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Goldfish aquascape for school

Halley

Member
Joined
6 May 2015
Messages
385
Hi guys, I volunteered to aquascape the local school’s fish tank (I know it seemed a good idea at the time!) It is about 4 feet long and has gravel in it with about 6 fancy goldfish (sorry no pics). Any ideas on how to aquascape it - I know goldfish eat a lot of plants so advice would be appreciated.


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Thanks I thought about plastic but I want to keep it real (Good way to get the next generation enthused!) I was thinking about using toy ornaments to create something as well - “I believe that children are the future....”


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Thanks - would it be ok to collect pebbles or should I buy them?


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I've kept Goldfish for many years and they do not realy eat that much plants.. Avoid soft tissue plants.. For example true aqautics like Elodea will be eaten.
But the more harder tissue plants as mentioned above Vallis is left alone, Hornwort also is a good plant and most Potamogetons too. They are more foraging fish concentrating on the substrate.

They actualy make great pets to watch if you give them more than just a straight forward cubic volume to swim back and forth. I never kept fancy gold fish, i know they lak the agility of normal goldfish, but by character it stays a goldfish and they are very social and very inteligent and like to interact with their surroundings. Give them room to play with broken lines of sight and you will be rewarded with very playfull fish. They are very aware of beeing in a group and like to challange eachother, if one is up to something others will curiously follow.

I keep them in tubs in the summer outdoors and winter indoors.. I always build a sort of Hunnebed structure for them with cobble stones with flat ones on top and sufficiently large openings to explore and play under, over and around it.
800px-Grootste_hunebed_van_Nederl.jpg


In a 4 feet aquarium a setup like this can be realy interesting and give you a very natural display of their curious behaivor.. Covering the top stones with mosses and patches of epiphytic plants like Java fern. Than if it is an open top tank and you can build some height with larger flat slaps for example 10 to 15 cm under the surface with some moss covered rock or maybe wood, maybe even plants emersing the tank. They will also go around that they love to explore shallows as well giving a great contrast viewed from above.

Anyway, if you can give them something like this, you will be rewarded with a goldfish show you've never seen before.. :thumbup:





:) As said, Fancy goldfish lak this agility, thus it should be taken into account and give them a bit more room..
 
Would moss balls stand up to them? Might be an interesting addition.
 
I have been documenting my experiments with a planted goldfish tank here:
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/155l-goldfish-cube.55393/

Although I do add CO2 most of the plant species I grow should still work without it.

Positive experiences:
  • Anubias seem fine
  • Java fern is completely ignored
  • Cyperus Helferi needs some assistance transferring from emersed to submerged (weekly pruning) but is largely ignored as it is tough. Unfortunately the new growth isn’t as tough and may not be being given a chance to grow out, still trying to observe this.
  • Having ten or twelve bunches (for three fish) of Elodea seems to work well they graze on it but eat less than it grows and it helps to add more plant mass to the tank. Each week remove any completely ravaged bits and replace with a new bunch (or three) every now and again
  • Completely removable hardscape with plants attached to it make cleaning the tank much easier (and gives fish something to play around)
  • Large regular water changes (50% weekly)
Negative Experieneces
  • Blyxa Japonica will get torn apart
  • Alternanthera Rosaefolia will get eaten
  • IME Vallis do get eaten
  • Keeping diatoms at bay is a struggle (more plant mass seems to be helping)
Good luck!
 
I've kept Goldfish for many years and they do not realy eat that much plants.. Avoid soft tissue plants.. For example true aqautics like Elodea will be eaten.
But the more harder tissue plants as mentioned above Vallis is left alone, Hornwort also is a good plant and most Potamogetons too. They are more foraging fish concentrating on the substrate.

They actualy make great pets to watch if you give them more than just a straight forward cubic volume to swim back and forth. I never kept fancy gold fish, i know they lak the agility of normal goldfish, but by character it stays a goldfish and they are very social and very inteligent and like to interact with their surroundings. Give them room to play with broken lines of sight and you will be rewarded with very playfull fish. They are very aware of beeing in a group and like to challange eachother, if one is up to something others will curiously follow.

I keep them in tubs in the summer outdoors and winter indoors.. I always build a sort of Hunnebed structure for them with cobble stones with flat ones on top and sufficiently large openings to explore and play under, over and around it.
800px-Grootste_hunebed_van_Nederl.jpg


In a 4 feet aquarium a setup like this can be realy interesting and give you a very natural display of their curious behaivor.. Covering the top stones with mosses and patches of epiphytic plants like Java fern. Than if it is an open top tank and you can build some height with larger flat slaps for example 10 to 15 cm under the surface with some moss covered rock or maybe wood, maybe even plants emersing the tank. They will also go around that they love to explore shallows as well giving a great contrast viewed from above.

Anyway, if you can give them something like this, you will be rewarded with a goldfish show you've never seen before.. :thumbup:





:) As said, Fancy goldfish lak this agility, thus it should be taken into account and give them a bit more room..


Thanks for the advice - goldfish are very interesting and I suspect the reason most of us are in the hobby. It is a closed top aquarium I will be working with.


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I have been documenting my experiments with a planted goldfish tank here:
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/155l-goldfish-cube.55393/

Although I do add CO2 most of the plant species I grow should still work without it.

Positive experiences:
  • Anubias seem fine
  • Java fern is completely ignored
  • Cyperus Helferi needs some assistance transferring from emersed to submerged (weekly pruning) but is largely ignored as it is tough. Unfortunately the new growth isn’t as tough and may not be being given a chance to grow out, still trying to observe this.
  • Having ten or twelve bunches (for three fish) of Elodea seems to work well they graze on it but eat less than it grows and it helps to add more plant mass to the tank. Each week remove any completely ravaged bits and replace with a new bunch (or three) every now and again
  • Completely removable hardscape with plants attached to it make cleaning the tank much easier (and gives fish something to play around)
  • Large regular water changes (50% weekly)
Negative Experieneces
  • Blyxa Japonica will get torn apart
  • Alternanthera Rosaefolia will get eaten
  • IME Vallis do get eaten
  • Keeping diatoms at bay is a struggle (more plant mass seems to be helping)
Good luck!

Looks great! I like the background - is it just a drawing? - great idea


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Thanks for the mention @goldscapes

Have you had a look at @George Farmer 's Practical Fishkeeping article about this?
https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/articles/how-to-get-fancy-with-goldfish

Aquascaping a Goldfish tank can be a nightmare... most of the plants I've tried were either eaten or uprooted by the fish. But it's doable, just needs some trial and error. Once in a while I take trimmings from other tanks and drop them in the tank to see if it survives more than a couple of days. My experience so far is pretty much what @goldscapes already mentioned. Floating plants will get eaten sooner or later, if they are big enough the fish can't eat them, but they'll keep eating the roots, which slowly weakens the plants. As for imersed plants, the plants need to either grow faster than what the fish are capable of eating, or be hard enough they won't like it (they may still like to play with it like mine do, though... I tried anubias and it failed miserably because they loved to play with it :shifty: )

Some plastic plants can look very nice, specially if you mix them up a bit. In my tank I have 3ft of plastic bamboo leaves mixed with a 6ft garland type plastic plant. At first it may not look like much, but when it starts to grow a little bit of algae on it it looks very natural.

At the moment I'm trying to attach live plants to the plastic plants. I've tried Elodea densa and Water Wisteria (Hygrophila difformis) with some success, but everything else just seems to disappear and clog the filter.

Edit: Also, take in consideration what @zozo mentioned about the agility of these fish... Fancy Goldfish are slow and clumsy. When I don't allow enough space between the plastic plants and the back and bottom of the tank when I attach them, it doesn't take long before I have to "rescue" a fish that got stuck in the corner and can't get out.

Good luck!
 
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I wonder where all those vegitarian nightmares about Goldfish come from. Realy wonder what it is, maybe boored fish take off frustration on the plants? I never realy experienced that proplem, grew Vallis cuttings from the aquarium to a decent size outdoor among the goldfish, it didn't got eaten nor uprooted. :) And than imagine i have more than 15 fish at the moment in different sized from 2 to 5 inch in size.

Also uprooting is something actualy easily avaoided with a suffcient long dry start to get the plants to root propperly. Or if it are true aqautic plants, glue a pebble to the plant roots with super glue before you stick in the substrate.. :) Than even if they dig it out and push it around it stays down.
 
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