Does it ever get any easier?

[wordhappy]

Hi there,

I don't mean this to sound whingy, but as a serious question: Does keeping goldfish ever get any easier, or is it a constant struggle with diseases and issues of various kinds? I am quite new to keeping them and have spent many hours reading, researching, etc. but am finding it exhausting emotionally, physically, and financially as my fish have just had problem after problem after problem. If I don't see a metaphorical light at the end of this tunnel soon I am going to have to give the fish away. (

Hopefully,

< : )

wordhappy.

[Joshlikesfish]

How big is the tank?

How many goldfish?

How big are they?

Whats the filtration?

Whats your water change regime?

[ichthus]

Yeah - it can get easier. I think we all get rough patches, but if you follow a few basic rules keeping goldfish should be an enjoyable hobby. My advice - avoid getting advice from loads of different sources, as everyone has their different ways and recommendations. Find someone you trust who keeps a nice tank, and offers simple straight-forward advice, and stick with them.

Good luck.

[Ice222]

Yea unless if we know what your situation is in terms of the stuff Josh listed above it's hard to say.

I don't know about goldfish, since they can be a lot messier, but I'm finding keeping tropical fish easier and easier. I mean it's probably not the best animal husbandry, but during the break I spent some time overseas and my tanks had no waterchanges for around 6 weeks. My sister even overfed 2 of my tanks and completely did not feed one tank for half that time, she thought that had no fish in it! Only 1 fish died, and it was in the tank that was not fed. All the other fish were perfectly fine, no illnesses some are even laying eggs. I really do think fishkeeping very much about finding some kind of balance and a routine that matches it. If you find it, everything can be very cruisey, sometimes it's just hard getting there.

I also think it may have a tiny bit to do with luck. If the fish you currently have doesn't work out for you, sometimes it's good to have a change. It could just be that you jinx that type of fish for some unknown cosmic reason . I remember a thread awhile back, where very experienced fish keepers were saying that specific types of fish never works out for them, even if they're meant to be hardy fish, nothing's wrong with the conditions and all the other fish in the same tank are perfectly fine, that specific type would always die.

[Caryl]

Do you belong to the Dunedin club? They have knowledgeable goldfish keepers and would be able to give you excellent help and advice.

[wordhappy]

Thanks folks, just feeling a bit disheartened with it all today and want to do right by my fish but did not realise at all the level of investment (of all kinds) involved when I took them on.

How big is the tank? 38-40L approx

How many goldfish? 2, fantail/comet crosses I think (see my profile pic, that is my tank, minus the now deceased blackmoor and nope, I don't know what it died of, suspect swimbladder)

How big are they? Nose to base of tail, approx 1-1.5in. The orange one has a tail as long again.

Whats the filtration? Not sure, filter is built into tank. It's a drop down filter i.e. the filtered water drops back down into the tank, aerating the water. It has noodles, balls, and a bag of carbon wrapped in filter wool.

Whats your water change regime? 25-30%, 1-2 times a week, with 10ml of StressCoat+ added.

As an aside, I feed them Nutrafin basix Goldfish Food (flakes). I don't think I overfeed and water readings always come back good (pH, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia). At the moment there is no gravel in there, just glass ornaments and a ceramic cup turned on its side as a 'cave' for them - basically a hospital tank setup. But no heater.

Planning to join the Dunedin club at some point but have a lot of other things on at the moment which sounds lame but is in fact a bit of an understatement (thus perhaps explaining why I am emotionally overwhelmed with the state of the goldfish right now).

< : )

wordhappy.

[Squirt]

Huh, I thought goldfish keeping is easy? My grandparents(both mothers parents and fathers parents) have ponds with 20+ goldfish which breed on a regular basis, they feed them bread when they remember and it's just fish and oxygen weed in there. To be honest if the fish are constantly getting sick there must be something wrong.

[MarkLB]

Hi. It sounds as if you're doing everything right. I'd ditch the carbon though. If you're using any medications the carbon will strip it from the water. Also, when the carbon is old and used it can dump toxins back into the tank. Best to get rid of it all together.

[Ira]

Hi there,

I don't mean this to sound whingy, but as a serious question: Does keeping goldfish ever get any easier, or is it a constant struggle with diseases and issues of various kinds? I am quite new to keeping them and have spent many hours reading, researching, etc. but am finding it exhausting emotionally, physically, and financially as my fish have just had problem after problem after problem. If I don't see a metaphorical light at the end of this tunnel soon I am going to have to give the fish away. (

Hopefully,

< : )

wordhappy.

If you're wanting something healthy and low maintenance you shouldn't have gotten goldfish. They're messy and dirty, they're deformed, mutant products of thousands of years of inbreeding. They're always getting diseases and illnesses. Tropicals are usually much cleaner, much healthier, much lower maintenance. My tank the only thing I need to do, over the last few years, was water changes and occasionally cleaning the filter.

And don't put them in a tiny little tank like a 30L. Bigger tank->less maintenance->Healthier fish->Lower maintenance.

[JazzyJeff]

The tank is too small - swap the fish for a heater and go tropical. Something like platy's or neons or guppy's would be easier. I have one of those tanks and LOVE it! Plants grow really well, maintenance is low, fish are healthy. I use the carbon cartridge that you described and change it every 2-3 months, I have read in several reliable sources that carbon does not 'dump' the toxins back into the water when full it just simply stops functioning.

I do 30% water changes every week - ten days depending on how much time I have. Don't give up on fish keeping it can being trying at times but worth it.

