This article will give you some tips on how to choose goldfish for your aquarium or pond. If you plan to keep them indoors, then the size of your aquarium is a big consideration. Adult goldfish will need a minimum of 2 gallons of water for every inch of their length.

Goldfish are members of the carp family and are available in several different varieties. Some have been known to grow to nearly two feet in length and weighing several pounds. So this variety would not be a good choice for the average home aquarium, but more suited for a good garden pond.

Goldfish are genearlly divided into two groups…

1) Fancy - Can grow to a foot and a half in length with proper care.
2) Common - Usually grow to less than a foot in length, with 8 inches or so being more common.

Colors

Goldfish can come in a variety of colors such as gold, black, brown, red, blue, purple, orange, white, yellow, and in many combinations of these. They also have the ability to change colors depending on their surroundings. Just one of the many interesting facts about goldfish.

Tips for buying goldfish

1) Buy your fish from an established pet store that has a good reputation
2) Do not buy fish that look sluggish, are floating on the surface, or ones that have any torn areas on their fins.
3) Only buy fish that are are actively swimming and look well cared for.
4) Choose the variety of goldfish for your particular purpose. Common varieties for a home aquarium or fancy varieties for a garden pond or other outside pond you may have.

I hope these tips and information on how to choose goldfish have been helpful to you.
 

by Alden Smith

A plastic shoebox from the dollar store will meet the needs of most aquarists. As worms need to breathe, the container shouldn’t be air tight. Cutting a small hole in the lid and placing a piece of breathable foam in the hole will suffice to allow enough oxygen to reach the worms.

Fill the container about 3/4 full with peat moss as the medium. The peat moss should be wet, but not soaked. Test by squeezing a bit of the medium in your hand. If a few drops emerge, then you have it right. If water emerges from the mass in a stream, you have it too wet.

Add your starter culture of worms. Finding a suitable starter culture can at times be difficult. A good source can be from auctions at local fish clubs, or from a fellow enthusiast. Also, looking in the classified in the back pages of magazines like Aquarium Fish Magazine or Aquarium USA can sometimes lead to a good resource.

Place a piece of wet crustless white bread on top of the medium for compost. Cover this with a sheet of plastic the size of the slice of bread. The plastic aids in keeping the bread from drying out. It is a good idea to bury the piece of bread in the medium when first starting a culture to prevent mold from occurring.

Allow the worms a week to establish before feeding them. Check on them on a daily basis to insure that they are eating the bread.White worms will need to be housed in a cool dark place, free from insects. We use an apartment sized refrigerator with a temperature control sensor that maintains the temperature at 55-65 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of the best foods for white worms is Gerber’s Baby Oatmeal. Add a pinch of active dry yeast to the mixture. The trick is to feed the worms enough to insure they thrive, but not so much that it will begin to mold. A good rule of thumb is to feed only what they will consume in three days. A little trial and error work is needed here. If mold occurs, simply spoon it out of the medium, and replace the food, using less the next time.

White worm cultures will "crash" if the population becomes too large. This can be noted by the worms attempting to crawl up the sides of the container. Simply dump the medium onto a sheet of newspaper, separate the medium into two parts, and you have another culture to fall back on if the first crashes. Get another shoebox, top to 3/4 full with dampened peat moss, and you have the insurance of a supply of white worms.

To harvest white worms, simply wait until a nice clump of them are underneath the sheet of plastic, pluck them out with tweezers or your fingers, and clean appropriately before feeding to your fish. rinsing with dechlorinated water, by pouring from one container to another will do the trick, removing any soil or left over food. You can then feed the worms to your fishes.The biggest thing to remember about growing white worms is to never let the medium dry out.

It is also a good idea to have two cultures growing at the same time, in case one of the cultures "crashes." Keep an eye out for mold, feed the worms appropriately, and you will have happy, vigorous fish! Alden Smith is an award winning author. His website at King Discus is filled with information and articles relating to the hobby. This article is one of a series on Discus fish. Find more at his site.