Help! Fish-in Cycle With Goldfish

[Bexley333]

I am getting my first aquarium on Saturday but have unexpectedly inherited a 30l aquarium from an elderly lady I used to care for who has recently passed away
The aquarium came with 2 small goldfish she'd had for just a few weeks, a filter and heater (she originally had a couple of plecs) and everything was ok. The ladies daughter came to drop the stuff off last night and has helpfully emptied and cleaned the whole tank and filter..........
I'm now trying to make the best of a bad situation.
I have treated the water with ammolock and a thing called 'cycle' that was recommended to my by the nice guy at my local fish place and put 4 plants and some gravel in. I tested the water a couple of hours ago and the nitrite and nitrate is 0, ammonia is 0.6 and ph is 6.5.
Am I doing the right thing for them? Do they need all the treatment the tropical guys do?
Someone told me I could use some dirty water from an established aquarium to help the filter and that this would also help to protect the fish during the cycle, is this correct and ok to do?

 

[Truck]

your going to need a 130-180 litre tank (long if theyre common goldfish, your looking at 4 foot atleast! ) and a massive external filter.

nutrafin cycle DOES not work!! you will need to keep up on water changes too.

of theyre common goldfish, theyre better off in a pond

 

[WILDER]

I agree with truck.
This is about the 4 goldfish thread in the last 2 days. All in small tanks.

Common goldifsh need 20 gallons for the first goldifsh and 10 gallons for every other one added.
Fancy goldfish 15 gallons for the first one, and 10 gallons for every other one added.
Also they need double fileration as goldfish they are massive waste producers.

 

[Bexley333]

I don't know anyone with a pond, will fish retailers take them in?
The daughter said the breed is called 'tiny goldfish', they're supposed to be like bonsai goldfish or something. I couldn't find much about them on the web but the woman at a big fish retailer near me told me they can grow to 15inchs if they're allowed to? Is that right? She also said they'll only grow to the size of the tank, was that right?

 

[Truck]

I don't know anyone with a pond, will fish retailers take them in?
The daughter said the breed is called 'tiny goldfish', they're supposed to be like bonsai goldfish or something. I couldn't find much about them on the web but the woman at a big fish retailer near me told me they can grow to 15inchs if they're allowed to? Is that right? She also said they'll only grow to the size of the tank, was that right?

they can grow to 15 inches and they do grow to the size of the tank, but that stops them developing properly and isnt fair on the fish.

 

[WILDER]

There hardly any fish you could put in a 6 gal. I have bigger issolation tank.
You could get a betta for it and some corys.
Fish need room to move about aswell.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with truck and wilder, you need to continue your urgent search for a new home for these goldfish, as difficult as that may be.

Meanwhile, you need to use good water changing technique to help them stay alive until you can move them. Luckily water changes won't take so long on a small tank. Hopefully you have a gravel-cleaning-siphon (siphon tube with a larger clear plastic cylinder on one end to disturb the gravel.) You allow the gravel to churn and the debris to hopefully go out with the water being siphoned out. The return water should be treated with conditioner (this is a product that performs dechlorination/dechloramination and converts ammonia into ammonium - I'd recommend a good product like Seachem Prime or API StressCoat+ to perhaps help with your situation.) You should also roughly temperature match the water with your hand. If your tap water parameters are good (you should use a good liquid-reagent-based test kit like the API Freshwater Master Test Kit) then you could do pretty large daily water changes for these goldfish, all the way down to where there's just room for the fish to be underwater before the fresh water. Once you get the test kit you can ask here and get more explicit instructions about using it to perhaps lessen your water changing burden.

Perhaps your filter situation will turn out to be good for this interim period but I wouldn't assume that right away.

~~waterdrop~~