Any idea what's up with my goldie?

[Colin_T]

When I was keeping fancy goldfish (fantails), I had them in tanks with rainbowfish and kept the pH around 7.6, and the GH about 200ppm. The water temperature dropped to 18C in winter and got to 30C+ in summer.

I fed the fish on goldfish pellets, frozen marine mix (prawn, fish & squid blended up), brineshrimp, daphnia, mysis shrimp, prawn. I also had duckweed on the surface and the fish ate that.

I did a big water change and gravel clean every week. I cleaned the filters once a month.
My tap water was dechlorinated and modified a week before it was used. By modified I added mineral salts (Rift Lake water conditioner) to increase the GH to 200ppm.

I dewormed all my fish when I got them and this usually dealt with gill flukes too.

 

[foxgirl158]

When I was keeping fancy goldfish (fantails), I had them in tanks with rainbowfish and kept the pH around 7.6, and the GH about 200ppm. The water temperature dropped to 18C in winter and got to 30C+ in summer.

I fed the fish on goldfish pellets, frozen marine mix (prawn, fish & squid blended up), brineshrimp, daphnia, mysis shrimp, prawn. I also had duckweed on the surface and the fish ate that.

I did a big water change and gravel clean every week. I cleaned the filters once a month.
My tap water was dechlorinated and modified a week before it was used. By modified I added mineral salts (Rift Lake water conditioner) to increase the GH to 200ppm.

I dewormed all my fish when I got them and this usually dealt with gill flukes too.

Ok, thank you so much. I don’t have the option to feed them all the fancy foods, I can probably get one other thing to feed them. What do you recommend? I’m trying to do a water change/gravel vac every week, but sometimes it’s two weeks. Other than that, I really don’t know what else to do.

 

[Colin_T]

Check the GH. You can do this by contacting the water company by website or telephone.

Either get marine mix or marine green mix, (marine green has more plant matter), from a pet shop. Or get some frozen prawn/ shrimp from a fishing/ bait shop or from the seafood department at a supermarket. Keep them frozen. Each day you take out one prawn and defrost it. Then remove the head, shell and gut (thin black tube) and throw these bits away. Use a pair of scissors to cut the remaining prawn into small pieces and offer a few bits at a time. When the fish are no longer racing up to the food, stop feeding and remove uneaten food.

Wash scissors and hands with warm soapy water and the fish are fed for the night. You can give them dry food before the frozen food or dry food in the morning and frozen at night.

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If you have room in the back yard, you can set up some plastic containers with fresh water in. Add some leaves from a deciduous tree like an oak tree. Leave the water for a few weeks and you will get mozzie larvae in the containers. Use a fine mesh fish net to scoop them out, rinse under tap water and feed to the fish.

You can also put some live daphnia in these containers and let them breed. Then scoop some out and add to the tank.

 

[Colin_T]

What’s the very best filter for a goldfish tank?

I had undergravel filters in most of my tanks. Use whatever filter you can get, undergravel, air operated sponge, power filter, whatever is available.