Do you want to have a real goldfish at home?Just imagine, this is possible not only in a fairy tale. No, we will not give you any guarantees that your three wishes will come true... But there is plenty of advice on how to properly care for a goldfish living in your aquarium! Goldfish are easy to care for, and their maintenance does not cause any special troubles. What are these fairytale goldfish really like? What should be the proper maintenance of goldfish, how to feed them and do they need any special care? Let's figure it out.
Zoological portrait
Aquarium fish, known to us as goldfish,are officially called Carassius auratus auratus (in Latin) and belong to the carp family (Cyprinidae). The closest relatives of goldfish in our rivers and lakes are mirror carp, crucian carp, bream, rudd and bleak. But to which family the Pushkin Goldfish belonged is difficult to say, because these fish are mainly freshwater. In a home aquarium, goldfish, as a rule, do not grow longer than fifteen centimeters, although they can reach thirty centimeters in length. They have a laterally flattened, elongated elliptical body with a sharp snout (muzzle). The long upper (dorsal) fin begins in the middle of the body, and the short lower (anal) is located closer to the tail. The classic coloring of a goldfish is red-gold on the back, yellow-gold on the sides and yellowish on the belly. The fins are painted in bright red or any reddish shades, less often they are just yellow. However, there are specimens of simply exotic colors, ranging from black and blue to white. So the goldfish may not be gold at all, but red, pink, brown or even spotted. It is possible to determine the sex of the goldfish only in the pre-spawning period. At this time, males ready to spawn acquire a distinctive feature - serrations located on the front ray of the first pectoral fins and on the gills. A female ready to lay eggs is easy to recognize by her compacted, swollen abdomen. If you look at the fish from above during this period, you can notice a curvature of the body, which often remains after the eggs are laid.
Conditions of detention
An aquarium with goldfish shouldcorrespond to comfortable conditions for keeping them. It is advisable to purchase a special species aquarium with a length of at least one meter. It is necessary to pour coarse-grained soil on the bottom of the aquarium and plant a small number of aquatic plants. In accordance with the conditions of keeping goldfish, these should be plants with not very small leaves, such as water lily or vallisneria. It is good to settle floating plants in the aquarium, which serve as food for goldfish. Of the floating plants, duckweed and Riccia are the most suitable. Comfortable conditions for keeping are water, the temperature of which fluctuates from 16 to 24 degrees. Moreover, in winter the water temperature should not exceed 20 degrees, and in summer it should fall below 21. It is necessary to decrease or increase the seasonal water temperature gradually. Proper care of goldfish is also maintaining the balance of hardness and acidity of the water in the aquarium. Water hardness (dH) for goldfish can fluctuate from eight to eighteen units, and acidity (pH) is maintained at around seven units. Naturally, the water in the aquarium should be clean and saturated with oxygen, and the height of its layer should not be less than twenty-five centimeters. Caring for goldfish also includes daily water renewal, when one tenth of its total volume is added to the aquarium. It is necessary to add water of the same composition and temperature, and with seasonal temperature changes, raise and lower the degree using daily water renewals. It is also advisable to equip the aquarium with a filter and an aerator. The maximum permissible number of fish in the aquarium can be determined using a simple formula: for every ten centimeters of the fish's body length, two hundred square centimeters of water surface are required. For an aquarium without aeration, this norm is doubled. And at the same time, the daily water change should be at least a third of the total volume. Note that caring for a smaller number of fish is much easier.
Feeding
Basic care for goldfish comes down tocorrect and timely feeding. It is important to remember that these aquarium inhabitants are quite voracious, do not know the limits in food and are prone to obesity. At the same time, they are unpretentious and omnivorous. The diet for goldfish should include live and plant foods. Live food suitable for them is traditional bloodworms, daphnia, earthworms and earthworms, tubifex and corethra. Plant food is duckweed, riccia and lettuce. As additional carbohydrates, they can be given bread crumbs and very thick porridges made from buckwheat, oatmeal or wheat. Porridge is cooked without salt and rolled into pea-sized balls. Additional protein in the diet of goldfish will be scraped meat, which can be mixed with bread and also rolled into balls. Unlike tropical aquarium fish, goldfish need more carbohydrates than proteins. Special dry food in the form of granules or flakes should be given according to the instructions. The daily food norm for goldfish should not exceed three percent of its weight. Fish will also eat more food, since they do not know the limits. You can determine the amount of food for fish in the aquarium experimentally. To do this, pour an approximate amount of food, and after fifteen minutes, collect all uneaten food from the surface of the water. Goldfish need to be fed twice a day. And you can leave them without food for no longer than a week.
Breeding
How to care for fish during spawning?To breed goldfish, you need a special spawning aquarium. During the mating season, males and females are separated and well fed, and the female and two or three males ready for spawning are placed in the spawning aquarium. The female spawns by swimming among or above aquatic plants, and the male fertilizes the eggs immediately. The eggs stick to the plants and become transparent on the second day. After spawning, the fish are removed, and the water layer in the aquarium is reduced to fifteen centimeters. In about five days, fry emerge from the eggs. It is important that during this period the water temperature in the spawning aquarium does not change by more than five degrees. Further care of the fry and the conditions of keeping are completely consistent with the care of adult goldfish. At first, the babies are fed infusoria and rotifers, and in the second year of life they are transferred to regular food. If you properly care for goldfish, then their maintenance will not cause much trouble. These creatures are unpretentious and cheerful. So proper care and comfortable maintenance are all they need. Settle these fabulous fish in your aquarium, and who knows, maybe your wishes will come true! We recommend reading:
