Gold Fish Care Basics

Overview of Goldfish:

Common and fancy goldfish are Asian Carp, Carassius auratus. They have been bred in the Orient for over a thousand years, and in Europe for over a hundred years to provide all of the colors and shapes available to hobbyists today.

Goldfish are a temperate fish found in cool streams, lakes, and ponds throughout Asia and part of eastern Europe, though all the specimens found in the hobby today are captive bred. Goldfish can be easy to care for, however, they do require some care. Given proper care and a good, healthy environment, goldfish can sometimes live nearly 50 years!

Goldfish Equipment & Maintenance:

To keep a goldfish healthy, remember to provide them with plenty of clean, cool water.

Your goldfish's temperature should never rise above 74° Fahrenheit (about 23.5° Celsius), and ideally should remain between 65° and 68° F (18° and 20° C) so you will need a thermometer. Keeping a goldfish above 72° F (about 22.5° C) for long periods of time will result in Oxygen deprivation, which can cause nerve damage, heart damage, and can seriously hamper the immune system, making them more susceptible to many diseases, from easily treatable Ick to nearly untreatable swim bladder infections.

Keep your goldfish in a fish tank no smaller than a 10 gallon (about 38 liter), and make sure that a minimum of 6 gallons (23 liters) of the space in that fish tank is dedicated to each goldfish (each goldfish should have 6-8 gallons or more (roughly 23-30 liters or more) space in the goldfish aquarium). A 10 gallon fish tank is really only suitable for one goldfish.

This will provide sufficient space for your goldfish, so he can remain healthy, and this will allow the aquarium to help you keep healthy goldfish.

Goldfish should never be kept in a fish bowl.

Perform your weekly 10-15% water changes, so that your goldfish always has clean water and so that any waste that is not processed by the aquarium filter is removed.

Your goldfish will need a filter to keep the water from becoming toxic, and you will need to keep the filter in good condition. When selecting a filter, if you have fancy goldfish, make sure that the filter will not produce excessive current in your fish tank, and this will make it difficult for the fancy goldfish to swim.

Goldfish Food & Care:

Remember that your goldfish is an omnivorous (eats anything) scavenger, so provide him with a varied and high carbohydrate diet. Many goldfish foods are available on the market today, and most frozen fish foods are also appropriate, provided you do not feed meaty foods too often.

Goldfish have large appetites, but they also graze for food constantly. Don't let their 'mock hunger' and grousing around for food fool you into over feeding them. Your fish should be able to consume all the food you offer within two minutes of feeding. If there is food in the aquarium after this time has elapsed, this will contribute to poor water quality and make your goldfish more susceptible to disease.

You will only need to feed your goldfish once a day. If you feed more than once a day you will increase the waste your fish is producing and will also increase the risk of over feeding, so it becomes more important that you are performing your weekly 10-15% water changes and all necessary filter maintenance. Providing a proper diet will increase your goldfish's life expectancy and bolster their immune system.

Goldfish, like almost any fish, are aware that they are prey animals. In order to feel comfortable, they need to have lots of hiding places. Goldfish do not seem to be too particular about their cover, however, you do want to make sure that you do not use any sharp or roughdecorations that your goldfish may get hurt on, especially if you are keeping any fancy goldfish that have impaired vision.

Like most other fish, they are more comfortable and will come out more and be more active if you can provide them with 50-75% cover - this means you should make half to three fourths of your tank space hiding places. Providing sufficient cover will reduce stress and therefore improve your goldfish's immune system, reducing chance of disease.

Goldfish Companionship:

Goldfish can, like most fish, be kept with fish with similar care requirements and temperament. However, this very quickly limits you to other goldfish - fortunately, there are many different and interesting fancy goldfish to choose from.

When looking for a companion for your goldfish, remember to select goldfish with similar handicaps. If their disabilities are too different, it is very likely that some will out compete the others for food, and you can have a goldfish starve to death while another gets fat right before your eyes in your fish tank.

