Some simple yet effective ideas will help maintain goldfish health and save the keeper's time and expense.
The Environment for Goldfish
The ideal environment for goldfish should have ten gallons of water for each fish. Also a large surface area increases oxygenation of the water. For large goldfish, a pond is more appropriate.
Goldfish like to hide at times, so appropriate plants and decorations can be used, but any object in the water should not have any sharp edges. This may seem odd, but despite their scales, goldfish can graze themselves very slightly and the wound become infected almost unnoticed, occasionally creating apparently mysterious deaths.
This is one of the reasons why shells and coral are not ideally suited to goldfish environments; the other reason is that despite any scrubbing or smoothing, they also collect decaying food particles and so affect the water.
Goldfish need their environment to be temperate, normally between sixty-five and sixty-eight degrees fahrenheit or eighteen to twenty degrees centigrade. Tanks near draughts will become too cold, while being too close to external heat reduces oxygen in the water.
Having a thermometer and checking it every time the tank is viewed is a good idea, as an advance warning of any potential issues.
A filter will be needed and if opting for a minimum approach, then a biological filter will be suitable. Water testing kits to test pH levels are a worthwhile investment to detect invisible changes that will affect the health of the goldfish.
Appropriate Feeding Levels
Goldfish like to constantly graze on food and are omnivorous, meaning that they will eat both plant and animal matter. The level of food given to the goldfish needs some regulation by the keeper because too much food means:
- excess waste and hence more cleaning required,
- decaying food sinks eventually sinks to the bottom of the pond or tank, negatively affects water quality, rots and creates disease.
Changing the Water
A good way to change the water is to change it more regularly and use a staged approach, taking between twenty and fifty per cent each time and using the apporpriate stages, so that a twenty per cent change means changing the water through five stages.
Some experimentation may be appropriate. This staged approach has the benefits of not having to remove the fish at all and making less radical change to the water itself.
The water used needs to be dechlorinated. Leaving tap water stood for one and ideally two days is suitable in most instances.
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