I wanted to know if anyone has any suggestions about owning a [pearlscale] goldfish. He is in a 10gal aquarium (by himself) with a plant and a aquarium-safe rock (with a hole to swim through). He has a fluorescent light and a filter as well.
My question is... is there anything that I need to be aware of? I know that I need to soak his food before feeding him... and that peas are good to prevent/cure swim bladder. I gave him some cucumber this morning.
Just let me know if there is anything that I should know... I've never owned a goldfish before.. Thanks
Vary the diet as much as possible with live and frozen foods as well as flake/pellet foods and fresh veggies. Make sure you do LOTS of water changes as they produce huge amounts of waste and, though you may want to feed more than once daily, make sure you don't feed too much at once and make sure you syphon out left-overs within 20 minutes. Goldfish are extremely messy and produce huge amounts of waste so you need to be very vigillant when it comes to maintainance. You should also consider up-grading the tank soon to a 20 or, better still, a 30 gallon. 10 gallons is ok for a pearlscale (because this is one of the smaller varieties) but 20 is much better suited to it and, technicaly, the minnimum for a goldfish. Though pearlscales are meant to stay relatively small compared to other fancy types or the even larger commons, they are still capeable of getting to a good 8" and they also happen to live for 20 years or more so you deffinately want to minnimize the need for maintainance as much as possible and getting the biggest tank you can afford is the best way to do this. 30 or more would be even better as you could then keep two pearlscales - goldfish are a social, schooling fish and appreciate the company of others of their kind. The guideline for stocking goldfish BTW, is one for the first 20 gallons plus 10 gallons extra for each additional fish - so 20 gallons for 1, 30 for 2, 40 for 3 and so on. You also may find visiting the coldwater section for goldfish info more useful than posting in amongst the tropicals
Haha.. thanks for the reponses. Sorry about that.. I am overtired and stressed dealing with problems that I've had with my betta. I'll transfer the post to the proper forum section... whoops
