Experimenting With Plants - Goldfish Style

 

As many of you know there are many ways to keep fancy goldfish. My personal preferences and th temperaments of my fish have come into play here.

Some people keep bare bottom tanks as its easier to keep clean. My personal choice is to have gravel and plants for my fish to rummage through. Admittedly it is more time consuming.  It is messy when it comes time to clean the tank - and at times requires regular tidying between tank cleans.

My tank substrate in the big planted goldfish tank is a mix of Seachem Fluorite Black and a natural gold gravel. I don't recall the exact ratio but its mostly gold gravel. To begin with the fluorite was in one section however the tank has been up and running for a while. Between the gravel vac when cleaning and goldies rummaging, the fluorite has spread out and mixed through the whole tank.

In terms of plant choices, I'm just sharing what I found worked for my fish. Hopefully my experience may save you some money on plants.  I've slowly worked my way through a big portion of the Pisces plant catalogue (one of the perks of working in a pet shop that sells fish).

I used to live in NSW and there ambulia was a staple in pretty much every pet store. However after moving to QLD and getting back into fish I found elodea seemed to be the plant everyone has here. This makes a lot of sense as it's sometimes referred to as pond weed. It grows readily either planted or floating and it is long lasting. 

It is possible to buy ambulia in Queensland.  My guys prefer to eat it over elodea (but will eat elodea also if there is no better option).  I suspect the preference for ambulia is due to the fine soft leaves. Given it's popularity as a menu item, it doesn't last very long and is very messy in with my goldfish. A $5-6 bunch may only last 15 minutes!

I had great success growing ambulia in fluorite black in my tropical tank.  It grew quickly in the warmer water but it doesn't recover in the non-tropical tank.

I've trialed various plants and different plant combinations to find out what works. I should clarify that I buy the plants ultimately to enrich the environment and lives of my fish. My aim is to have some plants that last, creating cover and places to hide if they want. I also buy plants that I know are more temporary, giving the fish a change. 

I will try to detail my planting experiments into more manageable posts with the aim of focusing mainly on one type of successful plant or a few failed attempts. Stay tuned for the next instalment!

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