Hi folks, first post, and sorry if it's too long. I guess I'll just highlight my main questions in blue.
If my fish have disease, and then was transferred into a different tank... (or dare I say, thrown out), will the water and biofilter be contaminated in the original tank due to residues from the fish? Would I have to start over by running untreated tap water through the system water loop (hoping the chlorine will purge everything)? Is there a type of procedure we can do to identify whether the water is disease free?
Why am I asking this question?
I did not quarantine the first three
goldfish I introduced into my newly set up aquarium - apparently someone on a different forum mentioned that a lot of fish bought from the pet store are a ticking time bomb for diseases. So this got me all paranoid and I decided to remove 2 of the 3 fish out of my main tank and put them in my parent's smaller tank which had 1 smaller goldfish. As a fact, my parent's 2 gal fish bowl is poorly taken cared off, so I do not want to bring these 2 goldfish back into my aquarium due to the existence of possible of diseases from the parent's tanks transferring over into my newly assembled aqarium. Yep... I think this was a bad idea and most definitely cruel - maybe I should of instantly killed the goldfish instead so they don't suffer in the parent's fish bowl? I should of just kept all my fish in my original tank, however my impulsive action due to my paranoia about "ticking time bomb disease" goldfish got me all paranoid.
You can see how stupid and irrational this mistake was as I "removed 2 out of 3 fish". A pointless action as I still decided to leave one fish which still wasn't quarantined, and now my
ammonia production to start the cycling process is reduced unless I replace the 2 goldfish. I am paranoid about bringing back the two goldfish from my parent's tank as there is another goldfish in there that had been swimming in 4.0 or even 8.0
PPM of ammonia (it was hard to tell by the test) so lord knows what kind of diseases/parasites are in the parent's aquarium. Holy , I can't believe that tiny goldfish in there is still swimming around after a few days... I did like a 400% (four-hundred)
water change in that tiny tank and the test for ammonia was still around 1.0 ppm.
Furthermore, to relieve my paranoia, I am thinking of removing the final goldfish in my aquarium and then doing a system flush; a.k.a. starting from scratch.
I'm thinking of adding untreated tap water and running my system so the chlorine in the untreated tap water will kill off the possibly existing disease causing organisms in the aquarium and filters. Is this necessary? My refusal to do fishless cycling in the first place:
What shy'd me away from fishless cycling was the process of getting my hands on the right type of ammonia. I was also not fond of using my own urine to start the cycling.
3 days after putting the new goldfish in my tank, I changed my mind. I decided I wanted to do a fishless cycle. This was a really dumb move on my part. But I guess the motive was that I did not want the fish to rot in the built-up high levels of ammonia while trying to increase the nitrifying bacteria population. Reason being, I am paranoid that if the fish break out a disease, then my system's water will also become contaminated which may also infect my newly introduced fish after the cycling is complete.
So if the fish do catch a disease during the cycling process, assuming they don't die, wouldn't I have to start over and purge my system from the disease causing bacteria?
So today, I checked my local LOWE's and browsed the cleaning supplies section, and of course... I did not find the right ammonia. In fact, I couldn't find a product which even contained ammonia. I will be visiting wall-mart tomorrow, and if no luck there, home depot.
If I still can't find the right ammonia, then I've just caused myself unnecessary problems and I'll just have to replace the two goldfish.
Too quick an action removing 2 of the 3 goldfish. 
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