Overcrowded Goldfish Bowl

Davyhal

Hey guys,

I arrived home on Monday to discover that my housemates have gotten goldfish over the weekend. They have gotten 4 fish, one for each of us in the house. However, the four are all in one bowl and the water is already filty. My housemate told me that the discolouration is due to the food that the have been fed, and that it is not the fish's excretment that has dirtied it. The fish have been fed a few flakes, peas and tiny bit of cereal/porridge.

My main concern is can we actually expect the fish to survive, with 4 of them in one bowl?

We are on a budget, so what size bowl/tank should we really have for 4 small goldfish and what price are we looking at here?

Kukey

I'm no expert on Goldfish but I know that it's one goldfish for every 10 litres of water.Those little bowls are not even enough room for 1 goldfish! You only feed fish food not anything else.Look on buy and sell sites for a 2 nd hand tank,you could pick up a cheap one with a filter.They also need gravel and a plant or ornament to hide behind.Best of luck:)

Silverfish

It's actually more like 40 litres per fish, to a minimum of 100 litres. So 100 for the first fish, and 40 for each additional fish.
Of course there is some wiggle room on that to the tune of 10/20 litres each way on the overall tank size.
This is for fancy goldfish, for common single tailed goldfish, they really need to be in a pond.
I'd return them to the shop, get a larger tank and a heater and keep tropicals if you absolutely want fish.

kylith

I second Silverfish's advice. Getting appropriate housing for so many goldfish would be very expensive; either bring them back to the shop or rehome them to someone with a good pond.

Just to give a sense of how big they get; this is my old goldfish, a bog standard one bought from a shop, in a 120L tank, he was about 8" and 10 years old when I rehomed him to someone with a garden pond. If anyone tells you that goldfish only live a short time and stay a couple of inches long they're grossly misinformed.

Silverfish

Ah Paul! He was deadly!

My oranda is 9 inches at the moment, still a baby so might grow a bit more, though they do grow throughout their whole lives, just more slowly.



That's a 4 foot long tank, so he does take up a bit of space in it, and can swim from one end to the other in a couple of seconds. Still, that size tank for two fish would be the other end of the scale.

movingsucks

I wonder could I get some advice on this thread too, (if the mods think I need my own thread that's fine )
My three goldfish have now outgrown their tank, (they are two years old and got very big over the last couple of months) could anyone recommend a good tank?

Davyhal

Goldfish No.1 is no longer with us. RIP Tasty the Goldfish.

Though, to be fair, it could have the result of many of factors.
- One of the goldfish loved picking on tiny little Tasty.
- The bowl was a bit compact for 4.
- My housemate's niece may have decided to put the goldfish bowl on the windowsill because her teacher told her that goldfish need hours of sunlight everyday.... When he found Tasty's remains, the water was so hot, we think he may have been boiled in his bowl.

Anyways, we are heading to get a tank this weekend in Limerick. Thank you very much DoneDeal.

Tropheus

IMO, goldfish are for ponds. The fancy kind do alright in tanks, but the common goldfish can grow to 12" so is better off in a good pond. I have 22 goldfish in my pond and they're thriving. They are a very underrated fish.