by Izzet Inak

Created on: September 17, 2010

Most of the people that breed goldfish usually don’t have a filter to clean the bowl or the aquarium water. This means cleaning the bowl or the aquarium more frequently. Even it seems so easy to clean a bowl; it becomes a little bit more complicated when there is a goldfish in it. So what we should do to clean our goldfish bowl easily?

If you have an aquarium temperature present in the bowl, check the temperature. And prepare enough water in another bowl that matches the temperature of the water that is in the bowl of your goldfish. If the water temperatures do not match each other, it is possible your goldfish will have white dots or will get sick. You can make the water warmer by adding some hot water and colder by adding some cold water. Take a third bowl and fill it with water that has the same temperature as the other bowls. Your goldfish will stay in the third bowl while his bowl is being cleaned. The key part is having the same water temperature in all the bowls.

Put a filter in the sink and pour the water that the dirty goldfish bowl has inside. By putting a filter, you will avoid stones or sand clogging your sink. You can use detergent to clean the dirty bowl but after that you need to wash very well. Do not also use hot water for cleaning the bowl; if cold water touches the hot bowl accidentally, you might end up with a cracked or a broken bowl.

You can clean the stones by rubbing them to each other or you can put them into a bowl that has water-bleach mixture inside. Water-bleach mixture cleaning will be a lot better than rubbing the stones each other but after that, you need to wash very well too.

You can also clean the accessories that are in the bowl with this water-bleach mixture but need to be carefully. You need to wash till you are sure that there is no bleach left on the things. Some aquarists say that bleach kills the fishes but if you wash very well, your fishes won’t die. I have been cleaning my aquariums with this method for more than 10 years and nothing has happened.

Take the clean bowl and put the stones and the other accessories inside. Pour the water that you prepared in to the bowl and after 5 minutes, slowly put your goldfish slowly in to the bowl too.

Try not to clean the bowl very often as every water change and cleaning puts your goldfish into stress. Sometimes dirty aquarium is healthier than frequent cleanings and water changes.

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