Disastrous Decorations

For St. Patrick's Day I decorated my tank with a castle house decoration in my 45 gallon tank.  The decoration had two swim through holes and was hollow. The swim through holes were smaller than my goldies in the tank and the edges weren't sharp enough to snag really delicate material so I didn't think it would be dangerous to put in my tank.  

After St Patty's day ended, I removed the fake pot of gold and round green marbles  from my tank. I really liked the castle house decoration because it added a whimsical touch to my aquarium and had decided to leave it in my tank.  

It had been over three weeks with the castle house decoration and no problems...

When I woke up this morning and turned the lights on my tanks I noticed that my 45 gallon tank looked emptier than usual. Being that it was morning and I am not a morning person under any circumstance, it took me a while to realize that I was looking at a tank with three fish (Sparrow, Armani, and Jimmy-Bean) swimming around when I should have been seeing four goldies swimming. Willow, my red and white Oranda, was missing.  

Instant panick. As my morning brain started to clear in its panicked state, I saw a tail sticking out of one of the swim through holes in the castle decoration.  My heart started to sink.

I started to lift the decoration, anticipating that Willow was surely dead, when she started to thrash. Operation house extraction commenced.  She was so thoroughly wedged in there that I had no choice but to hold the decoration still and wait for her to stop panicking. I took a firm but gentle grip in the middle of her tail fin and pulled her backwards. She immediately swam away from the decorations. A few of her scales were lost but she had no open wounds or sores. I was relieved that she made it out alive and with little damage. I think she might have a permanent scar where some of the scales were scraped off.

I immediately tossed the house decoration in the trash.  No decoration is worth the life of one of my fish.

Fish Tank Update

I've got four tanks! Two main goldfish tanks (36 & 45 gallons), a fry tank (3 gallons), and a betta tank (8 gallon). Check out the link below for a video of my tanks.

My last post was a video of Autumn laying eggs. I didn't realize any of them had been fertilized until a few days later when I saw small little fry swimming in my tank. I was able to carefully take ten of them out of the main tank.  

Overnight three of them didn't make it. When I looked at them closely I noticed they weren't developed properly. I had seven left and during week two I noticed two of them struggling to swim to the surface. I separated these two into an area with more shallow water hoping to reduce the water pressure on them and giving them a better chance to make it to the surface. 

Unfortunately, I left them unattended on my counter top for a minute while I was making a custom lid for their make shift holding tank. I came back to find my black and white cat, Duo, playing with them. 

So, I have five fry at week three heading into week four.  Each of the five remaining fry are doing well. Four of the five look like they have excellent potential to be beautiful butterfly goldfish. I hope at least one of these four is a purple butterfly goldfish like their Mama! 

The fifth fry was born with a single tail and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with him yet.

Prada, my tricolor butterfly, went home with a fellow goldfish enthusiast. Rio and Midget have also been rehomed. I had these three with three more in my 45 gallon and the bio load on the tank was just to much as each of the fish have grown so much over these past eight months.

Jewel, my red and white butterfly, had a mouth sore she got during a routine weekly water change a couple of weeks ago.  

I've been doing a 0.3% salt solution and she is almost completely healed.

I've ventured into the world of Betta tanks and have had Draco, a male red crown tail Betta for a month now. He lives in an eight gallon tank. 

Here is the link to the video. I hope you enjoy it!

http://youtu.be/IO87PE_8J8w

Autumn & Laying Eggs

Check out this video of Autumn laying eggs:

http://youtu.be/zRxifPxCxNM

My Fish: Then and Now

I've been super busy and haven't had the chance to update this blog recently; Sorry, folks!

Here are some photos of the growth of my fish. Some have gotten big, and others haven't noticeable grown.

Prada - Joined the family on October 2, 2013. Last photo taken January 10, 2014 (3 Months)

Then

Now

Rio:

Then 2013

Now 2014

Jimmy-Bean-

Then 2013

Now 2014

Armani-

Then 2013

Now 2014

Sparrow-

Then August 2013

Later November 2013

Now January 2014

Midget -

Then

Now

Autumn, Jewel, and Willow are mature adults and have not grown any.

In my last post I had three tanks (a 20, 36, & 45 gallon).  I purchased a 56 gal. Column Aquarium and put my 20 in storage (aka my closet).  After three weeks, I simply did not have the time to keep up the maintenance on all three tanks. My sinks don't work with water changers which means that I have to use the old bucket method and this is extremely time consuming. Unfortunately, I made the hard decision to get rid of my 56 gal. aquarium and focus on keeping a good maintenance schedule on my two remaining aquariums. This meant that I had to re-home Jack, Reaper, Ember, Gucci, and Deville. This was an extremely difficult decision as I love my goldfish but I felt that it was best given my hectic schedule to down size. I currently have nine fish total spread amongst two tanks (a 36 gal. and a 45 gal .). I know that as my fish continue to grow I will have an overstocking issue and will need to consider upgrading one of existing tanks to a larger size or rehoming some. 

