I am a newbie to caring for goldfish...just into my third week of the fishtank world..I have a tabletop round 5litre small tank with three goldfish, two snails and one clump of weed.... the water has gone very milky, I can barely see the wee gold fellas anymore....and lots of bubbly foam on the surface, which I scoop off daily.
My little fish seem happy and active, I feed twice a day..just enough for them to clean up in a couple of minuites. I have changed 20% of the water at the end of each week...three times now. The fish seem to constantly feed on the weed..only a few stemms left now, should I get some more?
Any advice would be welcome.
Cheers,
Harry

Five litres is only 1.3 gallons. That is an extremely small tank. Even 3 small goldfish should have around 10 gallons to start and closer to 30 as adults. Most of your problems are due to the small size of the tank. The goldfish and snails produce a lot of waste and the water changes can't keep up. Do you have a filter or aeration of any sort? Those things will help clear the water. I do 50% weekly water changes but closer to 30% every week or two is what most aquarists do. In a 1 gallon tank, especially with 3 baby goldfish, daily 50% water changes may be needed to keep them alive. Be sure to add dechlorinator and a little aquarium salt might help them with the stress too. Cloudy water is do to an explosion in good bacteria that are trying to process the goldfish's and snails' ammonia wastes but they can't keep up (not enough room to grow). My section on cloudy water and what to do about it is at http://www.fishpondinfo.com/algae.htm#cloudy
The foam is due to the fish and snail wastes as well. See my section on foam due to dissolved organic compounds at http://www.fishpondinfo.com/pcare.htm#foam (this section pertains to ponds but the same thing happens in aquariums too). My goldfish pages start at http://www.fishpondinfo.com/gfish.htm
I'm guessing the plant with the fish is something like anacharis (Elodea). Goldfish love to eat it. They also eat most other plants. You can buy some more so they can eat their "veggies."

I used to have 2 japneneas shubunkins in a 3 galon tank. Iwill say they were overcrowed (1 was 3 inches long and the other 2 inches) I gave them a third water change eatch weak but within 3 days there tank became cloudy again (not frothy on top) but now there in a 141 liter tank and there much happier

PS my snails are in a seperat tank to my fish ?

i dont seem to have caught a question in the last 2 posts, are you just letting us know that things are better for them now?

yayh, i agree with robyn, bettas arne t even suitable for a 1 gallon!

I don't recall making the first emal???

what do you mean? goldfish need a 10 gallon min per adult and even thats streching it.