Jan Sacharuk
September 23rd 03, 01:00 AM
We have some friends that moved into a house where the owners were
moving several thousand kilometres away, so they didn't take their
fish with them. We've never raised goldfish before, but we didn't want
the fish to die, and we certainly liked the idea of having a tank.
The tank has two commons and two veiltails. When we got it, the algal
growth was so thick that you could hardly see through the glass,
everything was green, the water was hazy, and the filter was
clogged. The fish just sat at the bottom of the tank, unless they were
being fed.
We cleaned out the tank, saved a quarter tank of the old water, and
scrubbed everything out. We refilled the tank, added the old water
that we saved, and transferred the fish in. Over the course of the
weekend, we put in a couple new decorations, a water stone, and put a
new filter unit on. Because we have 4 fish in a 15 gallon tank, it was
suggested that if we can't go immediately to a new tank (which we
can't...there's just no room or money at the moment) we should
increase the filtration. So, we've got 45 gallons of filtration on a
15 gallon tank. We'll have a new 20 gallon tank in a few months, we
hope. We'll probably get some plants next week.
We think that the old owners were pretty lousy. We've been reading
furiously trying to catch up on what we don't know. The fish show no
outward signs of disease or distress, except our littlest fish, a
veiltail, seems to have a small problem with his mouth. He can still
get food in, and it doesn't appear to be a fungal growth; it doesn't
match the descriptions. However, we're still kind of worried about his
mouth. It looks like it's slightly damaged on the right side, and
doesn't provide a perfectly clear path into his mouth. In all other
ways, however, he seems normal and fairly happy (especially when we
added the airstone. That perked everyone up.) Should I worry, or just
keep an eye on him for now?
Oh, and while I've read that keeping commons with breeds like
veiltails may be detrimental for the veiltails because they aren't
aggressive enough, the little veiltail ("Jean", like the Canadian PM -
because of his damaged mouth :) seems smarter than the others, and
always gets to the food first. Our biggest fish is also a veiltail,
and he's just more aggressive than everyone else. We'll seperate them
later so they can all have more water, but over my exceedingly short
experience, I haven't seen any problems yet.
JS
--
========================= ========================
Jan Sacharuk Member in Good Standing of The Discordian Solidarity
Turn on viewing of the X-Geek-Code header to see my Geek Code
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"This is a dumb world. In my world, there are people in chains,
and we can ride them like ponies." - Evil Willow, BtVS
moving several thousand kilometres away, so they didn't take their
fish with them. We've never raised goldfish before, but we didn't want
the fish to die, and we certainly liked the idea of having a tank.
The tank has two commons and two veiltails. When we got it, the algal
growth was so thick that you could hardly see through the glass,
everything was green, the water was hazy, and the filter was
clogged. The fish just sat at the bottom of the tank, unless they were
being fed.
We cleaned out the tank, saved a quarter tank of the old water, and
scrubbed everything out. We refilled the tank, added the old water
that we saved, and transferred the fish in. Over the course of the
weekend, we put in a couple new decorations, a water stone, and put a
new filter unit on. Because we have 4 fish in a 15 gallon tank, it was
suggested that if we can't go immediately to a new tank (which we
can't...there's just no room or money at the moment) we should
increase the filtration. So, we've got 45 gallons of filtration on a
15 gallon tank. We'll have a new 20 gallon tank in a few months, we
hope. We'll probably get some plants next week.
We think that the old owners were pretty lousy. We've been reading
furiously trying to catch up on what we don't know. The fish show no
outward signs of disease or distress, except our littlest fish, a
veiltail, seems to have a small problem with his mouth. He can still
get food in, and it doesn't appear to be a fungal growth; it doesn't
match the descriptions. However, we're still kind of worried about his
mouth. It looks like it's slightly damaged on the right side, and
doesn't provide a perfectly clear path into his mouth. In all other
ways, however, he seems normal and fairly happy (especially when we
added the airstone. That perked everyone up.) Should I worry, or just
keep an eye on him for now?
Oh, and while I've read that keeping commons with breeds like
veiltails may be detrimental for the veiltails because they aren't
aggressive enough, the little veiltail ("Jean", like the Canadian PM -
because of his damaged mouth :) seems smarter than the others, and
always gets to the food first. Our biggest fish is also a veiltail,
and he's just more aggressive than everyone else. We'll seperate them
later so they can all have more water, but over my exceedingly short
experience, I haven't seen any problems yet.
JS
--
========================= ========================
Jan Sacharuk Member in Good Standing of The Discordian Solidarity
Turn on viewing of the X-Geek-Code header to see my Geek Code
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"This is a dumb world. In my world, there are people in chains,
and we can ride them like ponies." - Evil Willow, BtVS