Hi all I'm Brianna and I'm (obviously) new here... I've read around a bit but I'm still relatively clueless so I figured this is the right place to ask my overall questions.

I have a 29G tank with my gorgeous Ryukin, Suna Solar, inside of it. He currently has 3 snails (there were 4 last night...do not know where he disappeared to) and some sad-looking bamboo inside of his tank.

SO...I have the most questions about substrate, so I'll start with that.
I use a black sand substrate because when I saw him at the store, he definitely ate a piece of gravel (I did NOT see him spit it out any time after) and I figured that was the only thing I could go with to prevent a blockage. He's about 4-4.5" right now and only going to get bigger, so I can't imagine all the gravel he'd eat if I went with anything I've seen in the stores ( other than river rock -_-;; )

I would really really like to do some sort of dirt to make it look as natural as possible, but I was wondering... what kind of dirt do you even use for an aquarium? And is there anything that I can use to put on top of it (in non-planted areas) in order to make cleaning easier? Suna gets Peas and Spirulina tablets (has a mixture of shrimp, blood worms, etc. in it) and also dried blood worms every now and then. That being said, cleaning up his leftovers he leaves behind is not an easy task with sand.

I also would like to know the dangers of leaving substrate uncycled. I had read about people talking about getting some sort of problems if there are pockets anywhere where the water is not filtering through? Overall I am completely lost on any of that so I would love as much information as possible!


Now...algae... I've had a significant amount of algae growth in poor Suna's tank recently. I have to scrub it every other day, but all of his rocks and his plants just get caked with it. :/ I've recently placed the snails inside, so I'm hoping they will help, but is there any plant-safe treatments for algae? (Are we all just doomed? lol)

Last question though... plants! I've found that as long as I can place them in deep enough, Suna isn't too bothered with pulling anything out, but he DOES have a field day going through them so I would like to know some plants that would root strong enough to take a fat Ryukin scratching his back on them. A general list of things to look for would be ideal. His tank is NOT heated, also, so plants that would do well in cold water is a must.

...That should be it. Thank you so much, in advance.

Hi Brianna, welcome to TPT!


Lets see if I can help with those questions
Im just going to go in order of your post and hopefully itll keep me organized :P


First off, a note on the bamboo
It will rot underwater if its fully submerged so if it is, you may want to take it out, maybe plant it in the bottom of your filter if you have a HOB



For dirt, I personally use play sand, you can get a large bag of it at home depot for under 10$
Theres also pool filter sand which is lighter but still cheap, I got a bag at a pool supply store for under 15$
If you go that route, make sure you clean the sand, the play sand in particularly filthy.

As for easier cleaning, you can trying soaking his food so it wont float around and getting a large feeding dish. I dont think it will help much though tbh, goldfish are just messy!
Side note: I would recommend soaking anything freeze dried, it has a habit of causing bloat, something fancy goldfish are prone to already.


As for uncycled substrate, I believe you are referring to substrate compacting. Its when bacteria cant get oxygen and it dies causing rot. You can tell when it happens because the sand will turn black and smell bad. You can prevent it by poking your substrate with chopsticks or something similar thats aquarium safe, anything that will move the sand to prevent compacting. Malaysian trumpet snails will sift your substrate for you but your goldfish will most likely try to eat them and they have hard, pointy shells so I wouldnt recommend using them.


To get rid of the algae, we need to know what kind it is. What color is it? What does it look like? Is it easy to scrub off?


For plants, I would recommend plants you can tie down to something, such as anubias or java fern, both which are super easy to take care of and goldfish tend to not eat, with anubias being tough and java fern tasting bad. Crypts have strong roots but will grow slow and probably melt for awhile before growing back.
Lots of stem plants will grow fast depending on your light but are tender and prime for goldfish eating.
You can also look at duckweed if youre feeling brave. Itll grow ridiculously fast and suck up ammonia and Suna will probably nibble at it, but once you have duckweed, you will ALWAYS have duckweed. Such a pest to deal with!


Hope that helps!
-Ele

Ah thank you for the wonderful advice on plants and substrate And yes, the substrate compacting was what I was talking about. I'm assuming as long as it's moved around then, it'll be ok right?

As far as the algae, some of it is brown (on the rocks and by my filter) some of it is fuzzy and on the glass...and then some grows like a mesh on top of the plants (looks like the kind on the glass, just way way thicker).

The algea is easy to scrub off on the glass...on everything else, it takes 3 or 4 wipes :/ I was thinking maybe it could be the water not moving enough or maybe too much waste.

