Gumtree Fish Rescue - London Area (uk)

[Nick16]

it will be better for them if you do do a gravel vac. what are your water stats? i take it you test them?

i gravel vac 2x a week.

 

[jerrygerl]

at last test the water ph was at 7.

that really is great news that a weekly gravel clean will not stress them out.

i will also adopt the 2 weekly gravel clean, until i get my larger tank then i will drop it to once a week.

again thanks every for all your helpful and constructive advice

 

[Nick16]

do you test for ammonia, nitrates and nitrites in your tank? this is a must.

 

[jerrygerl]

i'm embarrassed to say that no i haven't tested for ammonia and nitrates. i will do after tonight however as i will pick up a test kit on my way home fromer work

can you please tell me what level they need to be at, and if i find they are to high. what is the best way to bring them down to acceptable levels. is it a water change?

 

[Truck]

ammonia needs to be at 0 always,
nitrIte needs to be at 0 always
nitrAtes from about 10-20 is acceptable any more and that can start to harm fish, when they go above this level perform a water change.

 

[Schmill]

ammonia needs to be at 0 always,
nitrIte needs to be at 0 always
nitrAtes from about 10-20 is acceptable any more and that can start to harm fish, when they go above this level perform a water change.

Well, 2 out of 3 isn't bad

As said above, ammonia and nitrItes need to be zero, anything more than that and you need to do a water change.
You should also test your tapwater to find the readings for that, and doing so will also give you a baseline for your nitrAte.

NitrAte levels don't harm fish until they get VERY VERY high compared to the other 2 readings, (we're talking well into the hundreds or thousands here), but it should be kept to within 10 or 20 ppm of what your tap water reading is, which is possibly where the confusion has come from above.
The reason you still do weekly water changes despite this massive 'safe area' is because there are other thigns that we don't test for that you don't want to build up in the water, and equally you don't want to stress your fish when you DO do a water change, (which will happen if the tap water is to different to that already in the tank).
So for example, my tap water comes from the tap at 40ppm NitrAte, so as long as my tank stays under 80 I am happy, (why 80, not 50 or 60? well, my nitrate test only has markers for 40, then the next one is at 80 ). To be honest though with weekly(ish) water changes my nitrAte doesn't ever seem to shift from 40 anyway

 

[andywg]

Does anyone actually have any evidence of goldfish being messier than any other fish of a comparable size? I recall reading that over 80% of ammonia/ammonium given off by the fish is as apart of osmoregulation and not decomposition of the amount eaten.

 

[Schmill]

Does anyone actually have any evidence of goldfish being messier than any other fish of a comparable size? I recall reading that over 80% of ammonia/ammonium given off by the fish is as apart of osmoregulation and not decomposition of the amount eaten.

See my previous post here, (yes I finally found it!), it's got a couple of useful links in it.
Goldfish Care

 

[Truck]

well arent the toxins waste? and isnt waste often classed as mess?

 

[andywg]

Does anyone actually have any evidence of goldfish being messier than any other fish of a comparable size? I recall reading that over 80% of ammonia/ammonium given off by the fish is as apart of osmoregulation and not decomposition of the amount eaten.

See my previous post here, (yes I finally found it!), it's got a couple of useful links in it.
Goldfish Care

Wikipedia and the pdf are unsupported, so there is still no evidence that goldfish are any messier than any other fish of the same size.

And on the wiki point about them having no stomach, stomachs are missing in many fish (the list includes lampreys, hagfishes, chimaeras, lungfishes, some gobies, minnows (Cyprinidae), suckers (Catostromidae), pipefish, wrasses and some of Families Atherinidae, and Cichlidae).

This is believed to be due to the lack of the fishes' need to produce hydrochloric acid and in many of the predatory stomach-less fish there exists an expandable area of intestine where large morsels can be broken down (Biology of Fishes 2nd Edition, Bond p. 437). Despite the lack of a stomach, in 1969 Lane and Jackson found that it took Carassius auratus (the goldfish) takes between 60 and 72 hours for the digestive tract to completely empty at a temperature of 20 degrees C. This is towards the higher end of a number of fish listed at Table 25-2 of the aforementioned book (p. 439).

As a result of the above I see nothing that indicates that a goldfish will cause any greater pollution of the water than another fish of a similar size.



To truck:

My point is that any fish living in the same water will be doing roughly the same passive and active uptaking and releasing of ions at the gills by way of maintaining the internal salt levels (the fish give off ammonium as part of a way of preventing sodium and chloride from being permanently lost to the water which has a much lower concentration in a process known as osmoregulation).

Most FW fish maintain an internal salt level (more correctly osmotic concentration) of slightly less than 300mOsml/kg. As a result of this, any fish of roughly the same size can be reasonably expected to be releasing a similar amount of ammonium into the water through osmoregulation which is the cause of most ammonia/ammonium in the water and not urine or faecal matter breaking down.

Most people claim that goldfish are messy, but the truth of the matter is that most of the "mess" released into the aquarium is simply not visible and as explained above can be considered comparable to any other fish of a similar size. As such I wonder where the statement that goldfish are messy has originated from and whether there is any scientific paper which points towards this.

 

[Schmill]

excellent, cheers Andy, a good read

I guess in that case it just comes down to the fact that most people think of 'goldfish' as the small fish they have in a bowl, not as the carp related LARGE fish that like living in large bodies of water sucha as large tanks or ponds

 

[andywg]

Indeed, but are we mis-informing people making goldfish out to be some sort of huge waste producing machine when in reality they produce the same as any other fish of a similar size?

Should we merely point out the potential size and ensure they have what would normally be considered adequate filtration for that tank size?

 

[Schmill]

From reading your previous post it would appear so. I must admit I had always been told that goldies were big waste producers, and had therefore just 'passed it on', but it does make you wonder if it is all just a big ol' "wives tale"

 

[andywg]

a big ol' "wives tale"

You sir, are u83r br4v3!

Andy would never use the phrase "big ol' wives". That way leads to much trouble and lots of moaning...



What's that you say? On my head? Why yes, it is a thumb print, how observant of you!

 

[Schmill]

With my significant other just over on the other sofa I was very careful to make sure that "wives tale" was within the quotes, whilst the "big ol'" was outside, otherwise I'm afraid the computer may have been broken by the flying shoes...