Finally:

Remember, goldfish are beautiful living creatures. It is the responsibility of the pet owner to care for their pet and provide a healthy environment. So give your goldfish space, clean, cool water, plenty of hiding places, and high-quality, high-carbohydrate foods and he should be a good companion for a long time.

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"Until we found your common sense approach to fish care, we were submitting them to ongoing jeopardy. Shortly after reading your web site, we emptied our existing tanks, put most of the chemicals in storage, and started from scratch. So far, so good, as the fish seem to be reveling in the change. Your guidelines provided for a new aquarium set up are right on the mark. It got to the point we just knew the information we were getting locally was wrong! We just didn't have the right ones to move forward!
Thank you very much for your free information as it would easily be worth the price of any book. We never could find one this good! We can we see you are very committed to this hobby. We are very thankful that you have taken the time to help other beginners."

Mark Morrison, Saskatoon, Saskatchwan, Canada

August 7, 2004

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"Cool. Thanks for the advice, its good to find someone who will give you straight forward facts without trying to throw in a sales pitch with it, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure you do..."

Shane Eack

October 3, 1997

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10 Gallon Aquarium: Dimensions, Size, Setup Ideas, Kit Tips

Source: http://www.aquariumcarebasics.com/

A 10 gallon aquarium is a very common size and popular choice for the beginning aquarist. Most aquarium hobbyists setup a 10 gallon aquarium as a starter freshwater tropical fish tank. Other 10 gallon aquarium ideas include a freshwater shrimp tank for Amano Shrimp, Red Cherry Shrimp,Ghost Shrimp, or a Nerite Snail tank.

A note about Goldfish: A 10 gallon aquarium is not the best aquarium sizefor Goldfish. Keeping Goldfish in a small tank like a 10 gallon aquarium can lead to water quality issues very quickly and be harmful or even fatal to the fish. But since my children won two small Goldfish at a street fair, and in the moment I was pressed for physical space, I had to temporarily keep the two small Goldfish in a 10 gallon aquarium while room was made for a larger tank. Soon thereafter, the Goldfish were moved to a larger tank with more water capacity, so it all worked out. But just be aware that a 10 gallon aquarium is really not the best choice to keep Goldfish over the long term.

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A 10 gallon aquarium kit is almost always on sale at the local fish store as well as at the chain stores, and are also always available online. The 10 gallon aquarium size makes it easy enough to setup, but because low water volume and limited surface area, a 10 gallon aquarium may be challenging for beginners to maintain and care for over the long run.

A 10 Gallon Aquarium Kit Can Be Good For Beginners

10 gallon aquarium has some advantages for beginners. A relatively inexpensive 10 gallon aquarium kit contains nearly everything needed to get a small tank up and running. And over time, as hobbyists graduate to larger tanks, the old 10 gallon aquarium setup can serve as an extra tank to temporarily keep fry or serve as a quarantine tank should fish become ill.

There are many 10 gallon aquarium starter kits on the market today. Some hobbyists feel that getting aquarium kit at the local fish store may be an advantage because they believe they may be getting greater access to shop keepers with aquarium knowledge. Other hobbyists feel that getting an aquarium kit at one of the bigger chains is better because they may be getting a better deal on price. And still others opt out of the brick and mortar option all together by shopping online and having it delivered. Regardless of where and how a hobbyist gets a kit, keep in mind that all kits are not the same and aquarium kit contents may vary by brand and price range.

The 10 Gallon Aquarium Kit Is Not Standard…So Shop Around

On the lower-end of the price range, a 10 gallon aquarium kit may include:

• One glass 10 gallon glass aquarium;
• One plastic tank cover with a socket for an incandescent light bulb;
• 3.One small plastic in-tank aquarium filter and some sample filter media;
• A few feet of air hose;
• Some aquarium gravel;
• A small sample of fish food;
• Samples of aquarium dechlorinator and/or water conditioner; and
• An information booklet.

On the higher-end of the price range, a 10 gallon aquarium kit may include:

• One glass 10 gallon glass aquarium;
• One plastic aquarium hood and tank cover with a florescent light bulb;
• One small HOB aquarium power filter with a sample filter cartridge;
• One small 50 watt aquarium heater;
• One small aquarium thermometer;
• Some aquarium gravel;
• One small fish net;
• A small sample of fish food;
• Samples of aquarium dechlorinator and/or water conditioner; and
• An information booklet.

An important accessory that is generally not included in a starter kit is an aquarium stand. A filled 10 gallon aquarium weights about 111 pounds, so make sure the aquarium stand is sturdy and can handle the combined weight of the water and gravel. Tables and stools are not strong or sturdy enough as their legs that can be kicked out easily. The best bet is to invest in an aquarium stand made for the aquarium size being purchased.

With an aquarium kit it’s important to remember that a starter kit is just that…a place to start. In the end, aquarium hobbyists will need more than the accessories included in an aquarium kit to maintain a successful and healthy tank over the long run. So with buying kits, shop around and try to get the most value for your buck as possible. Along those lines, it may even be a better idea to go a la carte and purchase items separately to get upgraded accessories for a few dollars more than the total price of a kit.

Peter's Fish Tank - Episode 1 - 1350 Gallon Tank Overview

How to set up a Saltwater Aquarium

Aquarium Setup - Aquascape - Step by Step and Final Product - Live Planted Fish Tank

Getting Started in the Reef Aquarium Hobby

Source: http://www.tfhmagazine.com/saltwater-reef/feature-articles/getting-started-in-the-reef-aquarium-hobby.htm

Adding corals may be an intimidating endeavor, but our resident reefer breaks the process down so even novice fishkeepers can take on the challenge of keeping their own little patch of coral reef.

If you already have a marine fish-only system or are completely new to the marine aquarium hobby and want to jump right into reefs, there are obviously quite a few things to learn before you begin. A reef aquarium is by no means just a regular saltwater aquarium with some corals added in.

For one thing, you’ll have to pay much more attention to water quality than when dealing only with fish. You will also have to provide substantially more lighting as well as strong circulation, and providing foods suitable for corals can often make a big difference in how successful you are. I’d like to go over some basics here in order to give you an idea of what’s required to keep corals alive and healthy. While the details of setting up a reef aquarium and long-term maintenance can (and does) fill whole books, this should be enough to get you thinking and headed in the right direction.

Water Quality

Regardless of the type of aquarium you have or intend to set up, maintaining water quality is of the utmost importance. This includes such things as keeping the salinity, temperature, pH, and other parameters within acceptable ranges, which is vital to the survival of livestock. As mentioned, this is especially important if you want to keep living corals, as it will be absolutely imperative that you keep the water in an aquarium close enough in character to natural seawater to keep them alive and well. Mixing up some synthetic sea salt and water is definitely just the very beginning of water quality maintenance when it comes to reef aquariums.

Salinity

Maintaining an appropriate salinity means the water in a reef aquarium must contain an appropriate amount of dissolved salt, which means you must make sure that the right amount of synthetic salt mix is used when making up new seawater. This is typically checked by testing the density of the water, as it becomes increasingly dense as more salt mix is added. To do this, you’ll need a hydrometer (a device that measures the water density) of some sort to test the salinity and make sure it stays in the ideal range of 1.023 to 1.027. If it gets too far above or below this range, any corals in the tank will die no matter how perfect everything else may be. The same can also be said for many other aspects of water quality, for that matter.

Temperature

When it comes to temperature, you’ll have to make sure the water stays in the 72° to 84°F range and doesn’t change much from day to day or day to night. While temperatures may get a little higher or lower than this in reef environments, many corals will die if temperatures rise or fall a few degrees over or under this range; in fact, you’re even taking chances by letting temperatures reach either end of the suggested maximum range, so this is best avoided.

The optimal range is actually somewhere around 75° to 81°F, which is what you should really try for, as this range is perfectly suitable for corals. Temperatures around reefs also change very slowly, typically over periods of weeks or even months, and usually not very much from daytime to nighttime. Stability is important for keeping corals.

