Goldfish...Another Rant About People

[ladycrotalus]

WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING A PET IF YOU AREN'T GOING TO GIVE IT WHAT IT NEEDS TO THRIVE AND BE HAPPY?????
Goldfish grow to 8-24 inches depending on variety and have lifespans of 20-30 yrs.
They have longer memories then what was thought, thanks to Adam and Jaime from the show Mythbusters. They actually are pretty intelligent, ive seen videos of this guy training his goldfish to put a tiny soccerball in an underwater net. They definatly learn to recognize their care givers. Yet ignorant pieces of crap think of them as "just fish". Those are the ones who should be banned from owning any pet. Its not just them their way of thinking gets passed down to their children. They are unknowingly or sometimes knowingly teaching their kids that animals are disposible objects, unfeeling, unthinking decorations. Just because their is a picture on a box or their parents did it or a bad petstore told them that its ok to cram the fish in a tiny bowl or tiny desktop aquarium, that it is ok. The poor goldfish's gills and fins burning and rotting off because of the high ammonia in the tiny toilet of a bowl or tank. And when that fish finally succumbs to the neglect and abuse, another victim takes its place, continuing the unrelenting cycle of animal cruelty.
Goldfish 3 inches and smaller NEED 10 gallons PER fish with alot of filtration and weekly 25 percent partial waterchanges where the gravel is vacumed thoroughly with a siphon. Never drain the water past 50 percent. An aquarium is a closed system, dissolved organics (which are INVISIBLE) MEED to be regularly removed. Smaller more frequent waterchanges are healthier for the fish then infrequent larger waterchanges. Obviously a goldfish that is larger then 3 inches will need a bigger tank then a 10 gallon.


Meet Bruce


http://www.goldfishparadise.com/care/care.php

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1922&articleid=2650

http://www.mu.edu/~buxtoni/puregold/home.html

http://www.goldfishinfo.com/setup1.htm

http://www.fishpondinfo.com/gfish.htm

http://www.thegab.org/Articles/GoldfishBasics.html

We would probably have a shot at correcting people's beliefs about goldfish if:
a) the media wasn't continuously portraying tv and movie characters as having goldfish in a bowl. You don't see beloved characters beating their dogs, do you? And yet Elmo must go through many goldfish... Interesting...
b) the more commercialized aquaria companies didn't continually show goldfish in their 3g Spongebob tanks or fancy globe tanks. Let's take a look through the aquarium brands available at Petsmart.com that do this (we'll just look for golfish to make this easier)
-
Aquascene
Marina
Eclipse
BiOrb
AllGlass
Uncle Milton
Uncle Milton Again (on the box it says great for goldfish)

c) So many petstore employees weren't circulating bad information to make a sale

Goldfish are just a prime example of bad information on fish circulated in our society. There are also media portrayals of other fish like gouramis and livebearers, etc in too-small tanks.

FYI: Goldfish Bowls have been BANNED in Rome.  

[55G FreshWater]

So far i like the sounds of your rants about how stupid people are. And yes those are the two most understod fish.  

[Fable Fae]

Unfortunately goldfish will likely continue to be kept in horrific conditions. More people are being educated on how to properly take care of fish these days, thanks to great sources on the internet, however it's not much in comparison to the overwhelming abundance of ignorant people who will remain ignorant thanks to the nature of the aquarium industry's marketing techniques.

Making a sale is priority over the health and safety of the creature they are selling. Fish-lovers can be angry and fume over people who mistreat their fish all they want, but the ones who they really need to direct their frustration toward is the companies who made their fish tank, their fish good, their filter cartridges, etc. The visuals on most tanks show overpopulated communities, which according to many brands of fish food you should feed several times a day, and since you are dumping so much food into your overpopulated tank every day, you will be constantly maintaining your water and filter with an array of chemicals, bacteria, carbon and other materials for absorbing harmful elements.. It's a domino effect, isn't it? Sure, even if someone has a tank with just the right amount of fish they will still need to buy some of these things regularly, unless they have other means of filtration, but they do so less often. What the industry wants is for the consumer to have to double or triple their spendings on maintaining their aquariums and make them think it is the norm.

The same goes for purchased fish. Most fish only live for a few weeks if you are lucky, right? These fish are lucky they are in a safe environment! If they lived in a lake or something they would probably be eaten before they even lived the two or three weeks I spent caring for them! I've heard people say that before. Sadly not long ago I was one of them. I must have been about 19 or 20 before I realized that a goldfish lived longer than a month. That was about 4 years ago. I thought I was so lucky that my goldfish was living for months. He must be the longest living goldfish ever! Before I knew it a year had passed and he was still splashin'. After watching him furiously gnaw and tug at the live plant that shared the space with him in his gallon of water, I decided to poke around online to see how long goldfish are supposed to live. I was shocked out of my mind at what I discovered. That very hour I ravaged my kitchen looking for something else to contain him in, and I found a large Tupperware we used to keep dry goods in and rinsed it obsessively, treated some tap water and transferred him and his plant into it (which I didn't do properly either, but at least he was out of the toxic water he had been previously surviving in).

