We moved Halloween over to this tank. He's quite a bit larger than Mustache was when we added Mustache, so I wasn't as worried about the other fish picking on him or beating him to food. He seems to be adjusting and integrating with the school pretty well, though I expect it will still take him another week or so to really fit in.
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November 12, 2017 22:18
I really need to update the photos for this tank. The goldfish are growing rapidly. The largest (Bubbles) is around 5" long now!
Excitement tonight!
Yesterday we gave the goldfish some broccoli for the first time in ages. In the past, I've just thrown a stalk of cooked broccoli in there, and they ate the leaves, leaving the stalk.
But now they're bigger, and their mouths are bigger, and they're as greedy as ever. Apparently Snowy tried to eat a big chunk of stalk and it got stuck in her mouth.
We noticed it last night, but she seemed to be breathing, so we just let things go to see if they worked out. We noticed tonight that they hadn't worked out, and she was starting to just hang out on the bottom of the tank.
She got pretty animated again when I tried to snag her with the net, but eventually I got her out of the water. I was able to use tweezers and a toothpick to remove two sizable chunks of broccoli from her mouth.
She's back in the tank, opening and closing her mouth again. She didn't seem as johnny on the spot to go grab the food we put in, so her mouth may be a little sore, but she did eat some.
Hopefully she'll recover fully.
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December 6, 2016 19:49
We welcome a new goldfish, Victini, won by youngest daughter at a same carnival where we won bubbles.
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October 14, 2016 12:25
I tried them on finely chopped carrot today. Holy crap, they love it! They were on that like gerbils on a cardboard tube.
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August 11, 2016 19:33
(Saturday 8/6)
Today I boiled up some broccoli and gave it to the goldfish. It took them a little while to warm up to it, but ultimately they all tried some, and most came back for more.
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August 11, 2016 19:31
Got the new air pump installed so the bubble features work. I can't split the air for deep features, though. They need the whole stream to get the air out. So my four-gang valve is more or less useless for this tank. The pump has two outlets, so I'm using one each for the two features, and I'm not worried about the sponge filter. I'll leave the sponge filter in for the bio filter for now, though, until I'm certain the tank is really cycled.
Move-in day! The goldfish moved from their old aquarium to this new one.
Well, we certainly took our sweet time! Over the weekend we finally moved on this. First step was shampooing the carpet, since we're never going to be able to get to the carpet under the aquarium stand again!
Today the kids and I went out and picked out a background and some decorations. Then the work began.
First was applying the backdrop. This wasn't super hard, but it did take a lot of fiddling to (mostly) line it up right and get the air bubbles out. It looks pretty good.
Then came rinsing aquarium gravel. I ended up using a five gallon bucket and rinsing one 25 pound bag at a time outside with a garden hose. So, that was hauling 25 pounds of gravel out of the stand, pouring into a bucket, carry outside, rinse, repeat (literally), then carry back in, and carefully pour into the aquarium. Three rounds of this.
By now I was tired, so I'm afraid I didn't rinse the five 5 pound bags of multi-colored gravel. I just put them in.
Since most of our decorations are stable out of water, we placed these now. I mostly let my daughter pick the layout. It wasn't much trouble to run the airlines to the two new features that need air. I also got the filter set up.
Then, the most fun of the evening: filling a 75 gallon aquarium ONE GALLON AT A TIME! I guess I could have run a hose into the house or something, but I wanted a reasonably accurate count of the actual water volume for the system.
Finally, around 9:30 the system was filled. I added the water conditioner and powered up the filter, waited 30 minutes, then added the starter bacteria. I moved over the sponge filter and air pump from the other aquarium and found...stupid me. Of course a pump for a 10 gallon aquarium can't push water pressure from a 75 gallon aquarium! I really wanted the sponge filter in there to get the bio filter from it, though, so I left it with air and moved it shallow enough that it mostly works. I'll have to order a new pump that can handle the load. Lucky tomorrow is Prime Day!
Got the tank and stand moved into it's final position today. Filter and gravel have arrived, and are stored in the stand for now.
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October 12, 2015 19:45