Hi, I'm pretty new to goldfish and I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Basically, I've got an 18"x10"x10" tank and after reading loads, I'm wondering whether it's big enough? its completely set up just waiting for the fish. Could anyone help me by telling me how many goldfish could live in there? I was thinking of 2. Nothing too fancy. Also, how do I equate the tank size over to how many gallons the tank is?

Any help would be great...

2wf

I used: http://pw1.netcom.com/~ddougal/AquaVol/aquavols.html

and found out that your tank is about 8 gallons. You really can't keep any goldfish in there, unless you just want to get 1 and you realize it's only temporary. I suppose you could get 2 really small ones (1-2 inches) but you'd need to upgrade their tank in a few months.

However, with a heater, there are LOTS of tropical fish that can live in there! You could keep one betta, or two bettas (two females, or put a divider in and keep two males)... a lot of small schooling fish like neon tetras would probably be ok... some bottom-feeders like cories... one of my new favorite fish are cherry barbs, the males are a really bright red color and they stay under 2 inches long, and they don't mind being in smaller groups. African dwarf frogs are fun. Some small gouramis would work. There are some smaller cichlids that might be ok in a really small tank, but I don't know much about them... there are plenty of web sites out there to research them. And so many more options. It's really really hard to keep an 8 gallon goldfish tank, but it's easy to keep a fun 8 gallon tropical tank. They say for small tropicals (ones that stay under 2-3 inches) that you can have 1 inch of fish (adult size) per gallon.

thanks for the advice may, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be big enough, which is a real shame. However, as it's set up I may do as you say an invest in a heater and go back to smaller tropicals (i've had tropical a few years ago).

thanks again for taking the time to reply,

2wf