Latest Addition to the Family

Say helloooooo to Gabby! She's a 6 month old (4cm/1.6" without the tail) baby Oranda goldfish - the reason for my addiction :). Got her yesterday from Q&A Reptiles in Cresta. She's as cute as a button!

She's currently in my quarantine tank just to make sure she's not carrying any parasites or anything.

Test Kits

Whatever you do, don't buy test STRIPS. Useless! I paid a fortune for it and its not even accurate grrrr... Off tomorrow to get the drop test kits. Found a great link that allows you to keep an update of your water parameters, especially when cycling your tank. "It has alerts if your readings are toxic or dangerous and also has an overall comparison graph in addition to individual graphs for each of the tests, which could be useful for identifying trends. It updates automatically each time you enter data." Check it out at the bottom of my page under my Links tab. Oh, and here's a pic of my new tank..

You can actually see little Vinnie (Fantail Goldie) in the bottom right-hand corner.

This is the built-in filter.

The R.O. Water debate

Wasn't sure whether to go for tap water (which contains 0.1mm of nitrites - due to city water no doubt) or Reverse Osmosis water. Turns out i can use the tap water as long as i leave it out for 24hrs, use a water conditioner that gets rid of the nitrites, and perhaps salt it. Phew! having to carry all those bags of water from the car to the flat was not going to be pretty! If i go with RO, i will have to add minerals to the RO water as it has no minerals in it that the fish actually need! So, RO is great for drinking but not great for fishies, while tap water is good for fishies but not good for drinking .

Fish tank on order

Tank size: 915 x 325 x 600 mm