help goldfish lovers!

Alright--you are speaking over my head in fish talk. I have no idea what fry are! Any good website to read up on "cycling" and how to pair fish and how many to keep in my aquarium? I saw some pics of those rummynose tetras--are they the same as tetras you were referring to?
My fish store employs high school kids that have no idea what they are talking about--I need a real resource before I kill anymore fish.
Thanks
 
To start, here is the cycling thread:
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81388
The Article section is your friend.

Be sure to look at the tag "scams", btw.

fry are baby fish. Basically, there are types of fish called livebearers which spawn(mate) all the time when any males and females are put together in the aquarium. Some of the fry survive, grow up, and then mate with the other fish, and the population slowly(or in some cases, quickly) grows.

Stocking, the art of knowing how many fish you need to keep in your aquarium, is not determined by one hard and fast rule. You learn a fish's requirements and if you can keep them in your size tank and if they will be compatible with the other species in it, and your water chemistry. At this stage in the learning process, we'll just recommend stuff to you.

Some fish require pairs, some need to be isolated, and others need schools(groups of 5 or more).
 
Thank you. I'll keep you posted as I cycle:) I'll try and give Spooky back to the pet store tomorrow as well.
 
If you decide to go with a different species of fish, I would not recommend livebearers (guppies, platies, mollies, etc) unless you were to just keep one gender. You would also need a heater. There is a HUGE variety of fish you could keep in a 25g. You could have a nice selection of tetras, a centerpiece fish like a dwarf gourami, some bottom feeders like cories. This would give you an active, relatively low maintenance tank that would be rewarding and fun to watch. But that is getting ahead of ourselves. For your goldfish now, water changes are your friend. Its likely you may need to do daily 50% water changes to keep the ammonia and nitrite at bay. As mentioned, aquarium pharmaceuticals makes a great liquid test kit (the master test kit) that will make monitoring the tanks chemistry easy from home. If you print out an online price, petsmart (i believe) will price match which can save you some money.
 
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