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i'd say 10-20 gal. per goldfish.

feeder fish are mostly common goldfish but mixed with comets, u can tell them apart by the commons have a more squared mouth, and have a bolder shape, comets have longer fins and are more slender, comets are more speedy than commons.

fancy types would be like bubble eyes/lion heads/ orandos/ etc..

generally when stocking goldfish, given the size pond, dont mix fancy with slenders and koi. Koi are very aggressive, they may not be mouth aggressive but rather in there swimming patterns. they are not good to mix with fancy types.

as for the 200 goldfish in a 2000 pond, they are probably all stunt so that is why they dont get any bigger,
feeder fish can get very large like koi, where koi can get to around 36 inches, slender goldfish can reach just around 20 inches. fancy dont usually get that big.

Allt he fishdiscussed are exactly the same species, just different morphs, of course they all have the potential to grow to the same size as the standard Carassius auratus

i must have 200 living in my 2,500 gallon backyard pond for 3 years

That's precisely why they're small. Overcrowding stunts goldfish in the same way it stunts other fish; they're just hardy enough to live through the stunting.

These are BIG fish, given room to grow.

-Molly
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im not entirely sure by what you guys mean by "feeder" goldfish but if you're referring to the slender bodied orange colored fish they will not get big. i must have 200 living in my 2,500 gallon backyard pond for 3 years and none are over 4".

comets, shubunkins, common goldfish, oranda, koi... yes will get huge, ive seen some grow 6+" in single summers (mostly the koi with that big of growth) but these feeders will not.

Hi' I'm new to this forum.I have a question about goldfish colour,One of the fish turned from gold to white which I know happens but my question is,can they turn back to gold again,and can you feed them anything to encourage them to go back to gold?(apologies if I'm in the wrong bit of the forum or if this question has been asked before)

Yup, its also possible for some species of goldfish to live 15-30 years, and most will continue to grow throughout their lives though at a much slower rate after the first 5 years are up. Bearing in mind how many goldfish go belly up in the first few years most people are unaware just how large and how long lived they can be.

A bowl is no place for a goldfish, not only is it cruel to keep them in conditions to keep them stunted (sometimes it doesnt work for a start! Ive seen a 10 inch goldfish in a 3 foot tank before!)but also the amount of ammonia excreted by a goldfish compared to that of many other fish of equal size during respiration can be 30-100% higher. Also dwarfing often leads to the continued growth of organs like the liver in a small body . This leads to deaths that look like and are often mistaken for dropsy or thermic shock, the condition also encourages swim bladder failure which in most cases will prove fatal.The ammonia issue is a water quality nightmare which needs good sized volumes of water and the best filtration to compensate .

The confusion is often because of the few goldfish surviving many years at a small size in small tanks, these fish are either the results of intense multigeneral selective breeding with intention of dwarfing the fish, or are the few survivors of the many dead ones.Either way these small fish are the exception, and huge amounts of people have been fooled over the years into thinking goldfish are good subjects for small aquaria.

Most goldfish you can buy have a significant potential for growth. Dont forget that a lot of the promotional attitudes toward goldfish and koi keeping comes from asia , china and japan, countries that dont have an enviable record in humane animal keeping, often promoting animal aesthetics over fitness and health. Combine that with the wests generally fairly lax attitude to petkeeping and you see how the confusion starts.Its a shame that these attitudes have become so pervasive in our respective cultures, but we do our best to redress the balance in these parts .

Its quite ironic that many parents of children might guide those children into buying a goldfish as a first fish , stating that theyre easy to keep and moan that tropicals will be too difficult, especially as we know that many small tropicals are far more suitable for small aquaria than goldfish.For some reason people seem to think that having a goldfish means small aquaria, no filtration ,maybe a small piece of plastic tat to go in the tank and no need for a test kit. Obviously goldfish need the full set of equipment too, possibly a bigger tank, and the only major difference is the purchase of a good aquarium thermometer.



