Goldfish planted tanks

Hi guys.


I have been reading a lot about people having goldfish planted tanks. Strange as it may sounds, you can have a planted tank with these plant eating fish. So has any one tried it out? I am thunking about setting one up.

 

@dash

I sure won't try it. Goldfish are messy little fish. They almost put me off the hobby for good ten years ago! - BUT I do love orange so I opted for sunburst wag platy this time round.

Love this look.

 

Of coarse you can do it. Just use plants that are bad tasting to most fish. Like Crypts, Java Ferns, Bolbitus, etc.

 

I've just set up a 4ft goldie tank, the 3 fancy goldies I bought outgrew their 2ft in less than 6 months! They never touched any plants in the 2ft (anubias, crypt, smallish amazon sword) except for the floating stuff (which shall not be named) that I threw in every couple of weeks for them to munch on. I've planted some swords and anubias in the 4ft, and put in a rock with windelov java, and although they've explored thoroughly they haven't chewed on or uprooted anything - except the air curtain!!! So far so good... Can't post pics from this useless phone I'm afraid, waiting for upgrade. I would suggest "slower" types like orandas or telescopes, they seem to be less destructive to plants; also keep them well fed with a variety of foods and they don't seem to bother with the plants.

 

That's interesting what temp are you keeping the tank? How do the plants cope with the colder temperature

 

I keep most plants in colder water. Well, in my holding tanks, and most of them are absolutely perfect.

 

Tank is set at 23C, fancy goldies need slightly warmer temps, but it's too soon to tell re plant growth cos the whole thing is only 2 weeks old!

 

I have a small 10 month old goldfish in my low tech planted 150L tropical community.
I sometimes bring in small goldies from the pond before winter.
In the warm water with abundant high protein food they show rapid growth and they also like to eat nuisance algae such ass cladophora.
In the beginning he was so small that I was afraid my angels would eat him, and he was always hiding to avoid the angels.

I recently added some new plants from another member and I discovered that he likes to eat the top leaves of ambulia.
The bacopa, rotundifola, vallisneria, java fern's, hygrophilla and other stem plants (think it's crypt's) he leaves alone.
Soon I will have to aclimate him back to cold water to put him back in the pond again.