I just bought my first goldfish on Oct 18 this year ( so I don't know how old they are) .The heater is put into the tank all the time to pretect fish from disease ( Temp 70F)

This morning four male fish are chasing a female fish in mock spawning runs. Till noon, I went out to Petmart for spawn host. But sales told me they didn't have it and told me to made it. So I made a spawn mop by green acrylic thread. After I put it into the tank(1:40pm), all the chasing activity has stop. They act normally.It seem I have a dream this morning.


1.The female still have a full , rounded appearance. Has she laid eggs already?
2.If not, when will the male fish chase her again?
3.Did self-made spawn mop make them unconfortable?
4. This morning all four male show strong interests in this female. Should I take 3 or 2 or 1 male out of the tank?

Thanks.

70 is probably a good temp for breeding but you can turn it down after that. Keeping the water warm doesn't protect against diseases in cold water fish.

Sometimes when rain is coming and the air pressure changes, goldfish get frisky, maybe that was what happened.

If she laid the eggs and you didn't rescue them, they probably got eaten.

If she is looking exhausted from the chasing consider taking some males out.

Thanks, Yabbie,

This morning no male chase the female. You are right, maybe they already ate their eggs while I was out.

Should I turn off the heater ? I put it on since I bought all fish on Oct. Will they be sick due to sudden change of temp?

Hope anyone can help.

What temperature is it usually now in your house, Snowfire? If there isn't much difference between the tank water and room temperature, then you can just unplug the heater and take it out. For a bigger difference - say anything more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit - I would lower the heater's temp 2 degrees per hour or so, until it comes pretty close to room temperature, and then take the heater out.
Too big of a temp difference causes stress, and Ich is a common parasite when exposed to big temp swings....

Thanks for your quick response.

Temp for room temp : 66F
Temp for water in the tank: 74 F

My Questions are:

1.Does goldfish lose weight without heater during winter?

2.My female still have a round belly. I still hope she will lay egg in the next few days again? ?

I don't know whether you live somewhere that is heading into winter or heading into summer. If you turn the heater down to 62F, that should be enough to get you thru winter without overnight temp swings and it won't switch on in summer at all.

Goldfish eat less when the water is cooler, their growth slows but indoors, they shouldn't lose weight. The ones that live outdoors where the temps are just above freezing may lose weight.

Goldfish spawn repeatedly throughout spring and summer. Don't worry about the round belly, if there is rain coming pop the mop back in and maybe you can rescue it in time. Meanwhile, some new plants, and high protein food, might also help.

Thanks,Yabbie.I live in Los Angeles, CA. Do you think I don't need a heater at all? It is warm in the winter.

These days I gave goldfish frozen bloodworm and high protein food. This morning I did 50% water change. No chasing. Maybe I should wait untill spring comes.

Nup, don't waste time plugging it it and cleaning around it. You won't need it.

Thanks. I took the heater out.

I found a small fish today. So happy.

A fry? Don't let his parents eat him.

Too late.This morning I couldn't find fry.

Actually I made a big mistake that the next day after chasing, 80% water change had been perform.

My Question:

how does egges look like? How Big?

eggs are very small...maybe 2-3 mm

Second Time Spawn!!
This morning they have laid eggs on the spawn mop. I saw the eggs and put them into another tank.So happy.

Thanks for Ranchugirl, yabbie and Tazz Knight's help.

Congrats

They should start to hatch in a about 3-5 days, depending on temp. You'll see 2 types of eggs - pale opaque ones (unfertilized) and yellow transparent ones (fertilized). The unfertilized ones might get a bit hairy as the fungus grows on them, which can affect the good ones, so maybe a small treatment of malachite green/blue might help. Best to read the help pages/forums on this site. You don't want to overdose treatments.

Sometimes as early as 36 hours after mating you can see a faint black ring in the egg. As this develops the line becomes more distinct with two dots at the end - this is the eyes and spinal column. You might even catch them flicker. I've got photos but I have to sort them out first, but go0gle it and you should find something.

It's fascinating to watch them grow.

Good luck

Great news, hm, Snowfire!!
Now keep watching those eggs like Darth mentioned, and in a few days you'll see what a ton of fry look like...

Thanks for all your's advise.

I took the white egges out on the first day. It has been three days. Some egges have too black dot , and some have white spots.

What mainly bother me is fry food.

I browsed internet. Someone said brine shimp is good for fry and make it more healthy and enhance color. After talking sale in petmart, I have to buy air pump , shimp egges , and hatchy bottle. Too much trouble. What about egg yolk water? or Any green water ? which one is best for fry?

you can get frozen baby brine shrimp That is what I fed my frys for about 6 months...

Congrats and good luck with your babies

Nice one, snowfire, fish babies are always a source of excitement!

We're now on round 4 of baby fish, 2 rounds in the UK around 18 months ago, which resulted in 4 healthy young common/shubunkin mixes, they live in our friends' kitchen now, happy as Larry and in very good hands.

In Australia we've had an initial round of 5-6 surviving fry from two redcap orandas around 5 weeks ago. The babies got sucked into the filter when we put them into their own little 10l (2g) tank, maybe it was a bit early for them

Now we've got 3 or 4 little lads or lasses, around 3 mm long (hatched 4 days ago) and they live in two white filter sponges weged inside a separator net (10x10x18cm, 4'x4'x6') that hangs inside the top edge of the main tank (220 litres, around 60+ UK gallons) to make sure they got a fresh and well-cycled water supply.

We were too careful about water changes with our first set of fry, and they got exposed to overly high doses of Ammonia or Nitrate, which caused their gills to look slightly shrivelled for the rest of their lifes, not pretty, which is why we put our next lot directly into a filtered tank where they got eaten by the water intake. I should have left the "tights wrap" filter on the water intake, but it got blocked by sludge.

Food: It's still early days, so I don't know if we succeed this time, but we've got a combined diet of some green powder (infusoria?) from the friendly man at the LFS, and this morning I made a protein complement from dried whole shrimp:
I mashed them up with the back of a serving spoon in a bowl until they were quite a fine powder, then I poured a small amount of boiling water over the powder to release the protein from the bone/carbon. I filtered the through a very narrow net (tights again), kept the liquid filtrate for the fry, added more boiling water and some gelatine to the solid leftovers.
Now I've got about 5 ml of liquid shrimp extract for the fry and around 20 ml of shrimp jelly for the big guys to feed them up with enough protein for the next spawning round. I feed a bit of infusoria (mixed with water and frozen so I can break off little pieces as I need them) and two drops of shrimp extract 3-4 times a day.

Fingers crossed, and don't we all look forward to 4 little crosses of black oranda male and gold oranda with black fins female *happywaggledance*

Will these fry food mess up the water?

No, the food will not mess up the water, because we have the fry net hanging in a big tank which has an a huge Eheim canister filter and a ultra-violet steriliser. When we had fry in a small bowl in London, we did twice daily water changes ( but that did not keep the nitrates at bay). So this time we have put the eggs in the big tank for hatching so that the minute particles will not cause a spike in the ammonia. If the little guys survive, we have a small tank (which we have used for the quarantining of the new fish) that we will move them into. Fingers crossed!!

We are very proud of the four fry we have presently, because we bought 4 new orandas to join the four we already had about two weeks ago and one of the new gold and blacks started to lay eggs a week from bringing her home. The big black male was chasing her but not doing the action (if you get my meaning!) so I held him in a bowl of tank water and 'stripped' him gently so that the water had sperm and then placed the few eggs that they hadn't eaten into the bowl - and Hey Presto! four little ones!

Thank you.

I will try.