No one is perfect, we all make mistakes, especially when we start a new activity or a new hobby. New goldfish owners make many mistakes at first. This list is intended to help you avoid them.
The ten most common mistakes made with goldfish
We all made almost identical mistakes. Ideally, each of us should make inquiries before we purchase our first goldfish or any other animal.
How to take care of goldfish? What is their ideal habitat? How to feed them properly?
You should learn the basics of aquarium maintenance. Popular beliefs combined with bad advice can make us buy goldfish and improvise.
Find out everything you need to know before buying any pet. Communication with people can also give you advice.
Buying an aquarium that is too small
Never keep goldfish in a jar. Goldfish live an average of 8 to 10 years and grow quickly when they have good living conditions. The fish need a lot of space to swim, so the length of the aquarium will be adequate.
Goldfish produce a lot of waste. This means that they need a large amount of water to dilute this waste and make it less harmful naturally. This is only possible in an aquarium of at least 60 liters.
Feeding them too much
It is harmful to overfeed goldfish. Goldfish search for food all day long, it is their main activity. You could potentially feed them every hour.
That’s why you should feed your goldfish several times a day with small amounts instead of giving them a lot of food at once. Too much food can cause constipation and bladder disorders (fish floating on air in the belly).
Goldfish eat a lot and pollute their water a lot. Do good water maintenance to avoid risk of disease.
Putting too many fish in the aquarium
GoldfishThe goldfish needs a lot of space and can contaminate the water quickly. Therefore, be careful not to put too many fish together.
The more goldfish we put together, the more rigorous and frequent the maintenance will be. Overcrowding is a frequent cause of illness and death in the aquarium.
Do not use the right filter
An aquarium should have a filter that works around the clock. As mentioned above, goldfish produce a lot of waste that pollutes the aquarium water.
Filter maintenance guests and a good colony of bacteria are necessary to degrade the fish waste to render it almost harmless. Sometimes, a filter is used in the aquarium that does not have the insufficient capacity. The filter should have a water flow rate of five times the aquarium volume per hour.
Do not build a colony of good bacteria
This is a very common mistake among people who acquire goldfish as a whim or game. Goldfish produce a lot of waste and ammonia, which is very bad for them, burns their gills.
Fortunately, there are “good” bacteria that can convert ammonia into less harmful components. Before you buy your goldfish, you must initiate and stabilize the biological “cycle” of the aquarium to build a colony of good bacteria.
Do not change the water regularly
In general, you have to change the water of your goldfish once a week. This water change should be as regular as possible. The amount of water and frequency depends on the size of your aquarium.
A 50% water change is also required in some cases, for example if you find a nitrite peak.
Changing too much water at the same time
You should not change all the water in your goldfish at once. The balance of the aquarium water parameters is fragile and changing all the water will cause significant stress on the fish (risk of disease).
We suggest regular water changes of approximately one third of the aquarium volume each week. Use a siphon to empty the water from the aquarium and the vacuum from the gravel and at the same time remove the waste from the tray.
Cleaning the filter, gravel and decorations too much
Your foam, gravel and decoration filter has a lot of good bacteria. NEVER do a big cleaning (washing the filter, the foam filter, the gravel and the decorations) on the same day and with tap water. Take a bucket of water from the aquarium and use it to clean the elements. Rinse the filter foams and do not replace them every week.
Do not quarantine new fish
Your new goldfish can bring diseases and spread them to other fish already in the aquarium. For this reason, do not immediately add it to your main aquarium.
Only “quarantine” will prevent you from losing your old goldfish. Any new fish must be separated from the others for two weeks in a temporary storage facility. This is the time you need to make sure it is healthy and has no diseases such as white spots or fin rot.
Putting plastic plants in the aquarium
For practical and maintenance reasons, many beginners prefer to decorate the aquarium with plastic plants.
In addition to aesthetics for the human eye, plants have a role to play in the aquarium ecosystem. They are essential for delaying algae growth, filtration of the aquarium and homogeneous oxygenation of the water.