New goldfish tank!

[MotherPanda]

Hello all, my poor common goldfish- pumpkin- has lived a rather dismal life so far in a tiny 19litre tank. its my fishes 1st birthday, so as a present i have bought him a 3ft 130litre tank.

am currently setting it up for a fishless cycle and rinsing out gravel etc- always the most frustrating part of fish keeping.

my question is this - pumpkin would really like a girlfriend (not planning on breeding!), Is there room for 1 or 2 more goldfish in my tank? I'm not opposed to upgrading again in a few years time, how many years would it take for the fish to get too big for this one if I did go for 2 more?

Also, i know i need to leave the bag of new fish in the water for 30 mins etc - but should I know anything else about fish introductions? Is there likely to be any hostility?

Thank you

i would have thought you could fit another in, but not sure as haven't kept goldfish myself

a quick google has given variable answers! one site says at least 140 litres for a single goldfish, others have said you can fit 3 in a 180 litre tank.

you need eaurouge

Hopefully Eaurouge will be here at some point - I know that goldfish can get big, but it's really knowng how long this size tank would be safe for 2 or 3 common fishies, I don't know how long it takes for them to get big,

I had the same problem with google - its telling me huge amounts for fully grown fish, which i'm happy to provide in time, i expect i'll be in a bigger house by then with a bigger tank/pond. Pumpkins only 3" long, and babies will be smaller.

Thanks

ahh i see what you mean, so you could potentially upgrade again in a few years?

This is my plan, Have been eyeing up 7ft tanks on ebay... There's no space in this house! But we are saving up for a deposit on a new house.Would love a pond, at least they'd be too big for the Heron by then (I hope).

Evening

Happy birthday Pumpkin! What a nice birthday pressie :) If he's in the 19 litre tank now then there's no need to do a fishless cycle, you can move the sponges from the old filter straight into the new filter and just transfer over all the water from the old tank. Pumpkin will be much happier in his big tank. DO you know for sure if he's a boy? They can be tricky to figure out.

Common goldfish do get very large and long-term 130 litres would be pushing it for just one fish. You could keep 2 in there short-term if you were going to transfer to a pond fairly soon. The problem is that by the time they start showing signs of stunting, the damage is done. This is a very rough guide of how fast they grow. A lot is down to genetics, they may not get that big or they may surprise you and get even bigger!

If you get a pond and you have a male and a female then you'll get babies for sure, goldfish are randy buggers.

If you do get another fish then you'll need to quarantine it for a couple of weeks at least to make sure it doesn't pass anything nasty on to Pumpkin so you'll need an extra tank and mature filter. I'd get Pumpkin settled in first and then think about where you're going to be in one year, two years etc. Goldfish are definitely a long-term investment so you need to plan ahead, or have a friend with a big pond.

HTH :)

Thanks for answering me,

No idea if pumpkins a boy, is there any way to sex them? i'm assuming that in a tank, any eggs would be sucked up by the filter? Sounds crude but I'm not looking for a goldfish farm.

Fantastic news about moving over the sponges - thank you! that saves me a month of empty tank syndrome. Pumpkin will be moving house tomorrow!

That fish keeping poster is perfect - that's just the sort of thing I was looking for, by that - i'm assuming that 2 fishies would be happy enough in the 130litre tank untill they are 3?

Luckily, my mum has a pond, so there is always that as a back up plan - sadly one of their goldfish called Nobby was just eaten by the Heron (we suspect) - is there any way you can prevent stock being eaten? Nobby was pumpkin sized.

It's not easy sexing them, it's made easier if your fish has breeding tubercles but there are other ways to tell. This has some good pictures and descriptions.

Goldfish eggs are sticky so they stick to whatever they land on. Goldfish will eat their eggs and any fry that hatch out so if you want to breed them then you can either...

remove the eggs into a nursery tank- the problem with this method is that you'll start with hundreds, some of which may have deformities or revert back to the natural olive/grey sort of colour. It'd be difficult to rehome any babies because there are so many accidental goldfish fry around so you might end with. You could just choose a few eggs if you're definitely going to keep the babies but you could get ones with health problems.

Or you could just let nature take its course, bunging in a few extra plants to give the babies a fighting chance. The strongest ones usually survive. I know many people that have a baby goldfish called 'Lucky' Keep an eye on the filter intake if you do this method, you might want to slip a pair of tights over the intake pipe to stop fry getting sucked in.