Its been a while ...

Its been a while since I last blogged about my goldfishes ... For the past 5 months, I have learned a lot more about goldfishes and yes I am still keeping them despite a couple of losses in the first few months ... My tank now has 6 healthy goldfishes and I will be sharing more about my tank in the next couple of days ...

Merry Christmas and A Blessed New Year !!

Introducing ...

BrokenFin

As you can see, he seems to have a broken fin. Thus his name. Reminds you of some Red Indian movie ?





Hyper

This fishy is hyper-active. Swims non-stop all over the place and he gobbles up food like crazy. Really tough to keep him from stuffing himself silly.




Skinny

This one is rather slim and slick. Swims fast and very streamline.






Leo

Unfortunately cutie Leo passed away before we started taking pictures of him.

Pictures !! Ah .. yes.

Many have asked for pictures and yes .. they are on the way ! Boy, taking potraits of fishes is NOT easy !! hehe .. Well I am using a simple point and shoot digicam ... Focusing speed is a bit slow. Maybe when I get a DSLR camera (Digital Single Lens Reflex), I will do goldfish family potraits haha.

Anyway, I will try to get them up ASAP and show you some of my goldfishes and setup :)

Skinny, Hyper, BrokenFin and Leo

These are the names of my 4 goldfishes ... My lovely wife had the honours of naming them :) (Gave her the privilage as she was initially not very fond of my idea of keeping fishes) Of the lot, Leo was the cutest as he had the biggest head and big mouth ... unfortunately, he was also the one that started having swimming bladder problems. According to a number of articles I have read, it is most likely due to the numerous cross-breeding that have significantly changed the internal structure of its body (less fish like apparently - e.g. too cramp in certain areas, tails are not as agile as normal slim fish etc)

Anyway, it was a pretty much a slow death for him despite our best efforts to save him and to nurse him back to health. Initially, he just floats at the top of the aquarium and fail to eat as he can't swim very well floating up there. Usually, I had to spoon feed him in order to get him to eat.. After a while, he developed ulcers on his pectorial fins and later also on his sides as he can't stay upright very well either. I tried many of the suggestions given by many websites and people such as feeding him peas, increase salt in water (separate tank). After battling the swimming bladder problem for almost 1.5 month, Leo finally gave up and went to heaven ... :( :(

So, the learning here is ... hmm don't really know. Swimming bladder problems are really hard to cure .. thus avoiding it in the first place would be ideal by NOT over feeding them and DO give them only food that sinks so that they don't gulp down extra air while eating stuff on the water surface. Peas and greens would probably be their best diet with the occasional high protein pellet(sinking) thrown in.

Goldfish-ies ... my new found passion ! Part 3

Not wanting to make the same mistake and to guess and worry about water condition, I decided to bite the bullet and bought my self a Freshwater Master Test Kit (Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc). It cost me RM 65 which was a big sum for some test kits considering a relative of mine who has been rearing goldfishes for ages never had to use one! Anyway, I thought it would be cool to be able to tell the condition of the water (technically) !

So I got rid of all the water in my first attempt and refilled it with fresh tap water and made sure I added sufficient water conditioner this time. 2 cap fuls for 35L says on the bottle lable .. 5 capfuls here it goes. Also added 2 capfuls of the Nutrafin bio supplement (Cycle) and left the tank for a week.

I started off with 2 goldfishes this time ...about 2 inches in size. Don't really know their type specifically but looks like a cross between comets and Oranda. Their lionheads have not grown yet. They look pretty OK and started a strict regime to test the water every alternate days checking Ammonia, pH and Nitrite levels ... and doing 20% weekly water changes.

So far so good ... 2 weeks and they are still alive ... !!!! Excellent. I started reading up more on the importance of a stable and clean water condition for the fishes and tried my best to do so. Didn't really figure out the salt level yet though ..... since I read that salt is really one of the best disease deterrent for the fishes.... In any case .. I was estatic ... My goldfishes are surviving ... !!!

Goldfish-ies ... my new found passion ! Part 2

A few days later, the 25 gal aquarium is sitting in my condominium hall. I thought to myself that I would give myself 30 days and 3 attempts at fish keeping. With that in mind, I went to IKEA to look for a stand for the aquarium and to my surprise found a very fitting TV bench that cost around RM50. I thought that, in the worst case scenario that all my 3 attempts fails within 30 days, I could still take the TV bench back to IKEA for a refund .. I just love IKEA :)

What next ? Well ... having read some of the materials talking about aquarium cycling, ammonia, nitrite, pH levels etc ... I was confused ... Read somewhere about fishless cycling ... and left the aquarium on its own for 1 week though I haven't fully understand what it meant yet. Being anxious and wanting to see fishes swimming in my aquarium, quickly went to Jalan Pasar (Market Street in Kuala Lumpur) where there are couple of fish stalls and brought home a couple of small little goldfishes. They were really like only 1.5 inch in length ... Also bought some water conditioner solution (suspect that it is a fake since it was really cheap and its label is very similar to the expensive ones from Canada), a packet of salt, a small packet of ceramic bio filters and a bottle of Nutrafin (Cycle).

Added 2 caps of the water conditioner into the aquarium and after 5 mins, Ahoy .... the fishes are in ... In less than 30 mins, the fishes started to look funny ... They started to develop whitish mucous around their body ... and sadly within 2-3 days, all were in heaven !! After lots of thinking to what have caused the deaths ... I realised that it was due to a huge mistake that I made. I didn't realise the tank was 25 Gals (Approx 100L) and that I had not put in sufficient amount of the water conditioner. Sigh ... So there it is, .. end of Attempt 1.

To be continued ...

Goldfish-ies ... my new found passion ! Part 1

Just thought I will start off by saying that I have found a wonderful and very rewarding passion ... Goldfish keeping ! They are so very cute and graceful that I could just spend hours staring at them swimming end to end ... :)

Nevertheless, I have always been told that it is a difficult hobby and I personally have witness numerous freshwater and goldfish fatalities due to unknown reasons. For example, my parents tried keeping them a couple of years ago and their 9 lovely fancy-tail goldfishes died mysteriously all of a sudden after 1 year of keeping them. They left their 25 Gal acrylic aquarium lying around since then.

I have been toying with the idea of taking over the aquarium for a while but it wasn't until I walked into a large pet store in Ikano Power Centre one day and started reading some materials on goldfish keeping (those promo brochures by Sera) that gave me new insights about fish keeping and also clues as to what had caused my parent's fishes to float to heaven. Ahaa ... Ooooh ... Eureka !!

To be continued ...