Hello,
Since my wife and I have moved into our house 3 years ago I have been gaining interest in raising fish. The main cause of this is our house came with 3 ponds now down to two as we removed a useless small pond. Anyway we cleaned them out a couple summers ago and headed up to Petsmart to get like 30 cheap goldfish top hopefully watch them grow in our ponds. A little background on the ponds one is a man made 4'x8' above ground with minimal to no cover and the other is a pre-made 120 gallon underground pond. By the time fall hit we had lost most of the goldfish mainly because we didn't know what we were doing and we weren't sure we cared that much because the fish were like 13 cents a fish. Anyway around October I bought a cheap little 10 gallon set up from Walmart to keep the fish out of the Minnesota winter and from turning into fishicles. Moving on to summer #2 we just put the remaining fish into the underground 120gallon pond because the big pond doesn't have the cover and I believe it gets too hot in the summer.
To make a long story short a few of my goldies have more than quadrupled and now I am hooked on raising goldfish! I have at least 3 goldies that have to be close to 7"s and I do eventually want to turn the 4'x8' into a Koi pond so I do have one Koi in my pond right now.
After reading just a few posts it seems this forum knows A LOT more than your usual Petsmart employee. My current set up is just a 55 gallon but I am buying a used 35 gallon and a used 20 gallon to disperse my fish so I don't over crowd my 55 with the bigger goldies and all. So a couple of questions because I see a lot of terms out there but I am not sure if it is something I need or not. I have run into some problems in the past where I have lost fish because I was getting to crazy with the test strips etc. I am sure I was making the water more toxic than it needed to be.
One of my first questions is with Goldfish they are low maintenance do I really need to get all fancy with the cycling and all that stuff? When I put the goldfish into the pond I never have to do anything other than let the water sit for a day or two and then take them out before winter. I never even have to feed them and the quadruple their size. I ran into this problem last year where I was doing research and adding chemicals to the water hoping to keep it ideal for the fish but I think it was overkill and I was killing off some of my fish ( a few big ones to say the least ). I don't run a filter just an air pump with some air tubes then usually once a week I clean out the gravel and do about a 10 gallon water change. This year I am getting two more tanks to split up the fish a bit so I dont get any over crowding.
My next question is I am considering maybe going back to a filter but I have also heard about powerheads? Before I put the fish in the tanks I do want to get some gravel filters for my tanks this time. Do I need a powerhead or a filter or both?
Another question, and I don't think I need this but what is a skimmer or what does it do? I have a feeling that is mainly for a saltwater set up but I am not sure.
Finally I do have one Koi and I had 3 others that died this past summer. I tried to put them in the 55gallon tank over the summer in plans for making a Koi pond in the near future however I believe they stressed out the tank and I had outbreak of ich. Now I could be wrong on blaming them for the outbreak but those fish were CRAZY! They looked like they were on speed or something. Anyway going forward what should I do about the one I have now? I don't want to put it in the tank with my bigger goldies and have another outbreak of ich. I have read that Koi's are pretty dirty and I might have to have a filter with a Koi? Otherwise like I said I am getting two more tanks this weekend to split up the fish so I probably could just give him his own tank.
Any advice or equipment suggestions would be greatly appreciated and I look forward to fueling my growing passion for this stuff!
A couple photos too boot
Here are a couple shots from the first winter:
Here they are in my 55gallon last winter. You can see the change in size:
Got a few different fish because some died off:
And this was the day I transferred them to the pond this past summer. I am sure they loved it!
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