Hello. Ok, please no yelling, since I am just a newbie here and trying my best.
Anyway, my son won a goldfish (I think it is a Sarasa Comet) a few weeks ago. For the first few days, we just kept him (George) in a large glass bowl to make sure he would live long enough to go buy a tank/supplies. Well he lived, and so we bought a beginner 10 gal. tank, plants (plastic) gravel, cave etc. After a few days of George swimming around, my younger son decided that he wanted a fish as well, so we went out and bought another goldfish (oranda I think?) named Fred. I was testing the water each day and the ammonia was hanging between .25 and .50. Water was a bit cloudy so I did some partial water changes every other day.
We went away overnight and came back to find that Fred was dead. We only got him 4 days before. After the funeral services, the ammonia level went up to 1.0, which I assumed was b/c there was a dead fish in the tank.
Now, a week later, the ammonia is between 0 and .25 but the water is still a bit cloudy (but getting better). I am now feeding George every other day (flakes and pellets-not together, just rotating them with each feeding)
I'm not even sure what to ask....(why the cloudy water, why did Fred die, was that an ammonia "spike" that I hear of, can I get another fish)
I do have test strips, for PH and Nitrates etc. I hate them and will be getting a better kit today, like I have for the ammonia (8 drops of each bottle into a water sample and then wait 5 min.) but so far, everything looked "normal" according to the results, except that it is almost impossible to tell how high/low the nitrites/nitrates are. It looked for a long time that both were at 0 (when my ammonia was high) and now that my ammonia is lower, it looks like nitrites are 0-ish and nitrates are maybe 20?
Again, I'm a newbie and I'm sure you will all tell me that a 10 gal tank is not even large enough for 1 fish but I had 4 goldfish in a small bowl when I was a kid and they lived for years.....I never knew any of this stuff. Just trying to do my best for the fishies!
Any advice will be appreciated.
Anyway, my son won a goldfish (I think it is a Sarasa Comet) a few weeks ago. For the first few days, we just kept him (George) in a large glass bowl to make sure he would live long enough to go buy a tank/supplies. Well he lived, and so we bought a beginner 10 gal. tank, plants (plastic) gravel, cave etc. After a few days of George swimming around, my younger son decided that he wanted a fish as well, so we went out and bought another goldfish (oranda I think?) named Fred. I was testing the water each day and the ammonia was hanging between .25 and .50. Water was a bit cloudy so I did some partial water changes every other day.
We went away overnight and came back to find that Fred was dead. We only got him 4 days before. After the funeral services, the ammonia level went up to 1.0, which I assumed was b/c there was a dead fish in the tank.
Now, a week later, the ammonia is between 0 and .25 but the water is still a bit cloudy (but getting better). I am now feeding George every other day (flakes and pellets-not together, just rotating them with each feeding)
I'm not even sure what to ask....(why the cloudy water, why did Fred die, was that an ammonia "spike" that I hear of, can I get another fish)
I do have test strips, for PH and Nitrates etc. I hate them and will be getting a better kit today, like I have for the ammonia (8 drops of each bottle into a water sample and then wait 5 min.) but so far, everything looked "normal" according to the results, except that it is almost impossible to tell how high/low the nitrites/nitrates are. It looked for a long time that both were at 0 (when my ammonia was high) and now that my ammonia is lower, it looks like nitrites are 0-ish and nitrates are maybe 20?
Again, I'm a newbie and I'm sure you will all tell me that a 10 gal tank is not even large enough for 1 fish but I had 4 goldfish in a small bowl when I was a kid and they lived for years.....I never knew any of this stuff. Just trying to do my best for the fishies!
Any advice will be appreciated.