Duckweed looks adorable (and very intimidating in large amounts) but getting rid of ammonia... definitely a dream! Then again i'm afraid of it being too much to handle haha.

Duckweed= Yummy snack for goldfish, in fact MOST plants are consumed by the goldfish.

There are people on here who grow duckweed just to feed to their gold fish.

Hopefully you can find plants your goldfish will leave alone.

Substrate compacting is not really an issue for planted tanks. It's also usually never an issue for goldfish tanks.

The algae sounds like a little brown diatoms. Ramshorns or bladder/pond snails will clean the up. My golfish always ate most of the babies so it never got to be a problem.

Tough deap rooting or strongly attached lowlight plants are best. I had great luck with melon swords. But every goldfush is different and yours might leave them alone.

Growing duckweed for goldfish if an awesome snack. I used to tossed in large handfuls every week befor a water change. It kept them all nice and regular.

Welcome to the forums! I'm not "new" but im not nearly as active as everyone else on here.

I current am running a 29g with 1 blackmoor, 1 oranda and 2 platies that is planted. I do also own a bamboo. I currently have Rotala Indica, Cryptocoyne Wendti, and Amazon Swords. These plants survive with my golfish and do not get eaten! I started the tank with these plants as well as Blyxa Japonica, Golden Creeping Jenny, and Water Sprite, however they have gotten eaten via the goldies. The goldies didn't actually bother the Blyxa Japonica, however they did uproot them nearly every day. After weeks of fighting the goldies on these plants the constant uprooting killed the plants.

My bamboo is doing quite well and is showing no signs of rotting. The top of it is out of water, but 90% of the bamboo is submerged within the tank.



I also use black sand that i picked up from petco. Depending on your fish, if he did eat the gravel, you should have seen it being passed otherwise he may have spit out without you eating it. I've never seen many goldies actually eat their gravel and survive which makes me think your little guy did spit it out, though all of my goldies in the past usually die due to SBD by the time they hit about 3.5".

As for dirt substrate, you might want to stick with sand in all honesty. Goldies like to sift. Dirt is not the greatest thing to have with goldies as you'll constantly get a wonderful ploom of dirt floating around due to them.

However since you really want it, im not going to be the person who says dont use it and leave it at that. Some dirt that you can look into using is Mircale Grow Organic Choice Potting MIX - not the soil, but mix. I am actually contemplating about adding a soil layer to my tank, however i just added a Fluval 305 filter so i have to wait for that bad boy to get cycled and up and running before i mess around any more.

When you add the soil, and are ready to fill up the tank, make sure you add a plastic sheet down ontop of the soil as this will disrupt the water and not screw up your soil (create a massive hole in it and throw soil everywhere).

What kind of algae are you seeing? I've been battling algae myself for quite some time. I have been experimenting with H202 and have seen NO side affects of using it and am starting to use it in my 10g aquaponics tank.

H202 has been the main forefront of killing algae within my tank and i have been winning the battle(slowly) over the past month. I used to have quite a bit of green algae on the glass and all of the decor inside the tank was covered in algae. I recently pulled all items out of the tank, and did a soak in a 5gallon bucket with some h202 for 24hours then scrubbed clean and let dry for 24hours prior to returning to the tank. So far the growth of algae has been stopped and i was seeing reversing signs prior to the cleanse.

I would say you first need to figure out what exactly is causing your algae problem first, and make changes to combat the problem before attempting to find a remedy for removing it.

I removed the 17w fluoro that came with the tank and put in 4 24w CFL's which made my tank a high light tank. This was a number one contribution to my algae problem and the second was my filter was a zoomed 511 canister. Its designed for turtle tanks, however it worked fine for fish that aren't high in producing waste.

Please keep in mind that H202 in aquariums are quite...experimental and use with caution. I have read many scientific articles about it and i personally use a doseage of 1ml-1.5ml per gallon of water. It has been seen upwards of 3ml per gallon is safe, however i would rather play on the safe side of things.

Would oyu be able to upload photos? If you have photos of your algae that would also help the members give advice on what to do/what is wrong.

What kind of filtration are you using? What are your parameters of the tank?

i have goldfish with hornwort and they don't bother it at all. can be a pain to keep in check as it can get out of control pretty fast. i think its like java fern or anubias, doesn't taste good.

sometimes it really depends on the fish. i have come across a couple threads where people have said their java fern wasn't safe from them either.

i did want to do dirt substrate at first in my 10g which is my first planted tank. i ended up going with floromax which i think i am happier with. definitely not as messy as a dirted tank would be but i like to rearrange and its more of grow out tank for my bigger one.