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Thanks you so much for the detailed reply. I am badly missing the thanks button for this post. I will bring in the upgrades one by one and will keep updating here. Going by your post I will get Java fern plant (and later other soil-needing plants in my future tank) on stock structure, try a DIY aquarium light (external with warm/off white colour) and feed them as suggested.

Sorry for my ignorance, but you meant that grey one (2nd from left) is a goldfish and one on extreme left is a molly, right?

Is it fine to feed them atta from kneaded dough as a treat sometimes? I put in small round pieces 30 mins back (twice the size of their food) and they were happily hunting for them.

If you have any idea, do molly and gf (goldfish :P) like well lit or dark areas? I will decide accordingly on the lighting.

Again, a BIG thanks for your time and dedication in answering my questions.

Don't feed them atta, it will cloud the water. If you want to give them a treat, a slice of cucumber should be good enough.

Grey one is molly.

I dont know in specific about the lighting, but as per my readings in some forums, dark, natural, contrasting background will enhance the fish's color and fish usually like darker. But i dont have experience on this. Once you have a plant, the plant would need atleast four hours of light.

I have well planted set, i keep 8hrs of light and 12 hrs of filter and bubble.

Do you also have fish in the aquarium? Because 12 hrs of filter and bubble would kill them. You would need it 24x7

There is no molly in there. All three are different mutations of the gold fish. The left most one looks a bit deformed though, something like a cross between a koi carp and a gold fish :D

Gold fish tend to eat a lot, so food must be limited and also good food is important since they shouldnt contain too much fat. Higher fat intake will lead to the fish puffing up and dying a premature death.

Yep, i have nearly 30 fishes in my aquarium.
2 angels, 2 siamese algae eaters, 6 neon tetras, 8 guppies, 2 serafe tetra, 3 zebra, 2 angles and 2 golden tetras.

I also have two shrimp, ghost. From past four months. I havent seen any die.
The water is clean, the fish eat only once. The fish havent come even once to the surface to gasp air. So i think my system is working very well.

8hrs of light (soft LED) is needed for the plants?, the plants themselves areate? The Gravel hasnt been any dirty.

BTW, there is one bubler and one additional bubbler with the top filter. The filter works for 14hrs in a day to be precise. I clean the top filter once every two weeks.

In the morning times, i have actually seen many fish on the stone, behind the plants etc.

I dont have any issues to keep the filter going for full time though.

Oh, good heavens, the middle grey one looks pretty much like a molly.:eek:

I am posting 2 more snaps for experts to make a better guess.





From my observation, the orange one (on extreme right in previous post) is a goldfish. The black one is 80% similar (fins, tail, body) to the goldfish, with a different colour and size though. The third one (orange) which looks like a cross between carp and goldfish has different fin, body and tail design than the goldfish and its lean and more active than the others. Also one thing is that the orange one (deformed i.e.) doesn't move its body much, unlike other 2, to move in water and I think it has a different system for swimming. Hope this gives a better idea.

And thank you all for the valuable inputs. This is surely going to help me (and fish) a lot. :)

Mods : Merge with the above post. Could not edit message once posted as I am still a newbie.

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No, fish would be fine if your water is clean and healthy. I use bubble from 6 PM to 9 AM (next morning) and filter for the rest. Heater is used 100%, has a auto-cut though when reaches set temperature.

Fish would usually swim on the bottom/middle area of the tank if the dissolved oxygen levels are fine. Else they will roam around the top part and come to the surface (for air) very often. Live plants also help reduce the need for bubbles. My guess is that fish actually don't entirely live on those bubbles, water quality is more important.

I have never seen a molly like that. Most importantly, I havent seen a molly with a rounded mouth. Please share a reference image.

@Swift_guy, the substrate is not suitable for live plants. Hence, if you plan to put live plants you should either go for a finer gravel or even better an imported substrate, which is expensive though.

Thanks. Yes I will change the stone structure in my future tank, which would hopefully be set up in August this year. I will decide at that time on which live plants to keep. The local shop owner quoted around 3.2k for proper setup (like adviced by groom, including live plants) for a tank of base size 4' x 1.5'.

And, regarding the molly/goldfish confusion, black one and orange goldfish have same round mouth. Carp-goldfish cross one has a different shape of mouth, curved from top and flat from bottom.

@Swift guy: you did not know what fish you were buying and the shopkeeper did not know what fish he was selling? Two alarm signals right there.

Gold fishes are not fit for a tank your size.

Read more here:
http://thegoldfishtank.com/goldfish-...-keepers-make/

And they are not tropical fishes. They prefer 20-24 degree temperatures.

Please read up more on fishes and their requirements before blindly buying them and letting them suffer.

Oh plants and gold fishes dont go together fyi

Thanks deathwalker for the useful link. Yes I agree that I bought fish without any research, and I will find out more about them soon.

I am upgrading tank size and will decide accordingly. In fact, that was the reason I came to this thread for help. But since no one pointed this out, I ignored this aspect. Thanks for letting me know.

I am surprised. I had four gold fishes in a pond setup.
I set this up in a 3 feet wide lotus pot. No filter, no bubbler.
The setup was full of plants, water lettuces, duck weed and two water lilly / lotus plants.

Changed water around 30% weekly / bi weekly. They lived quite well and the brownish gold fish, laid many many eggs and many of them even survived to grow big. May be theoretically they dont go well, they lived quite happy at my setup. ( i gave some fry back to aquarium). The color was rich orange, the water was fresh due to lotus and duck weed ?

I am still looking for that molly picture. will post if i get soon. :):thumbs up

yay got myself a blue phantom pleco :D