New (to me) 50 gallon tank

[Imchardo]

I'm fairly new to the hobby. My kids won some common goldfish at our local carnival a few months ago and I bought a 10 gallon tank and placed them in that (the fish, not the kids). We're learning as we're going.

But I'm really enjoying myself and I've spent the past 6 weeks shopping on Craigslist for a bigger tank. I finally purchased a 50 gallon tank - not the nicest one I've seen, but clean and a great deal.

Which brings me, finally, to the point of my post. I've got some ideas about what I'd like to place in the tank and I thought I'd run it by y'all to see what you think.

Fat, wiggly, fancy goldfish. Maybe 3 of 'em, maybe 4. For variety, I'd also like to have some schooling fish too - I was thinking white cloud mountain minnows. 8-10 of them? Is that too much? And some apple snails to help control algae. 2 or 3, I guess. All marinated in tank water on a bed of sand. Any special concerns about using sand instead of gravel? I like the way it looks.

By the way, I haven't forgotten our two original common goldfish - Billy Bones and Mr. Cuttle-Wuttles (sigh...thanks to my daughter for Mr. CW's name...rolling my eyes). I'm still searching Craigslist for a larger tank to put them in - I just don't want to mix them in with the fancy goldfish. I read thin-bodied goldfish and fancy goldfish don't go so well together.

So...I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you might have about my proposed stocking levels and my preference for sand as a substrate.

Or anything else, too...

Thanks, Rich

 

[misterking]

Good call on the bigger tank, and good on you for reading up! The thing is, you could probably keep your two common goldfish in there, 50 gallons is a decent size for two. However you pretty much wouldn't be able to keep anything else with them. If you upgrade to a bigger tank however you could probably make them into a trio

Goldfish grow biggggg (maximum of 12 inches) and produce a lot of waste. They need very efficient filtration to cope with this. You can keep four fancies in your 50 with very few issues, but adding anything else from there on gets a big tricky. As well as adding to the bioload of the tank, the white clouds may also be considered lunch (though probably very rarely made into it.. fancies are a bit too slow!). Apple snails also add a lot to the bioload.

Having just been on aqadvisor, and inputting 4 fancy goldfish, 6 white clouds and 2 snails, it apparently would work - but only with very efficient filtration. I'd consider just getting 3 goldfish with the other species. What filter are you currently running?

And for your last question, sand would work fine, in fact better than gravel (I've had goldfish in the past get gravel lodged in their mouths because of their foraging habits).