http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8653SsGTDM

While I'm not encouraging anyone to use less than 10-gallons per goldfish, I just thought this video was a simply amazing way to show why goldfish need SO MUCH room!!

Goldfish need 10 gallons so they can grow, if goldfish are put in anything smaller they can become stunted and problems can occur.

C'mon, you have to agree that the ryukin in the video was something besides stunted.

That Video is a perfect example of why goldfish need so much room, did you see how hard that fish was breathing, there wasnt enough o2 for him at all, let alone to turn around........


15-20 gals is the right amount

It's the absolute minimum amount. 30g or more preferably.

Adding an extra 5 gallons to that fish's 10g wouldn't alleviate its situation by much. I can imagine the owner of that fish is quite proud of it and it appears to be healthy, but it hurts me to see it struggling to breath like it's doing in such a small amount of water relative to its size. A fish's O2 requirement increases exponentially as its body mass does too. It needs much more surface area.

I agree Hun, but this is just to start with, some people if you tell them that something so small gets to 8-12" long they don't believe you, I think this video is perfect.

and yep 20 gals per fish is a nice start

It sure doesn't help when I walk into my lfs and see 3 inch fantails with a sign on the tank saying 'Jumbo Fantails'. Of course they are 'jumbo' compared to the smaller 'Large Fantails' in the next tank which were 2 inch.

This is highly misleading to newbies, 'jumbo' inferring they are bigger than normal goldfish instead of just being the wee babies they actually are. I can't ever imagine an lfs labelling a 3 inch baby Oscar as 'jumbo'!

NB. Not the lfs where I get my goldies from, where they would label them as 'Small'.

So true, It bothers me too, Now when I go to my lfs they actually label them right

my lfs sells fish by their mesurment in cm, so a 5 cm goldfish would be sold as big even though he still has alot of growing to do, so, if a little kid comes into the store, he would most likely get one of the 5 cm fish and put him into a bowl

so true!! when i bought my pearlscale he was in a tank with bubble eyes and ranchus labelled 'Large' even though none were bigger than 2 inches!! they were just 'large' compared to the 1/2 inch babies they sell for £2.99!
also when i asked if they were labelled right, they said 'yeah they are big for they type of fish' and i was like a 2inch ranchu is not large!!!!

wow. thats sad to watch. poor thing is gulping for what ever little oxygen is left.

perfect exsample to proove that gold fish need a bare minimal of 10 gallons.

Well, in that fish's case, he needs a minimum of 50gallons!

don't mean to up the ante- but for the type of swimmers Oranda are and the aggressive tendencies of Alpha Male - I find 28 Gallons per Lionshead quite practical - only problem is that now you are a hort. specialist in plants - the fish become secondary!

That's a whole other story Hun, what we are trying to get across to people is that a plain tank of fish (no plants, ornaments or such) should have the min of 20-30 gals of water if you want them to be healthy and big......

agreed- - I just cannot understand how 2- let alone three - Goldies can survive in a 10 gallon tank- any shift in ammonia- etc- even slight - is so much more dramatic and dangeroius to the Goldies health- in a thirty gallon at least you have some buffer time to catch a spike in ammonia or whatever- - what I was inferring - LOl regarding the plants comment and such- was the fact that it becomes a snowball going down the mountain-side- ie before I realized it- and I started with a 10 gallon "biosphere" AHHHHHH what stupid fool puts a filter in the bopttom center of the tank - that 1 Oranda could possibly die from - especially a - at that time - new fish keeper- not haviong my feeding habits under control- the Bio- activity - under control - etc- and I thought I had it bad with just 1 in a 10 gallon for a week until I upgraded, and upgraded, and still am upgrading lol-

Eric

Oh no's and I thought I was giving mine lots of room with five in a 75g. Wonder how long before I have to give up a fish for its own good?
Maybe if I start saving 10 bucks a week, if Ill have enough for a larger tank by then. Ya right me save money. And the tank would have to go where the 75g is and Id have to sell the 75g. I have no more room. Not so sure my floor can hold a bigger tank either. Well have to talk it over with my hubby.

poor fish . the owner have to get a bigger tank. beside, wonder what he did to the other two goldie. how could a fish grow 'that' big in such a small tank!

Um, wasn't that a different fish from the three they shown in the beginning? I find it hard to believe that a fish that big and healthy was kept primarily in that tank. I think it was done for shock value or to make a point. I do not think that the owner actually kept such a large, healthy looking fish in that small tank long enough for it to get that big. Wouldn't the odds be that it would have died before reaching that size or been stunted and sick? That is a beautiful fish and must have been taken better care of than that for a lot of years to reach that size.