Last edited by longhairedgit at 04-Oct-2005 18:45

There are two rough types of goldfish, in terms of size and growth, long-bodied and short-bodied. Long-bodied golds like commons ("feeders", comets, shubunkins, etc get larger, but more importantly are much more active; few if any commercially-produced aquariums make appropriate homes for them.

Short-bodied fish include fantails, orandas, and the rest of the "fancy" types. They also get very large, but are more e to "stunting" when kept in too-small containers; many of us once kept commons in bowls and found they reached three or four inches, which, given the size of the container, is fairly amazing, the poor things. Fancies in bowls tend to die more quickly from the ammonia poisoning and stunting, but if they survive, tend to stunt faster and more dramatically.

IME, the fact that fancies stunt more easily and grow more slowly in equivalent conditions to long-bodied fish is one reason even people who've kept fancies often think they're OK in small containers - because they seem to, as you've seen, reach some size - rationally too big for the tank, but small enough that many people won't upgrade them - and then "stop." More likely growth has merely slowed, just as it does in any animal after the first bursts of growth. Plus, it's difficult to observe growth in a fish one sees every day; it may have grown significantly, but without time away said growth will go unnoticed.

Basically, though: it would be nearly impossible for an oranda to reach its full potential (or even its reasonable adult size, around 8" not including the tail) in a 20 gallon that's not on an automatic water changing system, which is evidence enough for me that more space is needed.

Personally: having kept fancies in a 6' tank and seen how their growth rate increased, how their health improved astonishingly, and how much more active swimmers they became, I'd never ask them to live in anything smaller. There are, as I've said before, thousands of beautiful, fascinating fish species smaller than goldfish. I choose to keep species for which I can provide an ideal environment, not those for which I need to justify my care.

-Molly
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Hi, not looking to be dumb or atagonistic here I'm just following up from an above post..Just what are the difference between requirements for a 'common golfish'/'feeder goldfish' and a 'fancy' such as a red capped oranda or the like? I'm confused. Do some grow larger than others. I have a red capped oranda (as described by LFS when I purcheased him) in a 20 gallon. Some people seem to think this is fine, others don't. He appears healthy and happy and the water parameters are always fine. He's about six inches in size I'd say and doesn't appear to be getting any bigger. Is this because he needs a bigger home? Confusion prevails!!:%)

some people will say that a 55 is good enough for a goldfish, but when at the store the buyer see how small they are so they pick up like 10 -13 and then turns out that they will get large.

i think its a good idea

OH TOLEEDY!

Bruces pic in his owners hands IMO gives the best impression of his size....most people can relate once they know that's an adult males hands :%)!.

It's a good idea sneaky, I think we need to differentiate between fancies and pond/common/feeders. Unfortunatly it seems the latter is almost more common than the former and they have much more demanding space requirements if only because of their activity level!
I do think that even though they are the same species if a sub catagory in the profiles could be created to differentiate fancies from the othere it'd be a good idea

^_^[hr width='40%']"Has someone taken your faith? It's real, the [link=pain]http://babelfish.qwertydigital.com/" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] you feel.
The life, the love, You die to heal.
The hope that starts, The broken hearts...
I’ve got another confession my friend, I’m no fool.
I’m getting tired of starting again, Somewhere new."

There are some great photos of big goldfish out there.

A couple:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/LittleMousling/figaro.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v464/LittleMousling/dually_leila.jpg
http://www.sullivanet.com/misc/fishie/big-sammy-fergie-in-bg-11-04.jpg]http://www.sullivanet.com/misc/fishie/big-sammy-fergie-in-bg-11-04.jpg[/link] (and don't skip [link=http://www.sullivanet.com/misc/fishie/fishpics2004.htm)


And of course Bruce (I got all the Bruce photos from his breeders' website):

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Last edited by LittleMousling at 17-Oct-2005 06:20[/font]

-Molly
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