 

Tank Overhaul

Being new to the hobby, I often find myself redecorating my tanks frequently.  I know there are a lot of proponents for bare bottom tanks for gold fish but I really like having real plants as opposed to fake plants and feel that substrate is necessary. Although, I have seen some really nice fake plants and do have one of them in my 45.  They are just so expensive and hard to keep clean.

My first attempts at dealing with substrate in my tanks consisted of a turquoise, dark blue, and black mixture gravel.  I followed the instructions on the bag and had a pound of gravel for every gallon in my tank.  I ended up not liking how much space all that gravel took up and didn't like the three colors in the mix I had.

So I got rid of the blue and turquoise gravel and opted for a thinner layer of black gravel .

After a couple of weeks with the black gravel, I was displeased by the amount of crud I vacuumed up with my siphon during my water changes.  It looked like some of the food just got stuck in there.  I was concerned that this would be unhealthy for my fish so I opted for sand in all my tanks. I had black taithian moon sand in my 20 and 36, and white sand in my 45.

Last week I noticed that my 45 gallon tank never looked as clear as my other two tanks and I think it's because it was the only tank that had white sand substrate that had really fine aggregate size as opposed to my other two tanks that both have Tahitian moon sand.  Even though I liked the color of the white sand, I decided to put the same substrate in all my tanks. I also noticed that the white sand was piling up in my canister filter really quickly. It has been a process trying to get rid of the white substrate in my canister filter.  I still think there is still some left as every now and then I see small white particles come out of my tubing from the canister filter's pump.

With Halloween over, I decided to remove the Halloween themed decorations from my 36 gallon tank.  I've added a ton more plants.  I am happy with how my redecoration of my 36 has turned out:

I am not happy with the background on my 45 and can't decide how I'm going to fix it (see picture above with the blue background).  I can barely see Reaper in that tank with the black sand and dark background.  I like my substrate and the decorations in that tank (although I've decided that my 45 gallon will be my new holiday themed tank after thanksgiving. I already have my Christmas tank decorations ready!). If anyone has suggestions, I'd appreciate it!

Right now my 36 is my favorite tank setup and my 20 is my least.  I'd love ideas on how to spruce up my 20 tank. Maybe play with the idea that my 20 had both Jack and Sparrow in it (it's Captain Jack Sparrow!)

Here is what my 20 looks like, any ideas are welcome!

 

Introducing My Goldies

I have nine fish total, soon to be ten (a new red and white telescope butterfly is coming next Tuesday!) spread out over three tanks  Edit: I've stopped counting the number of fish :)(20 gal., 36 gal., & a 45 gal.). Sparrow is the fish I've had the longest followed by Jack.  The newbies are Winter and Autumn, my first experience with Dandy Orandas  (absolutely beautiful fish, I highly recommend Dandy Orandas). They joined my home this past Halloween day.

My crew:

Autumn - Female Purple Telescope Butterfly from Dandy Orandas.  4.75 inches. Arrived 10/31/13. Laid eggs on 11/27/13.

Winter - tri-color butterfly from Dandy Orandas. 4 inches. Arrived 10/31/13.

Willow - red and white oranda mix from Petsmart. Approximately 2.75 inches. Arrived 9/12/13.

Sparrow - orange and white fantail mix from Petsmart. Approximately 1 inch. Arrived 8/21/13.

Jack - orange and black fantail from Petsmart. 1 inch. Arrived 8/28/13.

DeVille - panda butterfly from buygoldfishonline.com. 1.25 inches. Arrived 10/10/13.

Reaper - black moor from local fish store. 2.75 inches. Arrived 10/20/13.

Midget- Female? Calico butterfly from buygoldfishonline. 1.25 inches. Arrived 10/2/13.

No-Names (suggestions welcome!) 

Female? tri-color butterfly from buygoldfishonline. 1.5 inches. Arrived 10/2/13

Male red and white butterfly from buygoldfishonline. 1.75 inches. Arrived 11/08/13.

Male tri-color butterfly from LFS. 1 inch. Arrived 11/16/13.

Orange and white ranchu from LFS. 1 inch. Arrived 11/16/13.

Female blue butterfly from Dandy Orandas. 3.75 inches. Arrived 11/26/13.