FMJnaX
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Mojo Troll said:Its not the ammonia I'm concerned with, nor the goldfish eating the plants. If you have a healthy planted tank, you'll never detect ammonia. The plants will consume it. I have'nt tested for ammonia on my planted tanks in well over a year. Phos and nitra I test every couple of days. Those are the problem causers for planted tanks.
What concerns me is Phosphates. In general goldfish are messy eaters and overfeed. Not to mention they poo like crazy. Which algae is it that thrives in high light, high Phos??? I can't recall.
Somehow I missed this post, so I apologize for the double post.
Anyway, I never said I had any ammonia detected. See my numbers and you'll see that I'm at 0 ppm. I haven't detected any for months (even after adding a new fish). I'm not sure where you get that goldies overfeed. They can't go open the food and feed themselves... I feed lightly and have more than healthy fish. I also have just over 10x filtration rate. The extra mess that the goldies make is quickly picked up. This is evident in my need to clean my filters at least once a week; sometimes more, sometimes less. I also gravel vac every week. I'm very proud to say that when I do gravel vac, most of the time the water is nearly clean enough to drink (not that I would. lol).
To make a long story short, you need to quit stereotyping. Until you start keeping goldies and attempt what I am attempting, you don't know much about it. You only know what you've read/heard/seen. I could be wrong. Perhaps you are a goldie with plants expert... but from the sounds of it, I doubt it. It's like, say, the pirahna. To an unexperienced aquariast, you may have an image of frenzy and losing a hand and you may start to advise against them. However, most of us [experienced] know that this is false.
Again, I appreciate your planting advise and chemistry advise, but the rest of it is bogus in my situation.