[BikBok]

agree with the others that are saying GO TROPICAL! hehe

IF you decided to stay with goldies, don't add any more. 2 is more than enough for that tank.. is it an AR380?

Just think , in that tank you could have several pretty little fish swimming around.

[Joshlikesfish]

Tropical is way easier IMO. I run quite a few tanks, everything is happy and breeding. I was at Crazy_Critters yesterday and she has a few AR380's and they look really good set up with a few tetra and plants, apposed to goldfish.

[Caryl]

Come on guys, tropicals are not easier than goldfish. The only difference between the two is the need for a heaterstat.

Ira has a pathological hatred of goldfish by the way so he is biased.

Your tank is too small for goldfish but not for the size they are at the moment. Goldfish in ponds are easier to look after than when they are in an aquarium so you can't really compare pond fish and their care with that of tank fish.

As said, it sounds like you have done everything right and remove the carbon from the filter.

Your readings may be good now but perhaps they weren't at the beginning and that caused the problems. pH doesn't matter as goldfish will tolerate a very wide range with no ill effects. Ammonia and nitrite should be 0 and nitrate will vary depending on your water source. It should be below 50ppm or preferably below 25ppm but this is not always possible as many have a high nitrate in their tap water.

[mickey_1975]

A couple of things could help

1. Get a small uv filter to minimise disease

2. Treat water with Prime or other chemical eliminator that removes chlorine and harmful chemicals

3. Always add new water slowly to tank to minimise stress to fishes. 10% change at least once a week

4. A good biological/mechanical filter for good bacteria growth to minimise nitrite/ammonia levels

Hope that helps:o)

[Joshlikesfish]

2. Treat water with Prime or other chemical eliminator that removes chlorine and harmful chemicals

Stresscoat+ does the same

[Ice222]

I personally don't like goldfish too. They tend to be big/bulky looking and I don't really like those googley eyes a lot of them have. There are other neat coldwater fish though, like paradise fish, coldwater guppies and White Clouds so you don't have to buy a heater to get smaller easier fish. Just a lot less variety to choose from without it.

Another thing is that goldfish need a lot more water volume than smaller fish. So while you could keep 2 goldfish in a 38-40l tank, it's a lot harder to maintain than if you were keeping 10 1inch small bodied fishes in there.

[#!CrunchBang]

10ml of stresscoat each water change? 10ml will do the whole tank, you only need 2-3ml when you do a 20-25% waterchange

[Ira]

coldwater guppies

[ichthus]

If you're into goldfish - that's cool. Stick with it. You may get into tropicals later, but some people do not. It sounds to me like you are doing everything to the best of your ability.

Your tank is small, and therefore a little harder to keep stable than a larger tank. But if that is all you can afford, stick with it. It suits your fish for the time being.

I look after a goldfish tank for my daughters kindy. It has 2 fancies in it, and is quite similar to your tank. All I do is a 40% vacuum and water change, once a week, with water straight out of the tap. The fish are in good health. They will out grow that tank in time, but at the end of the year they'll move to another home anyway when the kindy year ends.

Blackmoores, I have found, are a little weak - perhaps not an ideal first fish. But stick with it - and yep, perhaps joining the club in Dunedin will help.

[Ice222]

Lol well they're labeled as such :dunno:. Never kept them myself and 0 interest in guppies so never looked them up in detail.

[Snowman]

To me it sounds like the carbon could be the problem, it can only soak up so much then it will start releasing it back into the tank, twice weekly water changes should be sufficient so scrap the carbon. Persevere with it as it will get easier, only trouble you may find is you might end up wanting more and bigger tanks.

[wordhappy]

Wow, thanks everyone for your comments! :love: If only I had known all this, when I bought the fish! I did do a reasonable amount of reading before I bought the fish, and thought from my reading that a 38L tank would be fine for such tiny fish. Obviously now I know better, and now it is also too late as I have spent the hundreds of dollars (literally!) I might have spent on a better tank, on caring for the fish in their undersized tank.

They don't exactly prepare you for fish ownership at the LFS... kinda unethical really. But then it wouldn't be great business acumen to deter clients from purchasing something you stock as a mainstay of your business either. Especially when you know they'll be back every five mins for treatments etc... :nilly: :roll:

lol @ Coldwater Guppies pics... I will definitely be getting new stuff for the filter as I also suspect this could be a culprit. The other suspect is the calico fish, I'm convinced the little blighter is jinxed - nothing has gone right with the tank since it arrived (could be any number of reasons including it being goldfish number three and overcrowding the tiny tank). I'll also ease up on the StressCoat+.

Oh and Wardley's goldfish crumbles? The fish don't like them, can't eat them (seems their mouths are too small) and I don't know why everyone online seems to think they're so crash hot actually.

And I'm hanging in there cos I've grown attached to the little dudes (sadly the blackmoor was my favourite, he was very friendly and liked to hand-feed, would swim towards you when you talked to him, etc) - but I just like the little critters. 8)

[wordhappy]

Oh, and the tank is a Marine Master AR450RGC if that means anything to anyone. :smln:

[the new guy]

I found that the sources of the goldfish make a big difference. we have goldfish and i have found that the fish i bought from a smaller LFS that buy them from a supplier up north have all died on us. but the fish we got from redwood aquatics are fine(and heaps cheaper too)! they breed all their own goldfish as far as i know all we do is put water conditioner in the tank and nothing else

[aquariumbeginner32]

Ugh I'm feeling the same way right now. It just seems to be one thing after another.... what I thought wouldn't be an expensive hobby is turning out to be very expensive. I think I've already spent about $600 I don't want to give up. I really love the fish.