That last fish is a totally different one than the three babies in the first few moments of the movie, IMO. I think that might have been done to show just how big a goldie can get, and what kind of room it needs. It is my hope that the fish at the end is actually from a larger tank, and was simply put into the ten gallon for a size comparison.

I emailed this to my boyfriends mother...The one who I rescued the 13 commons from. She had them all in a 15 gallon tank! Sadly I was there for dinner today and she had 13 common fry in a half gallon betta tank. No filtration just a small air pump. As she sat there and said see they don't need the ridiculous 150 tank you have they are doing just fine. I offered her my 20 & 15 gallon tanks and filters, I know they weren't big enough but they were better then being jammed into a half gallon of water she declined. I sat there staring at these poor little things so small (less then an inch) without a chance. I tried to explain several times, she wanted to hear none of it. To her 'they are just goldfish'. *sigh*

Huh? She got MORE fish? Why does she keep appearing with goldfish in such tiny conditions? They don't even look nice in dirty unfiltered tanks. *bleh*

This video is very sad. Perfect example of a goldies probable size.

She gave me 'all of the fish in her pond'. Apparently that wasn't true, she kept the smallest of the fry for her herself & apparently left even more in the pond to freeze over the winter. Because I didn't think someone would do that I never looked in the pond to see if there were any others, sadly. They are so small, I feel so sad for them.

What if the pond fish don't die? What if they just hit hibernation and survive? Maybe you can convince her that having large HEALTHY fish is something much more lovely than dirty half-dead ones in a bowl?

Part of the problem is, I think, that most people never get to see BIG goldfish, never see their true potential size. They go into pet stores, see that the goldfish is labeled "jumbo" or "large", and think that this is it size wise. And they keep thinking, well if that is large, or jumbo, and it isn't growing anymore, it looks awefully ridicoulous in a bigger tank, so they buy smaller ones.
At Petsmart, for example, they have the fish labeled as "needs 20 ggl minimum", so that is a first step. However, if the employee is ill educated on goldfish, people rather are going to listen to him, than take notice of the 20 gl recommendation. Unless they really SEE for themselves how big a goldfish is going to get, of course.

I took my biggest 2 orandas to my daughter's anual fair at school, since I knew they would give away feeder fish as prices. Most parents, or kids for that matter, weren't aware at all how big their prize is going to get, and I bet that the pet store across the street made a killing on selling tanks that particular day. Its all a matter of "seing is believing"....

I am so so soooo glad my boyfriend talked me into getting SMALL fish!
He convinced me that it would be a joy to see them grow, thank goodness. I really wanted one of the bigger fish the petstore had (about 2.5" in bodylength) and I really wanted it in a goldfish bowl.

Fortunately I talked to this employee at PetSmart (you hear really bad things about bigbox store fish employees but this guy was great) and he practically begged me not to get a goldfish bowl and told me the evils of the bowl and told me there was no way I could put a big fish in a little bowl, so we got a little 1" fantail and put it in a two gallon tank with a filter/air pump. In my defense I've never really had pets and wasn't convinced the goldfish wasn't going to die so I didn't want to invest lots of money into a futurely dead fish. I promised my fish if he lived I'd buy him a new tank on his six month birthday. But he started to get sad and inactive so after 4 months of living in a studio apartment I bought him a nice new 10 gallon house with a good triple filter and a 6"x1.5" rectangular bubble making thing-a-ma-bob.

Unfortunately the new big tank was so empty and I just wanted to buy some fish food at the store and I ended up leaving with two new goldfish, a black moore and an oranda. I realize this is not ideal but I only have about 3.5" of bodylength (not including tails) between the three fish. Am I a terrible pet owner? They're babies and I'm totally willing to upgrade the tank when they put on some more weight and I've got a little more cashmoney (but I'm definetly not feeding them pro-gold in the meantime, haha).

I was joking with the employee at the store that I don't know what I'm going to do when they get that big (pointing at goldfish that were about 3.5" long each) and the person said that I would be fine in a ten gallon tank! Then he said I could have FIVE goldfish that size in a ten gallon tank!!!!

I am not the mother t. of goldfish but I'm not evil either! Hopefully he doesn't work the fish department very often because I know better than that but I'm sure lots of people don't.

If you guys noticed in the comments, though, he actually acknowledges the comments made by people saying he needs to get a bigger tank for his fish. So I doubt it will be having trouble for very much longer.

