So, I assume that you’ve thought about this long and hard? You’ve also read up on what goldfish need and weighed up whether or not you think you’re ready?
Before you jump in and buy your fish, you need to consider the nitrogen cycle. There is more to keeping fish than just the fish. Some will even go as far as to say that you are more keeping water which happens to have fish inhabitants! A big part of this is the ‘beneficial bacteria’ which live in the water and you need to cultivate these for your fish to be healthy. You can cultivate these with your fish in the tank, but it isn’t advised.
Bacteria can have quite a bad name. Not all bacteria are bad, as long as they’re in the right quantities. In your guts, you have beneficial bacteria (BB) which help you digest food. Too many or too few and you have problems. In the case of the fish tank, we need beneficial nitrifying bacteria to help turn the fish’s waste into something far less toxic.
When goldfish eat, they produce waste in the form of poop and through their gills. This waste is ammonia and is very toxic to fish. Imagine living in your own toilet! BB love to eat ammonia and will eventually turn it into nitrite. This is still toxic to fish, although slightly less so than ammonia. More BB will come along and turn this into nitrate. This is still toxic to fish but is a hell of a lot less so than ammonia or nitrite. The only way to remove this is with water changes. BB help you cut down on the amount of water changes you need to do on a daily basis. Without them, you’ll be doing water changes daily, perhaps more than once. That’s a lot of water wasted and can get very expensive!
So, let’s imagine that you now have your appropriately sized tank and filter. You could be very cheeky and go to the fish store to ask for some of their filter media to help ‘seed’ your tank. This might be a problem in that you don’t know what diseases the filter media will be carrying. If you have a friend who keeps (healthy) fish, you might ask for some of their tank water or a little filter media too. Perhaps one of their established ornaments may help?
Fill up your tank and don’t forget to add a water conditioner. Water conditioner removes the chlorine and chloramine that would normally kill off the BB. You will also want to start your filter running to get the BB inside and thriving there too.
The trick is to add a little ammonia into the water. The BB are already in there but Bob, Benny and Betty the BB need feeding for them to grow. For the time being, Bob, Benny and Betty the BB are your pets. You can actually buy bottles of BB to help with this, and in the event of cycle ‘bumps’ in the future. A little fish food would help. This will begin to release the ammonia.
A test kit is a great thing to have on hand. The API Master Test Kit seems to be a favourite. Some shops will do the tests for free, others will charge. If you know one which charges, it works out far cheaper to just buy the kit yourself. You’ll need to do tests every few days to see how things are coming along. Eventually, you will see a drop in ammonia until it reaches zero, and a rise in nitrite. Then the nitrite will drop to zero and you will have a rise in nitrate. This still wants to be kept to around 20ppm. This could take several weeks so be prepared to wait a while!
If you choose to go with a ‘fish-in’ cycle, be prepared for lots and lots of water changes. You will still want a test kit and you will need to monitor your fish closely for stress and ‘new tank syndrome’. I understand that it is difficult to wait, I really do! You may still want to add a little BB to get things rolling. I would still give it a couple of weeks before adding your fish – hey, if you’re that keen to keep fish, you probably want to do things properly!
Goldfish Fables 