low light/low tech scape for goldfish

I have not used soil for planting aquariums. If they goldfish get to it they will dirty up the tank fast with it. I have heard it can cause nitrate and other problems.

I consider sand an important part of a goldfish aquarium. They LOVE to sift through it, they do it a lot. I actually feel sorry for the ones I see in tanks without any substrate. It just doesn't make sense to me to deny it from them.
 
Bare bottom tanks are a viable option when water quality issues are of the utmost importance. Having kept my fish in both bare and substrate included systems, I have to say that the picking/foraging behavior is very much the same in either situation. To be honest though, the bare look just gets old after a while, which is why their tank now has a sand substrate. Better believe that if maintaining my dissolved metabolics in acceptable ranges became an issue though, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to scrap the sand. Since we can't quantify how "happy" a given environment makes our fish, we can only focus on keeping them as healthy as possible. If you decide to stay with the smaller tank, I would actually suggest the bare/potted plant method, as it will be immensely easier to keep the tank very clean, something that you'll have a lil more wiggle room with in a 55 or larger.
 
oh...well my goldie tank is a bare bottom because the only other substrate that i have at the moment is this gravel that has a diameter of like an inch around...which, as you can probably imagine, was not fun to clean....basically every piece of crap got stuck under inbetween the gravel and the filters couldn't do their jobs. it also makes feeding nearly impossible (sinking pellets) lol
 
it is getting old though, and i do remember that when it had the gravel, the fish were never bored and were always rooting around and moving the gravel, instead of just sitting in the corner. Bare bottoms force you to be creative though, you have to make the tank interesting enough that they swim around exploring instead of sitting in one corner of the tank, I set up a long bubble bar from front to back in a part of the tank, and there's like some kind of hamster house that i have that looks like a pear, and has a hole in it, and other randoms i find to put in (of course being cautious with my choices) I can't stand to go to the lfs and see the fish just sitting on top of eachother staring into corners... :(
 
Sand works just like a bare bottom though, it keeps all the debris on top (instead of trapping it like gravel and other course substrates) so that either the flow and filters can trap it or you vacuum it up.

Exactly how much worse were the dissolved metabolics after you switched to sand?

To simply deny them one of the most natural behaviors because its benefit is not easily measurable is not a good choice in my opinion.
 
reptileguy2727 said:
Sand works just like a bare bottom though, it keeps all the debris on top (instead of trapping it like gravel and other course substrates) so that either the flow and filters can trap it or you vacuum it up.
Exactly how much worse were the dissolved metabolics after you switched to sand?
To simply deny them one of the most natural behaviors because its benefit is not easily measurable is not a good choice in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Whereas before, there was never an issue keeping nitrate levels below 5, now it creeps up to around 20 despite my 2x weekly large water changes. I can't say for sure, but I'm willing to bet that my husbandry skills are pretty thorough compared to most others, and even still, I have issues with compaction. Additionally, the fish tend to ingest a large amount of sand while eating/foraging through it, and it makes their feces extremely heavy, so much so that even with a good drop, a python often has difficulties pulling it out. Beyond that, I am immensely overfiltered, and still see detritus buildup and dead spots. Though you may be of the opinion that the benefit of being able to keep a cleaner house for your fish is immeasurable, I'd have to say that trying to quantify such intangibles as happiness in our fishy subjects is much more difficult a task.
 
What types of fish?
What type of sand?

Even though we cannot measure their happiness with numbers on a test kit, I watch mine enjoy the sand and it shows something. It should not be ignored simply because we cannot measure it as finitely as nitrate.
 
Goldfish, and estes natural color marine sand (the coated/colored stuff is the one i had issues with). As long as we are going with intangibles, I have to put out there that my goldies looked plenty happy on their bare bottom tank, no more or less than they do now over sand.
 
Well from my experience it seems like yours are an exception. I have not found that mine eat any of the sand, and they are definitely very happy to sift through the sand. Oh well.
 
ok for a 48" long tank, (55g) would you guys go with this light or this light? taking out a bulb or two of course. And if money wasn't an issue. Which one would you guys use? for about 2.1 wpg?
or any other lighting you would recommend?
 
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