Gabby in Quarantine

Good articles on quarantining:

Quarantining Goldfish
Goldfish Healthcare
How to Quarantine a Fish

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.

Orandas are puppies with fins!

Contrary to popular belief, goldfish do not belong in fishbowls!

Well, my tank's been up and running for 10 days now. I don't know how, but my ammonia remained very low, never reaching above the 0.25 mark! Great news for little Vinnie no doubt. At first i thought my tank is never going to cycle because aren't you suppose to see ammonia levels rising, which mine wasn't doing at all. Then, to my surprise, i tested the water again yesterday, using my API Mater Test Kit (awesome!) that i bought at this shop in Hillfox - Animal Kingdom. The results were as follows:
Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0.25
PH = 7.8
Nitrate = 0
Notice the nitrite now rising and the ammonia zero - this means my tank is CYCLING heeehaaa . Don't know how i missed the ammonia spike or why, don't care either! :)

Gonna do a water change this weekend, for the first time, and then salt the tank for nitrite poisoning.

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.