Hi Fish Folk!

[LETHAL MERMAID]

Hi everyone! I'm Laura from the UK.

I'm relatively new to fish keeping, I have had a 60 litre BiOrb running for a little over a year. There are currently six white cloud minnows and two fantail goldfish (Pinky and Jaws) in there. My minnows are doing great, but it was after adding my second goldfish recently that I started encountering problems. After a quick google I realised that the BiOrb stocking guide (and their advice in general) is a load of rubbish and I'm looking improve my knowledge and my fishies' health.

I have also recently bought a Baby BiOrb (15 litres) off eBay. It came with a heater and I was hoping to eventually set it up for either a pair of African dwarf frogs or perhaps a nice betta.

I'm not going to make the same mistake twice though, so I'm going to do a lot of reading up beforehand this time, but I may still have a few questions for you guys.

Nice to meet you all

 

[aquariumart22]

Hi, Welcome to the forum!

 

[Blubble37]

hey and

take a look at the link in my signature, your problems are to do with the ammonia and other wastes your goldfish produce, biorbs are pretty useless anyway to be fair

you'd do better with a standard tank, maybe a fluval edge or something like that? with a decent filter, but one goldfish needs about 60 litres of space and a decent filter

 

[LETHAL MERMAID]

Hello!

hey and

take a look at the link in my signature, your problems are to do with the ammonia and other wastes your goldfish produce, biorbs are pretty useless anyway to be fair

you'd do better with a standard tank, maybe a fluval edge or something like that? with a decent filter, but one goldfish needs about 60 litres of space and a decent filter

Thank you

I'm a little concerned about one of my fish at the moment, I'm hoping he pulls through but if not I'm not going to get a replacement. I've been looking into getting a different filter, no one on the interwebs seems to have good things to say on the BiOrb but I like how it looks.. I'm going to try and make good of it somehow before giving up on it completely.

For the time being I'm just breaking my back doing water changes to try and keep on top of it all

From the looks of it there are many people in the same situation, so much false advertising.

 

[Blubble37]

Indeed :3 false advertising is (sadly) everywhere I'm afraid, could you give me a run-down on the fishie's symptoms? I might be able to offer some advice for you :')

 

[LETHAL MERMAID]

I've only had him around two weeks, About a week ago I noticed long thin white strands (kind of like hairs or long bits of fluff - they're VERY hard to see unless you look extremely closely as his tail is white anyway) coming from his tail. He's started clamping his fins in the last couple of days and is spending about 50% of the time floating (sometimes at a 45 degree angle) at or near the top with his fins clamped. He can still swim about with unclamped fins the rest of the time and has been eating. He doesn't appear to be gasping, or have any other symptoms as far as I can see. I was thinking of using Tetra Gold Med but I won't be able to get out to buy anything for a few days I'm just hoping he's not going to get worse

Since I noticed problems I've been doing 15% water changes every day till I can get my water tested (which, again, won't be for a couple of days). My last test was the day I got him and everything was in order. I ordered some ammonia and nitrite test strips online so I can do tests more regularly at home but they haven't arrived yet.

While I have you here.. Do you happen to know if a mini filter (for up to 45 litres) in addition to what I already have would be sufficient? I wasn't sure if, when combined with what I have running already, that would be good enough filtration.

Thanks for all your help

 

[Blubble37]

yes another filter would only help if it has cycled media... see if you can get some ammonia detoxifier for aquariumsa, it turns it into ammonium which isnt (as) harmful to the fishie

it sounds like finrot/fungal infection to me, so an antifungal would do great

sorry for the slow replies, i've been a tad busy with school/coursework