditioning, spawning triggers, and raising fry through the fragile early weeks.
• Walstad and soil-substrate planted tanks. I run low-tech, dirted tanks that lean on plants and biology rather than equipment — including the “silent cycle,” where dense planting does the heavy lifting a filter usually would.
• Unheated, cold-water setups. Not every tank needs a heater. I keep species that thrive at room temperature and below, and I’ve learned where that works and where it quietly doesn’t.
• The stocking and volume maths. The part most beginners get burned by — real usable volume, bioload, and sensible stocking — is the reason the calculators here exist.

The tanks I keep

Over the years I’ve run low-tech planted tanks, Walstad dirted setups, dedicated bristlenose breeding tanks, grow-out tanks for fry, and unheated cold-water tanks. Different jobs, different rules — and a lot of what’s on Tank Logic comes from running them side by side and noticing what each one really needs.

Why Tank Logic exists

Most aquarium advice online is either too vague to act on or built to rank rather than to help. The “one inch of fish per gallon” rule is the perfect example — it’s been killing fish for decades. I built Tank Logic to do the opposite: give you the honest number, explain the reasoning, and tell you when a result is an estimate rather than gospel. The calculators run entirely in your browser, the guides come from experience rather than a content brief, and nothing here hides behind a signup.

How I keep it honest

Everything here is written from first-hand experience or carefully checked against it. When something is an estimate — and aquarium maths usually is — I say so. I update guides as I learn more, I don’t sell your data, and the only thing funding the site is unobtrusive display advertising. If I ever get something wrong, I’d genuinely rather hear it and fix it. You can reach me any time at info@mytanklogic.com.