Well, it isn't the same fish and seemed, at least to me, to be a setup, but it does, hopefully to those who think goldies belong in a little bowl, get the message across. While I am only advocating it for the length of time it would take to film this clip, they should've had three big one in there to even more get the point across. Nonetheless, that ryukin was a giant!

With regard to the comments SpaceCakeGirl made about her own fish, that person at the pet store is an idiot. He can get the bowl part right, but is way off on the amount of fish per gallon.... Five goldies in a 10 gallon?! Unless they're fry, you need a 30 gallon just for the three that you have now.

omg

fish cruelty on tape so mean people need a way bigger tank ...so sad.

Is it ok to start your fish out in a smaller tank with the intentions of moving them to a bigger tank with time as needed. My wife and I had always had reptiles and wanted to try fish and we love our goldfish we just did not invest in a huge tank our plan is definately to expand as the fis grow.

It's really best for both you AND the fish to obtain the largest size tank possible and then go from there. One reason is the rate in which the fish will grow, smaller environments will slow the rate of growth but come with health consequences that include stunting. Another reason is that goldfish are one of the major waste producers of the fishkeeping hobby: a small volume will go foul in a matter of days and can make both your fish and YOU sick if you're not careful.

So if you're worried about size, just go with a simple 20-gallon setup. They're not that large at all and you can keep two fancies in there (since they're very social and do well with another friend).

what i did with my goldfish is start out with a large bowl and then as the fish got bigger move it into a 10gallon tank. works pretty well if you ask me : )

I have to agree with you. Desi is about that size, and kept in a 12 gallon for 7 years and didnt get that big. It wasnt til we put him in a 65 gallon that he grew to that size.

not unless you are doing several water changes daily and your fish are really small. ammonia and other toxins can build up really fast and dramaticly effect your fish's health. Ammonia can 'burn' and cause curled fins ect. on a fish. nitrates can cause stunted growth, swimbladder problems ect

I went there and suddenly, this message appeared...

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest flash player.

I know clearly the message is in error. I did not turn off JavaScript and Flash is up to date.

I've been using YouTube alot and now this problem. Help.

Thunder

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I finally got it to work. Yay!

Thunder


-Update-

The guy got another tank for the Goldfish, but still too small and its lonely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppjcO-SV4MY

Thunder

It is a little small, but it's surely better than the last tank. And he doesn't seem too lonely, he seems like he's actually enjoying the new space.

His new tank is stil too small, but at least the por thing can breath a little better.

At my lps they have a large tank with several very large goldfish inside. I love it because it shows how big these guys can really get. I'd buy the pom-pom they have, he's gorgeous! But I just don't have the space to put a tank big enough to hold him. That and he's pretty pricey, over $100.

I dont know if I was the only one that noticed but the fish was also picking up the gravel and spitting it back out! He needs to upgrade to a bigger tank and next time get bigger rocks!

Do you guys agree with me?

goldfish always pic up the gravel. mine use to do it all the time with smaller stuff. nothing bad ever happend. they were just looking for food. Now i have larger gravel, so they cant really do anything with it. Well, peaches can pic it up with out a problem.

I think the only time that gravel size becomes a problem is when it's the right size to get stuck in a goldfish's mouth. If it's really small in comparison to the size of the fish, then it should be fine. I've never heard of a goldfish swallowing gravel, although I'd guess that it is possible.

In this particular case, it looks like he'd have to get several pieces stuck all at once for any to get stuck at all, so I think he's probably okay. I do agree with the larger tank size, although at least now the owner is meeting the minimum size needed.

Oh my god that's heartbreaking that fish is just suffering needlessley, it should be given the space it deserves!

That's so sad.... Surely alarm bells would be ringing for the owner if they'd had it that long??

the poor fish. It is in a new tank and even that looks too small- but more alarming than that: Did you see the streaking in it's fins? The fish is sick, and it was shown bottom sitting. I hope the owner is treating it, it is a glorious goldie and should get better care.

That fish is huge! And the poor thing is gasping for air!

here is the video of the goldie in it new home http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppjcO-SV4MY

He still looks to big for his new tank. He only has just enough room to turn around in it. I would think he needs something like 30 gallons. At least

you should all be glad i was searching you tube and came across with this video of the same fish except his owner bought him a bigger tank and now he looks much more happy and he is not gasping for air i think that is a good thing 4 the little fishy.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppjcO-SV4MY