Hello everyone! I've got a question abouts goldfish sleeping. I'm very time scheduled with my fishies care. I feed them at 5:30 pm everynight. I make sure to have the tank light on everyday for 9-10 hours. But I've noticed that my fish sleep durning the day when the light is on. Is this normal/healthy?

That depends, are they active more than sleeping during the daylight hours or sleeping?
Where do they sleep on the bottom or the top?

Might be a good idea to let us know what the levels of the tank are, just to make sure the water isn't bad.

20 gallon tank, 2 goldfish, just did 19 gallon water change last night.

Just checked water, here is results:

Nitrite, Nitrate, and Ammonia = 0.
pH is between 7.2 and 7.6

My fish are active when not sleeping. They swim around and play with the gravel. They come nibble my fingers when I put my hands in the tank.

They sleep on the bottom in a corner, right next to one another, it's so cute!

They seem healthy to me, but it seems odd that they wouldn't sleep at night when the light is off.....

Ok, it looks like your tank is still cycling............this is going to be very hard on the fish. Are you familar with cycling?

As this occurs they can get very sick, so you may be seeing signs of stress instead of sleeping. Post back soon and we can discuss it more. But I am concerned that it isn't sleeping anymore.

I know close to nothing about cycling. I've had my goldfish for 1 month now. So you think they aren't sleeping but stressed?

Patti, you will need to look up cycling on the site here and read all about it.
Basically a cycle is a process that all tanks must go thru. See in short, gf produce waste that becomes ammonia (why you need 10-20 gals of water per fish). Ammonia is deadly to them, so while the tank is cycling you have to keep it as low as possible. The ammonia is transformed into nitrites, even deadlier to the fish than the ammonia. But still the process of the nitrogen cycle. Once the good bacteria starts to grow, nitrates, the last step in the cycle. The nitrates help control the ammonia and the nitrites.

During this process, the fish become very sick and can die therefore you have to read up on it, so you can control the amount of exposure they get of the bad bacterias.

Alright, I'll go read up on cycling! Thanks for the help!

Even after cycling my goldfish tended to be very active in the evening after the light went out. After partying, the next morning it takes them several hours to become active again -- spending most of the light hours for napping.

This was when I fed them late in the day. Then I started giving them vegetables earlier in the day and now they're active ALL day!

They may just be used to your feeding schedule and save up their energy for when you feed them. :shrug

I have noticed that my fish cannot sleep when there's light in the room. I am at home these days and during the day they are anyway up and active and sometimes I switch off lights (room lights) around 2am or 3am and until the time the lights are on my fish will be up and at least swimming very slowly around. The moment the curtains are drawn and the room is in darkness even during day time, they go to sleep. Maybe you need to check on the reason why your fish appear to be like this...

patti dont wrry i do the same but get some plants or a cave where they can get away from the light and sleep thats what my goldies do