Hey all! Just wanted to post some pics to show you what's been going on in my goldie/betta/community world! So the first few pics are of my female veiltail betta, Athena, who sits on my nightstand. The next are of my community tank, which I regret to say is very messy right now but I am planning to clean it up over X-mas break. In one of these pics you can see my cute clown loaches hiding under their favorite leaf! The last are of my goldies!!! Their fins are much less ragged than before. Sorry about how some of the pics aren't best quality 

The last three pics are of Zodiac - still not sure if (she) is a guy or gal, but I'm going to figure it out! I Will! I will!  I think her wen is filling out nicely. Are there special foods I can give her to give her some more growth???



Also, over X-mas I am planning on re-doing my entire goldie tank. My plans:

- New gravel (what do you think of black?)
- CLEAN OUT EVERYTHING (like, filter and glass)
- New decorations ( maybe a terracotta pot, or an archway of some sort? I think a sunken ship would be cool, but I don't know how much room that'd take up... )
- REAL PLANTS! YAY! I'm thinking some hardy plants, like maybe Anubias. I think that's hardy - am I right???

ANYWAY, enjoy the pics!

Thanks! I'll look for that Saki Hikari and Omega One foods.

As for the clown loaches, they're in the fifth picture (look carefully, just to the left of the leaves)

awww, cute!
But mine IS orange. and black striped

Very nice tanks there with some cute fish I saw a clown loach that was probably about 20cms long today, maybe a bit shorter, but they look amazing at that size!

Why would you re-do your whole goldfish tank?? What are you going to do with your fish while you are doing this? By getting new gravel and cleaning the filter you are going to destroy all the good bacteria and have to re-cycle the tank, if the fish are in there they could get very sick or die  I would just re-decorate it without touching the filter or gravel, there is no need really.

In a bucket for weeks does not sound like a good idea too me. But with a filter and airstone I imagine they will be fine. I must stress that a filter is much more important in a bucket than a heater is. Do you live somewhere very cold? Why else would you add the heater?

Also once you add your fish, your tank may go through a mini cycle, mine did even with just ONE goldfish. How many do you own? Adding that many at once to a newly established tank spells disaster!

I would only ever do what you are doing in an emergency, I've actually been thinking about doing it the past few days, to kill whatever is making Sunshine sick  For visual reasons well I dunno, can't you just wipe the filter and add more gravel and the plants with the water in there?

Hey I have in last two months started up a 90 gal 75gal, 20 +10 gal and redid a 40 gal to get rid of gravel in last tank that had gravel. I did do it with a product I absolutely swear by called Super Bac nitrifying bacteria. My tanks all cycled instantly or up to 2 days and 2 days was one time I didn't use enough first time.  Being I was upgrading tanks and setting those up I needed something, local petstore recommend it and it's wonderful. Before I used it I battled cloudy water because of the water I get on base housing here and since using it I have not had single incidence  of cloudiness. I don't even do it how bottle says the store told me to just shake it alot then add 1 and a 1/2 the dose just one time and only add more if levels not quite right. I put most dose in tank and dribble rest of whatever bio media in the tank (wheel ect...). Also my tanks have no gravel and this cycles them immediately. So If you feel you must change gravel I would try this. I assume it works same way on all water supplies. There is alot of info online about people who used it and of corse there are a few who say no good but most say great. Make sure you buy freshwater version. It is same idea as the cycle stuff local pet places sell but 100 times better. I also use it when I want to fo water change and filter clean at same time which is big no-no but it works then also. Now that I gave my larger tanks setup I won't need to do this but will keep a bottle on hand because store said can work on ammonia spikes. I have never had a ammonia spike since I used this so I can't say if that is accurate.

Ok guys, I posted more in the other thread with my answers to a lot of this. As much as I love typing ( ) I don't want to type the same things over and over again