Nitrogenous Compounds

Fishes and other organisms in aquariums give off ammonia as a waste product, and it’s also produced by the decay of uneaten foods. It’s deadly to most organisms, even at low concentrations, so you will need enough live rock and/or live sand to be sure that your aquarium has adequate biofiltration—sufficient bacterial colonies that have the unique ability to use the ammonia as food.

This bacteria-based filtration can keep the concentration of ammonia at zero (or at least very close to that) via the metabolic activities of microorganisms that occur naturally in porous rocks and sand. Millions upon millions of different bacteria live in such places and will suck ammonia right out of the water about as fast as it is produced. It’s then converted to nitrite, which is then converted to relatively benign nitrate by yet another suite of beneficial bacteria, and the nitrate can then be removed in various ways such as regular water changes. This entails simply removing some of the old water from the aquarium and replacing it with new seawater made up with quality synthetic sea salt and filtered water.

Calcium and pH

The concentration of calcium, the pH, and the alkalinity of the aquarium’s water are particularly important for corals, too, especially those that produce hard skeletons. Thus, all three of these must be maintained at acceptable levels. Corals use calcium from seawater to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons or skeletal components, so you’ll have to make sure they have access to plenty of calcium if you expect them to stay healthy and to grow. Coral health and skeletal growth are also strongly affected by the water’s pH, and the pH is strongly affected by the water’s alkalinity.

Alkalinity is the ability (or lack of ability) of your aquarium water to resist notable changes in pH from day to night and day to day, which are unwanted because you must strive for stability. Each of these can be controlled through various means that you should research.

Keeping calcium concentrations in the range of 400 to 450 ppm is optimal, but they can be a bit lower or higher. The pH should optimally be kept around 8.2 to 8.4, and alkalinity should be kept in the range of 7 to 12 dKH, though these may often go a little higher or lower. There are several ways to accomplish all of this without too much trouble, though. You can choose from using limewater (typically called kalkwasser) or two-part liquid additives, or even a specialized device called a calcium reactor. Every method has its own pros and cons, so you’ll need to do some homework and decide which one best suits your budget and schedule.

Nutrients

And lastly (with respect to water quality), you’ll also need to keep waterborne nutrients, particularly phosphorus, at minimal levels. Most corals come from areas where nutrients are available in the form of plankton and other particulate foods, but not dissolved in the water itself. Therefore, the concentration of dissolved nutrients on reefs, including various phosphates, is very low. As with the factors covered above, the presence of phosphates can also affect the production of calcium carbonate skeletal material by stony corals, and elevated phosphate levels can shut down its production completely.

In addition, phosphates also act as great fertilizers, but for all the wrong things. Elevated phosphate concentrations can quickly lead to the rapid growth of unwanted algae, which can really muck up an aquarium and even overgrow and kill corals. Avoid overfeeding your fishes, corals, and other livestock, as fish foods are the primary source for phosphates. You’ll also need to perform regular water changes, use a specialized filter called a protein skimmer, and harvest and remove algae as fast as it grows in the aquarium. And again, there are various options at your disposal, each of which has its own pros and cons—you’ll have to decide which is best for you.

Lighting

Almost every coral available to hobbyists will require lighting of higher quality and intensity than what is used over fish-only tanks. This is due to the fact that they have a population of symbiotic single-celled algae living inside their bodies, and these algae require the right light in the right amount in order to stay alive and keep their host coral alive. You’ll need a powerful lighting system with bulbs designed for this purpose.

The four basic types of reef aquarium lighting systems utilize VHO (very high output) fluorescent bulbs, PC (power compact) fluorescent bulbs, T-5 fluorescent bulbs, or MH (metal halide) bulbs, and many systems use some combination of these.Various systems also have different numbers and arrangements of bulbs.

Different types of symbiotic corals will need different amounts of light, as some can live under relatively low-intensity illumination while others need high-intensity illumination. However, even the corals that can withstand low light levels still require hefty lighting. Of course, the same sort of setup might be considered moderate in intensity over a much shallower tank (like a 30-gallon), but totally unacceptable over a much wider/deeper tank (like a 150-gallon). This is because light intensity drops very quickly with increasing distance from the bulbs and with increasing water depth. Likewise, four VHO or PC bulbs over a 55-gallon tank could be considered moderate intensity but high intensity over a smaller tank and low intensity over a wider/deeper tank. Get the idea? Your requirements will ultimately depend on the tank size/depth and what types of corals you intend to keep.

