I don't want to appear stupid but I have read that you feed goldfish what they can eat in 2 or 3 minutes. How can you judge when water movement flys it all over the tank and my goldies are down the bottom for like half an hour looking eating and spitting out rocks. Just thought I would ask.

good question. its probably more difficult with food that sinks like dense pellets or flakes but certainly with floating food you can tell. the tide from the filter shouldnt be able to wash the food away too quickly. if you have sinking pellets they should just find a general place to sink which the fish will find pretty quickly. on the other hand you could use a feeding ring for flakes. would be good to see what other people think

Thats a good idea never thought of that thanks. The only other problem I have is I have a Ghost Knife Fish living in with the goldies and I feed him bloodworms. Sometimes the Goldies go for them as well.

well Ghost knife and Goldfish are NOT a good combination in the first place.
for several reasons:
- you need an extremely large tank - over 50 gallons. Ghost knife grow over 10inches!!!
- ghost knife prefer warmer tanks than goldfish - so unless you're keeping lionheads, ranchus, bubble-eyes - they are not compatible in terms of temperature.
- ghost knife are shy and peaceful - although goldfish are also peaceful - they will stress them by bumping into them (think of a goldfish as an elephant - it will slam and squash anything in its path)
- goldfish are much quicker than ghost knife and will eat all the food.
Ghost knife should be kept with slow fish (gourami, pleco, angels) - even cories are too quick for ghost knife.

I recommend returning the ghost knife or buying another tank for your ghost knife.
Otherwise it will live miserably with the goldfish and have an early fate.


In the meantime, to solve your feeding problems with your ghost knife.
You can hand feed the frozen bloodworms to the ghost knife
or put the bloodworms on a skewer/stick and feed it directly to the ghost knife.
This way, the goldfish won't get all the food.

I feed my fish sinking pellets and what i did to gauge how much my fish can eat is by counting in the time they need to chew a mouthful of food. My fish usually eats 2-3 pellets before they got their mouth full and they spend about 30 seconds to one minute chewing the food, so based on that i can tell that 5-7 pellets per fish is enough

Hi,
Rooting around in the gravel is typical goldfish behavior--they will do it all day long. That is, if you have gravel--I have a bare bottom tank and can see the sinking pellets laying on the bottom so I know exactly how much my fish eat.

Thanks for the advice guys. Concerning the ghost and goldies I did have both of them in my tropical tank with danios and algae eaters but the two ghosts were always fighting. The ghost in the goldies tank always hides and very rarely comes out. If I put the Ghost back with his Pal could they do damage to each other. Its funny you know with all I have read about LFS's not knowing anything I actully believed mine and bought the two Ghosts. We live and Learn.