Guest5431
Fish Fanatic
You could get a swimming pool for goldfish and it still will not satisfy everyone. Then there's the guy who keeps one in a small bowl on his desk for 7 years. If you can at least manage 10 to 20 gallons per fish with large weekly water changes you'll be doing better than many. As for goldfish breeding, if you aren't trying to go into raising goldfish, get rid of the female. When she lays eggs it's a huge mess that can turn a tank into a disaster for a week or so. They stick to everything everywhere including the gravel vacuum you're trying to suck them out with.
Water discoloration comes from a lot of possible causes from light to food and even things like driftwood leaching tannins, plants dying, algae blooms, het bacteria blooms, etc.... The trick is figuring out which one you're dealing with. I'm wrestling with issues in a number of tanks and tubs now eliminating one thing at a time trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. One tub with a twin tube was having an algae bloom. I reduced the lighting down to 12 hours a day instead of 24 but no luck, I just slowed it coming back. I just started option B just now. I twisted one bulb to off so now we'll go back to 24 hours a day with one tube running instead of two. Hopefully I can get good plant growth without the algae bloom. In other tanks, it was just a matter of the cheap sponge not being able to get enough flow thru it to handle the fish load and feeding. I turbo charged the sponge with an upgrade in tubing size and got immediate results but not perfect. Now step two is underway, half rations since I've been overfeeding the little pigs as well. We try something, if it works great, if not modify and march on until you get across that bridge. Remember no matter what happens, those 3 goldfish are already better off than the 3 fed to the oscar or the 3 used as fishing bait and definitely better off than the 3 that weren't even bred in the first place. You really can't go wrong no matter what you do compared to some of the other frequent alternatives.
Water discoloration comes from a lot of possible causes from light to food and even things like driftwood leaching tannins, plants dying, algae blooms, het bacteria blooms, etc.... The trick is figuring out which one you're dealing with. I'm wrestling with issues in a number of tanks and tubs now eliminating one thing at a time trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. One tub with a twin tube was having an algae bloom. I reduced the lighting down to 12 hours a day instead of 24 but no luck, I just slowed it coming back. I just started option B just now. I twisted one bulb to off so now we'll go back to 24 hours a day with one tube running instead of two. Hopefully I can get good plant growth without the algae bloom. In other tanks, it was just a matter of the cheap sponge not being able to get enough flow thru it to handle the fish load and feeding. I turbo charged the sponge with an upgrade in tubing size and got immediate results but not perfect. Now step two is underway, half rations since I've been overfeeding the little pigs as well. We try something, if it works great, if not modify and march on until you get across that bridge. Remember no matter what happens, those 3 goldfish are already better off than the 3 fed to the oscar or the 3 used as fishing bait and definitely better off than the 3 that weren't even bred in the first place. You really can't go wrong no matter what you do compared to some of the other frequent alternatives.
