Decorate Or Not?

[maniakk]

Hi all,

Might be a silly question but I currently have a 60 US Gallon tank with 36 length, 24 height, 16 width.

Im planning to stock up my tank with Oranda Goldfish, specifically Red Caps. I've asked some that have goldfishes it i should decorate the tank or not, and they have recommended me to keep the tank empty (as in no rocks, plants, anything whatsoever). I guess the question i want to ask is, are goldfish tanks usually kept empty or should i decorate?

Im planning to keep around 6-7 rep cap orandas in my tank.

*P.S. If theres anyone who has decorated or a planted tank with goldfish, please post them up.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Alasse]

I have fantails and they were in a decorated tank (and will be again soon, moving to another tank)

 

[Etrigan]

I would say decorate... that's a lot of tank to have nothing but fish in it.

maybe not too heavily but it would be more interesting to look at with some decor in it.

 

[symon_say]

Decorate, it will look a lot better.

 

[maniakk]

Wow Alasse, beautiful tank!!

I will probably try to decorate it a little then i guess.

 

[Myuu]

A tank that big with only fish in it would be boooooring. Get some big pieces of driftwood, have places for them to swim though, hide, etc. Although you might hae=ve some troubles in the plant department. Plants like CO2 rich water, but goldfish like oxygen rich water. I'm still experimenting with plants in my goldfish tank, I'm going to go to petco in the near future to get a couple bunches of elodea to see if I can get them to grow. Right now my goldfish tank has some sickly looking amazon swords, mostly because the one in my planted tropical tank reproduced and I had like, 7 in a 20 gallon.

Here's a video of my goldies: http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3B252BuVMU

You could also probably add dojo loaches with a tank that big, if you wanted to do a coldwater community.

 

[maniakk]

My friend is also thinking of doing the same thing, but he had already bought and stocked up his tank and its been running for almost a month.

Could he still say add rocks or sand to the tank?? I mean that would him having to take out the fish, decorating the tank and then putting the fish back in after a day or so? Would that kind of kill the cycle that's already taken place? Would this put unnecessary stress on the fish?

 

[Noahs ark6]

plant or decorate it. I got a planted goldfish tank and i've never had any trouble with goldfish.

 

[Skins]

My goldfish tank has slate, rocks, and some plants. I would say its not heavily decorated and the decor is placed so they can't get trapped in any way.
One thing to take care with is sharp edges on rocks or slate, they can quite easly catch themselves when they are all trying to get that one piece of food.

Keith.

 

[Myuu]

My friend is also thinking of doing the same thing, but he had already bought and stocked up his tank and its been running for almost a month.

Could he still say add rocks or sand to the tank?? I mean that would him having to take out the fish, decorating the tank and then putting the fish back in after a day or so? Would that kind of kill the cycle that's already taken place? Would this put unnecessary stress on the fish?

Do you mean switch the substrate out with something else or add sand/gravel to a bare bottom tank? If it's empty adding substrate while the fish are in there probably wouldn't be any more stressful than moving them. If you want to remove them from the tank while you work on it, you can get a five gallon bucket, fill it with tank water and put the fish in it with the filter. You don't want the fish to be in unfiltered water for very long. I've done it this way when I had to strip down a tank because it had been overrun with algae. Make sure the fish don't jump out, I smashed a cherry barb by kneeling on it. That... wasn't a fun experience DDD: Also, I would try to get the fish back in the tank as quickly as possible, leaving them in a bucket for a whole day might be stressful for the fish.

 

[maniakk]

My friend is also thinking of doing the same thing, but he had already bought and stocked up his tank and its been running for almost a month.

Could he still say add rocks or sand to the tank?? I mean that would him having to take out the fish, decorating the tank and then putting the fish back in after a day or so? Would that kind of kill the cycle that's already taken place? Would this put unnecessary stress on the fish?

Do you mean switch the substrate out with something else or add sand/gravel to a bare bottom tank? If it's empty adding substrate while the fish are in there probably wouldn't be any more stressful than moving them. If you want to remove them from the tank while you work on it, you can get a five gallon bucket, fill it with tank water and put the fish in it with the filter. You don't want the fish to be in unfiltered water for very long. I've done it this way when I had to strip down a tank because it had been overrun with algae. Make sure the fish don't jump out, I smashed a cherry barb by kneeling on it. That... wasn't a fun experience DDD: Also, I would try to get the fish back in the tank as quickly as possible, leaving them in a bucket for a whole day might be stressful for the fish.

No, he's just adding gravel/sand to a bare bottom tank. I think removing the fish while adding substrate would be a good idea as well, but the thing is he has an internal built in filter. So are there any other ways of keeping the bucket of fish filtered? I'm thinking it would take around 3 hours to add the substrate and kind of wait for the water to be a little clearer. Are there any other options i could go with to filter the bucket of fish?


Sorry to hear about your cherry barb - hopefully i wont do something like that as well.

 

[Myuu]

They'd probably be okay if it's only for three hours. When I stripped my tank down it took a lot longer (plus I needed somewhere to keep the filter anyway) >__>

Yeah, the cherry barb thing wasn't very fun. I discovered I smushed it when I was hosing out the tank in my yard, scraping all the god-awful black beard algae off the walls. My knee was about 6inches away from my face and it took me a while to see the big red spot on my knee...

 

[maniakk]

Ok thanks Myuu for your help.

Again, lets hope no more red spots on ur knee in the future.

 

[fishman102]

Definatly decorate the tank.

 

[FishFanatic13]

decorate the tank or might be less intresting