Circulation/Current

Corals are animals and require oxygen to stay alive, but unlike fishes and such, they lack any sort of gills or blood and rely on the absorption of oxygen directly from the water to survive. This means they’ll need a constant supply of oxygenated seawater, which is brought to them by currents. They also rely on currents to bring them food, to keep sediment from settling on top of them and smothering them, and to blow away any wastes they may give off. Water movement is therefore very important in reef aquariums.

Some species of coral need much more or much less current than others, but in general they all require considerably more water motion than what is seen in typical non-reef aquariums. Fish aquariums may have nothing more than a couple of air stones to create currents, and/or some sort of power filter hanging off the back, but in a reef aquarium you’ll need to use pumps of some sort to keep the water churning and to produce turbulent currents.

In general, more than one pump is used, and these pumps should be positioned in such a way that their effluent streams intersect and create mixing currents that move around the tank, rather than always blowing a linear stream at a single point in the tank. You can also buy electronic devices that act like timers, switching different pumps on and off in sequences that create mixing currents, or you could get even fancier and use a surge device that periodically dumps water into the aquarium to create larger waves.

Feeding

Corals may occasionally capture a bit of fish food or some of the sparse plankton that can be found in healthy reef aquariums, and many hobbyists provide little or nothing else for their corals. However, providing food specifically for corals can certainly improve your chances of keeping them healthy and growing. There are three basic ways to do this—you can hand-feed them, you can add some sort of store-bought plankton substitute product, and/or you can set up your aquarium in a way that provides them with natural foods generated in a deep bed of sand within the tank itself or in a refugium.

Many corals, those with large mouths and/or feeding tentacles in particular, can actually be given food by hand. If provided, they’ll eat small-sized meaty foods such as bits of squid, crab, shrimp, clams, etc., and big corals can even take small fishes. They’ll also take smaller items like brine shrimp and bloodworms.

The easiest way to feed the smaller foods is to find a big syringe without a needle at a local drugstore and then fill it with some food and tank water. You can then direct a little squirt of food-laden water at a coral and let it capture the bits. If the end of the syringe happens to be too small in diameter to work with, you can always clip it down with some scissors to make the opening bigger. Also note that it’s a good idea to turn off all the pumps when you do this so the bits aren’t blown away too quickly.

If you try this, you’ll find that any coral with relatively large tentacles will quickly grab anything you squirt into them with your syringe, but many other animals will grab the food as well. Anemones, mushroom corals, button polyps, and even corals that have small tentacles will take what they can get when the opportunity arises. However, there are some exceptions, and it’s typically a matter of trial and error figuring out what foods a given coral will accept.

Likewise, you should occasionally provide other types of corals, those with small tentacles and mouths, with some sort of fine particulate food. Many such corals capture plankton of various sorts and sizes, and there are a number of products you can use to provide them with the real thing or a suitable substitute.

Or, if you want to provide your corals with a supply of live foods generated within the aquarium, you can set up the tank with a deep sand bed (DSB) that is full of organisms. This entails using at least 2 or 3 inches of fine aragonite sand to fill the bottom of the tank, and then stocking the sand with various sand-dwelling critters. The organisms that live in the sand bed can become a food source for your corals, but more importantly they can also produce eggs, larvae, etc., which are released into the water and can be captured and eaten by various corals. Another way to provide live foods is to add a refugium, which is basically a tank that is plumbed to (but separated from) the main tank, where live foods such as macroalgae and zooplankton can be cultured.

Summary

While this short article only provides a short overview, it’s clear that the successful caring for corals takes considerable know-how, equipment/supplies, and attention. Nevertheless, a reef aquarium can definitely be well worth the money and time spent when it comes to enjoyment—so long as you do things right. Do your homework, find out as much as you can about the various points I’ve brought up, and get started the right way if you choose to get into reef aquariums.