Goldfish, the seldom-amongst longtimer fish

redpaulhus

How big is this tank ?

I've never seen 33% losses on healthy Goldfish in appropriately sized and stocked tanks or ponds - but IMO that means approx 20g per Goldfish (and large frequent partial water changes, of course).

I would never trust an adult Goldfish with minnow or gambusia sized tankmates - a 5-6" Goldfish would happily slurp down a 2" minnow in my experience, never mind 7" or 10" Goldfish...

Nightfish

the pet stores around my home are just terrible-I actually had to go to a neighbouring city to get good fish (eg ones that wern't sickly and stuff)
the minnows were big, but that store seems not to be very good with fish
Goldfish are a very hit or miss thing (eg the stores rarely have healthy ones)
its very common to see many unhealthy ones, dead ones, diseased ones, etc
thus they can sell them for 17 cents and no one really cares
the minnows seemed to be from a bad batch-though the mosquito fish I got with them is fine, oddly.
tropical fish are easy to get - I mean they tend to care for fish if your gonna spend like 10-20 dollars each on them.
my tank is 33 gallons, and temporarily has more fish then it normally does (but this is not for long) all the other fish seem fine, I guess that was just a bad batch.

Nightfish

I guess I am just lucky, I mean my old betta lived for years with the comets, only reason he died was a crazy fish killed it (and this fish was crazy)-but that fish killed everything (I think it was a mollie or a Guppy of some sort-it was silver, hence his name "Mr. Silver")
I am probably gonna put that betta in with some faintails anyways-which seems like a good idea.
No one has died yet (except those minnows, but then again that store is crap lol)

redpaulhus

ahhhh that explains the death rate.
If you're getting Goldfish for less than a dollar each - they're feeders, they've been in poor conditions since soon after they hatched, most are carrying parasites and microbial infections before they even get to the LFS.
I don't sell any feeders (guppies, rosies/tuffies, or Goldfish) as pets - too much of a chance of them nuking an entire tank with the various diseases they are carrying.
The chicken served at KFC get better handling than feeder fishes... :(
I'm impressed you've been able to keep that high a percentage alive - I would expect closer to 90% to be dead in a month when buying feeders.

Our Goldfish start around $7 for small fantails, nicer fans, comets etc run $15 and up. We commonly carry small (ie tennis ball to softball sized bodies) imported ryunkins (etc) in the $30 -50 range. I think our "average" price for pet Goldfish is about $12-15.

onekatietwo

I've read that it depends on the feeder fish - that some of them are just the left-overs from high-end breeders. They chose the very nicest fish to raise a bit longer and sell for a lot of money and then ship the rest off to chain stores asap. I've heard that some can turn out to be really great fish.
Also, I know a lot of people who just bought 8 or so, dumped them in their pond, and then had a thriving (and rapidly growing) community of Goldfish for the rest of time as they knew it.

Buuuuut, no first hand experience here. I'd be too nervous to chance it. ESPECIALLY with other, healthy fish.

I wish i lived there!

iamntbatman

I'm not really interested in Goldfish. For one thing, there just aren't really that many suitable tankmates commonly available for them, so it's difficult to set up communities with them despite the fact that they can be perfectly well-behaved community fish. Secondly, they just don't interest me as much as other fish that have the same sort of requirements in terms of tank size and massive filtration. If I had a heavily filtered 75g or larger tank, I would go for some sort of cichlid long before I went for Goldfish. They just have more interesting personalities, in my opinion.

Nightfish

sadly my tanks are a "survival of the fittest" and the fittest are indeed thriving now There has been no death-save the two the betta killed (then the betta himself-he seemed the type to die simply because I put him in a bowl...he hated bowls) But where there is death-there is life, one of my Mosquito fish had babies-so they are growing up in the ten gallon tank (I spotted 4)