There was such a difference in his behavior after just an hour of being in the bigger space and fresh water.

I continued reading online and was absolutely mortified at how I had been treating this poor fish. I had been completely oblivious of things like ammonia and nitrates and what they could do to your fish. Afterwards I just stared at him and wondered how on earth did he stay alive for so long when he had been living with no real filter (just an airstone that sucked the debris into an under-gravel filter), a water change every month or two at best, overfeeding and having hardly any room to swim. He was such a strong, hardy fish to live through that.

Either that night or the following day my sister and I went out and bought a 20~25 gallon tub, pump&filter, gravel and a hollowed log with silk leaves for him. And since I read online that goldfish like company, we bought 3 baby goldfish to be his new tank mates. We set up the make-shift tank and put our oldest goldfish in his new home and let him scope it out before we added the new fish. He lived a very eventful life (with his little buddies that followed him everywhere) for a few more months before he died. Before his death we lost one of the baby goldies, who he seemed very concerned for while she was sick, as he would always try to hold her upright in the water with his nose. The two remaining goldfish survived until around late last year when I lost one. I still have one who lives in a 55 gallon aquarium with a recent friend who I bought while the other one was still alive. They are the only inhabitants of the aquarium and they are quite happy. Well, they are healthy at least. I don't know about the happy part, they didn't get along too well after the recent death of their tank mate. It's been a few months though and they are starting to get along a little bit better every day. smile

So there is my sad and regretful story. As sad as it is for me to recall, I have a lot to thank that first fish for. If he had been just another 2-weeker I would probably still be in that same mindset until this very day. I think acknowledging the neglect I put my own fish through helps me deal with and understand other people who have done the same. It is partially their own fault for not researching about the animal they care for, but it is mainly the industry's fault for giving people the mindset they have.  

[Fable Fae]

Oh, and as for fish being considered under animal cruelty laws... I definitely think that people should be held responsible for how they treat their fish, provided that every fish shop be required to supply basic information on how to properly care for the fish and stress the importance of fish grouping, water quality and tank space. I believe that any fish shop that gives incorrect information to customers should be forced to pay a fine for doing so.

Though if such laws did exist, I am definitely sure that we would see the price of fish and many other items in our LFS rise drastically. Without uneducated people making purchases time after time because of their neglect to their previous fish, they would need some way to keep making a profit.

I wouldn't have a problem with the price of fish going up though, because now I know how to properly care for them my fish live for years. The fish I have now are 3 or 4 years old and I still consider them babies. Perhaps if the price of fish went up people would start seeing them on the same level as say, puppies or kittens, and not just a cold, senseless creature on the same level as a worm.

I definitely know that my fish aren't any less than a puppy. Some people say that fish only seem to recognize you because it learns that you are the one that feeds it and they only come to you because they are expecting to be fed. Well on that same principle, dogs are the same as well. If you ring a bell every time you place food in front of a dog, the dog will eventually come to expect food when he hears that bell, and when hearing said bell the dog will salivate, even if he cannot see or smell any food.

In fact, Humans work in a similar way.

So when does everything stop being scientific?

Fish have individual personalities, they can be in good and bad moods, community fish often respect and recognize leaders or dominant fish. There are "ranks" in communities showing who is the most important/respected to the least important/respected.

Fish become partial to other certain fish. They form friendships. They show concern and help one another when they are ill. They get depressed when a long-time friend dies.

Why would a fish get depressed over the death of a tank mate? Logically, shouldn't that just eliminate competition for food and space? Or do the actions of fish go far beyond simple logic and basic instinct?

I believe they do. Just as I believe that it's not only a series of chemical synapses in the human brain that makes me love and care for someone.

It's undeniable that science plays a role in explaining certain things about the nature of animals and humans alike, but who is to say that my nature to love a family member is any different from an animal's nature to form bonds or even love others. Why is the affection or attention from an aquatic animal any different from a land-dwelling biped or quadped? If there are people who dogmatically believe fish to be nothing more than a few ounces or pounds of living matter, reacting upon instinct and impulse and nothing else, I would be happy to hear their explanation of how they differ from any other living being.

I, however, will continue to believe that fish should be well-cared for as if they were any other animal, or not cared for at all. If someone does not have the capability to care for an animal, they shouldn't own one. Period. Anyone who does and mistreats the animal, whether it is fish or any other, should get a warning or a fine and be forced to correct their ways immediately if there is reasonable evidence that they were doing so out of ignorance, and be heavily fined upon the second charge and possibly have their animal confiscated, depending on the level of abuse. Again, I believe this should only happen if LFS are required by law to correctly educate their customers on the basic care of aquatic animals and it's importance. If the customer doesn't have time to listen, they should refuse to sell them the animal.  

[meebeewee]

eek thats a big
fishy eek i want it