Quoth "Mary" on Wed, 10 Mar 2004
05:25:48 -0500,

Anyway, I have a two month old 12-gallon tank (yep I'm a newbie) and all
I've got is one goldfish in it. When I woke up this morning, there was a
cloudy white substance on the bottom that's a bit see-through.

Can you get a picture?

Regarding the food theory, how much and how often do you feed?

12 gallons should be fine for fantails and such. The long-bodied
singletails would eventually need more swimming room.

The tank stays around 75 degrees w/o a heater, it is an eclipse system,
biowheel seems to function fine.

I hope "seems to function fine" is based on water tests e.g. 0 ammonia,
0 nitrite.

Without any better idea of what the white stuff is, my impulse would be
to remove as much of it as possible. I'd be wary of doing another water
change if I'd just done one, but I might try to use a slow siphon to
suck the white stuff off and then top the tank up with treated water at
about 75 degrees.

With a goldfish, I would also add a little salt; two tablespoons of
aquarium salt or any pure salt (NO idiozed salt, NO anti-caking agents:
table salt is out, but pickling and canning salt works as does kosher
salt. read labels). Big chunky salts like aquarium salt, add to a small
covered container with holes in the lid (the cups pet stores use for
bettas are great for this). Fine granular salts, dissolve in tank water,
slowly -- you don't want the fish to swim into a high-salt area, and you
don't want to add salt directly to the filter. "Light salt" is often
used as a sort of fish tonic with goldies -- small amounts can't hurt
and may help when we can't identify the problem.


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Only know that there is no spork.