Gardening Goldfish !

Hi All

Went out to AV yesterday and got some plants, hairgrass and asome dwarf grass looking plant which I forget the name of. Spent a few hours splitting them and planting them to find a lot of them floating this morning. Looks like my Golden gardeners and been working the night shift and nibbled and plucked them out.

Any ideas??? or do Goldfish and grassy type plants not work together?

Pat

Goldfish are rough on most plants, they root around too much, I think they do more damage by displacing them rather than eating them.

They have mowen the dwarf plant like lawn mowers, not so much damage to the hairgrass. Goldies are going to be re housed sooner than I thought. Are most fish hard on plants?

Goldfish in a tank with plants usually means them destroying the plants. There are definitely alot of freshwater fish that won't harm plants in a tank. I'm sure if you ask in the shop they'll direct you to plant safe fish.

Hi, I would put goldfish up there with malawai cichlids based on their love for plants. For the past three I have kept two fancy goldfish in a low tech semi-planted tank and found that they really enjoy eating some plants, want to eat some plants but cant, dont like the taste of some plants and simply find some plants to tough for consumption.

From my experience I cant see you growing anything that has a shallow root system or is frgil in terms of the leaf. You will certainly not be able to grass plants unless you put a cage between the fish and the plants. If you do want to use fairly soft edible plants (swords, vallis) with the goldfish still in situ, I would plant really heavily so that the amount being consumed by the goldfish is outweighed by the level of growth. This will require Co2 (DIY will do) and dosing of micro and marco nutrients to keep the plants going.

This is what my tank used to look like when I was using the grow more than they can consume method.





Since then the goldfish have gotten big and the vegetation had to go because it taking up all the swimming space. Now I have gone for the option of using that's that they don't seem to like the taste of and those that they simply cant eat. These plants are wisteria, crypt, sword, java fern and anubis. I still used co2 and add ferts but the majority of these plants are slow growers so it doesn't need much maintenance. I will take a snap later of how it looks at the present time.

I also wanted to add that it also depends on the type of goldfish you have. Fancy goldfish (I have) although they are hard on plants they are nowhere as bad as common, koi or Vail tail goldfish. My bro tried to keep common goldfish with plant and I think it made him five years older in a matter of weeks. They didnt necessarily eat everything but they uprooted everything in the tank and he would spend many an hour with hand in the tank trying to replant.

This picture was taken when they where being behaved


In the end the goldfish where kicked out to a makeshift bucket/mini pond where they are still residing happily to this day.

Thanks guys for all the replies and pics. Lesson learned here. I now have a lovely upside down planted tank, ie. plants are now on the top of the water. I have given up on them. Had a pain in my face re-planting every few hours. Goldie's are going to be evicted before I try that again.

Pat

Hey pat, those goldfish will break your heart. Here is a snap of my goldfish tank as of this evening. As previously mentioned I've narrowed it down to a couple of hardy low maintenance plants and it works very well. However, the fat little fellas have now outgrown this tank and will have to be moved onto large accommodation.



For your information, if you are looking for a cheap house for your existing goldfish have a look at this little number I made last year (((( link )))). It has now been road tested for about 9-10 months and is still working perfectly. The only change to be made was to replace the media in the external sump with bio-balls and porcelain rings. The fish are in fine health and will most likely remain in this tank for another year or so. In my opinion they could probably stay in there for longer than that but my bro has plans for a pond.

Hope this helps

Denis