Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

Well, I found out the genders of my fish. They are as follows ...

VOODOO
the black moor

FEMALE

SAFFRON

the orange fantail
MALE

ASTRAL

the broadtail
MALE

OPUS
the white ranchu 

MALE

COSMOS
the white and orange nymph
MALE

How's that? out of 5 fish, I have only one female. At one stage, recently, I had Voodoo, Astral, Saffron and Opus all in my 220L tank together. Then it became apparent that some, and by some - I mean a lot of, breeding behaviour was going on, hence I found out the genders of my fish.

I've since had to separate Voodoo into her own tank. Poor love was getting really tired of being chased around by the boys. I was concerned for her health and was worried they might exhaust her to death with all the chasing.

At the moment, I'm a bit stuck at what to do. Voodoo is currently in the 70L tank until we can organise the 160L for her, most likely this weekend coming up. I feel sad for her though, Saffron and Voodoo have grown up together, we bought them home together on the same day, in the same bag!

I guess I have a few options.

1. Turn the 160L into a breeding tank for Voodoo and Saffron.

2. Get another FEMALE goldfish to share the 160L with Voodoo (but that won't be for some time yet, the newbie would have to go through quarantine etc as well)

3. Or.... I don't know? lol... I'm yet to do more research and seek help on fish forums.

My fiance and I are looking at upgrading eventually to a very large tank and hopefully by then we will have an equal male to female ratio!! (as in getting more female fish haha).

I will have to get updated photos / video of the fishlings. They are getting BIG! I was going through old photos and video and it's hard to believe they were ever so small. Their shapes have changed immensely as well, you can hardly tell they are the same fish.
 

Stay tuned.

Nitrites Appear, Cosmos and Gel Food

So it looks like there was a slight reading of Nitrites for my 100L tank when I did the parameter tests yesterday!! Ammonia is still at 4.0 ppm and Nitrites looked like they were between 0 - 0.25 ppm, Nitrates at 0 still but hey, looks like things are on there way. Slowly but surely.

Below is a picture of what the 70L tank Cosmos is in looks like at the moment. I added some more fake plans and such. Especially near and behind the filter head mainly. I did this because he was getting in the habit of swimming behind the filter head with some force (Cossi is a strong swimmer). He manage to lose a scale the other day. It flared up a little yesterday but today you can barely tell he did anything to himself. It's healing really well.

I also ended up making a batch of Goldfish Gel Food. If you are interested there is a absolute load of recipes for this online. With me being not the best of cooks, found a fairly simple one and changed it a little to suit the ingredients I could get a hold of. Below is a picture of the Gel Food setting in my fridge. Luckily it didn't work out too bad haha! Cosmos eats every morsel when I feed him bits. I have also fed him Bloodworms which he seems to enjoy as well.

The next time I do Gel Food I think I will stick spot on to a recipe. My Gel could have been a lot more gel-like.

Oh! and to finish this post off. Here is another video of Cosmos swimming around in his tank from the other week...

Cosmos is home!

Ok so a few things have happened since my last post, such as... I bought another tank! Yes you read correctly... haha. I'm still cycling my 100L don't worry - that one has not been forgotten about!

Thing is, I bought a 70L tank to transfer my 7 year old ryukin goldfish (Cosmos) into. He has been at my parents since I got him. Since back when I wasn't too knowledgeable in the keeping of goldfish. Unfortunately he was in a 38 - 40L tank, which is much to small. So, with my recent research in mind I decided to upgrade him!

I got his new 70L tank on Wednesday 21st and did his transfer last night. All went well thankfully. I ran his old filter in his new tank for some time to get the water parameters right for him. Along with also transferring an amount of his old water into the new tank for him.

Cosmos in his new home!

This morning I had a bit of a scare, as he was floating upside down and I thought he had past! My heart pretty much skipped a beat, It was not a nice way to start the morning. Luckily when I got closer to the tank he moved his eye to look at me then started swimming!

I've come to the conclusion that he has Swim Bladder Disorder / Floating Disorder. Which I believe might have developed due to feeding problems. "Gulping air whilst feeding at the surface or eating food with too much air inside, such as dry floating foods." - Kokos Goldfish
I'm planning on feeding him some cooked/steamed skinned peas soon, as the treatment for SBD suggests. Hopefully that is as far as I will need to go and he will be happy and healthy.

Other than floating a little he does seem happy in his new home. I'm sure it was a rather "freeing" experience to go from a 38/40L tank to a 70L. I am aware that technically the 70L is a little small for one fish, as 75L is the going size. But, seeming that he has been in a very small tank for 7 years, 70L would be a lot better! That and I believe his growth has been stunted due to being in such a small tank for so long.