fish tank help/advice

[suebee]

ok so i had a small fish tank, tiny really not even big enough to home a goldfish, and we had a few fish in there!!

so we got a real bargain, when we saw a ex display tank, with filters an gravel for £20.00 :53:

its 17inch wide, 14inch high and 12 inch deep, so its a nice sized tank (i think)
it houses 1 loach, 2 fan tail, no top fin or swollen heads type gold fish, a black moor head and 6 minows

my problem is this, the tank gets sooo dirty, cloudy water after a week and algea. i have a gravel vac thing, that works a treat, from reading whats on web its the goldfishes fault, but i do not want to re home them so to speak.
i change water about 30% once a week at the moment, wipe off algae and vac the gravel, rinse off plastic plants ornaments etc. squeeze filter in old fish tank water.
the new water i add has the chlorine remover in

the fish always behave hungry!! so i feed once a day, i did cut back to once every other day, but it's really off putting having fish eye ball you constantly as you move around the room, i feed a few flakes and pellets.
the minows and goldfish are like piranhas when its feeding time, so the slow black moor head and loach never seem to get a look in, so i put flakes in 1st then drop some pellets where the other 2 are.
i use to put an inch of cucumber in, but the goldfish would eat it over night

is there anything i can get, like an algae inhibitor thats safe for fish.
snails?? had them in old tank but they died
prawns??

thanks for any advice

 

[MissyMe83]

Hey Sue I had a few tanks for awhile, so I've done my a bit of research on the topic. It would help better to know the gallon size of your tank rather than dimensions, but sounds like it's too small for the fish in it. If I wasn't at work I'd do a little more investigating, but from memory I know that to house one goldfish properly it's reccomended to have a 20 gal tank just by itself because they are such a "dirty" fish.

Also, the loach tank requirement is 100-125 gallons as they get pretty large!

By the sounds of it your tank is probably around the 20 gallon range so not large enough for the type of fish that it's housing.

Tanks and fish are fun, but as I found out it's pretty costly and time consuming. My largest tank was 150 gallons and the filter alone was $200 and the maintanence on a large high quality filter is a pain as well. The smaller tanks with smaller filters are much easier and less expensive, but they can't hold the bigger more appealing fish...

 

[JerseyWendy]

The tank is only 12.36 gallons, so there are definitely too many fish in there.

 

[FreddyCheeks]

Way to many fish. At best you could get away with maybe the loach and the small minnows. The BIOLOAD the goldfish put off alone should be in a minimum of a 30gal with good filtration.

Also did you cycle the tank before adding that many fish?

 

[BirdSquawk]

That does sound like too many fish, you could move some of them to a different tank and use algae eating catfish to control the dirty water.

 

[starrynightxxi]

safe rule of thumb for fancy goldies (the fat ones with the fancy tails)is 20 gallons for the first fish and ten for each additional one, so definitely you are overstocked. Bare minimum, ten gallons per goldfish. This doesn't take into account the size of tank you'll need to also house the loach and minnows, which depends largely on the species and number you have.

Unfortunately, as long as they're in the tank you have, there is nothing to be done but constant water changes. More powerful filtration will help in the meantime, but ultimately, you'll need to size up to a bigger tank for the fish to continue to be healthy. I always recommend 25% water changes once a week as standard tank maintenance, so with your heavy stocking, you should actually be doing them more frequently to keep waste build-up under control.

Regarding feeding, goldfish are always hungry. They have no stomach so food does not sit anywhere inside them and tell them that they are full (unless they become constipated,) instead it is moving through them constantly. Most people find the fish's interest in it's keeper endearing

DO NOT get an algae eating catfish. It will do nothing for your dirty water. It will only make your water quality worse, and on top of that, many will happily eat the slime coat off of your fish instead of algae, or are otherwise incompatible with goldies, so you really need to know what you are getting.

 

[suebee]

Way to many fish. At best you could get away with maybe the loach and the small minnows. The BIOLOAD the goldfish put off alone should be in a minimum of a 30gal with good filtration.

Also did you cycle the tank before adding that many fish?

whats cycle??

grrr well i will keep up with my weekly clean, a little annoying as we got the extra gold fish from the pet shop we saw the tank in, and i did explain he fish we already had in the old small tank!! 1 minnow, loach and the black moor head.
thanks for every1 for the advice, sorry i have no idea the gallon size of tank :30: