Anybody know anything about goldfish?

[framlingem]

Do goldfish pine?

One of my roommates' fish (I suppose it's my fish too, but... yeah.) died today. I went to feed them and it was sort of under the plants, not moving, and the other fish was hovering next to it. I moved the plant and the dead fish turned belly-up and floated right to the top.

Said fish has been buried at sea with all honours. I sang Taps and everything.

I cleaned the fishbowl in case there were dead fish germs in the water, put room temperature (measured with a thermometre) water back in, put Survivor Fish back in, and fed it... it showed no interest at all in the food and now it's hanging out down by the plant. I don't want to kill both the fish, but I'm pretty sure it'll be dead by morning.

Poor thing misses its friend, I think. But... don't goldfish have a three-second memory span?

Comments

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

Did you put the... anti-chlorine stuff in the water? I killed three goldfish in a row before somebody told me about that stuff. >.<;;

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

The wha?

Not my fish. I'm heading to Walmart (which is an evil corporation, but I hate pet stores just as much, and Walmart is the cheaper of two evils) to see if I can't find a filtre that'll go in a fishbowl rather than an aquarium, because at the moment we're having to change the water on a regular basis due to a lack of oxygenation, and (according to my roommate from last year who had a ten-litre tank with five-year-old fish in it who not only thrived, but had baby fish last month), chaning the water that often is not good for the fish.

I filtered it through a Brita, though, because the water here is barely transparent. Lots of suspended stuff. I'm pretty sure Brita filtres get out chlorine - I know they reduce iodine.

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

Man... it's been years since I had any fish, but I remember there being a bottle of stuff that you put in the water... some kind of drops that got rid of the chlorine. I don't know about the Brita filter... that might do the same thing. I do know that before I found out about the drops, the fish died darn fast! O.o Like... overnight?

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

Fish are disgustingly easy to kill. This is why I have a pet rock. It's survived so far.

All the equipment we have is the bowl, fish food (I thought maybe the fish died because it was the wrong kind of food, but the jar specifically sas 'for goldfish'), and a net on a stick.

I knew someone once who was worried she'd be a terrible mother because she couldn't even keep fish alive for a week... having looked after both, I can tell you kids are way harder to kill than fish are. Kids complain so you know what you're doing wrong.

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

Pssst. Did the fishy survive the night?

ummm.

[mpulse.livejournal.com]

yes about the three second... its less than a five minute memory thing...

filter is a definite plus, however antichlorinate the water as well to make sure the chlorine doesn't have an adverse effect on the fish.

Re: ummm.

[quiva.livejournal.com]

Sorry honey, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one. Mythbusters tested the "3 second memory" myth and found it to be false. Goldfish can learn and remember. You can actually teach them to eat out of your hand, if you have the patience.

Re: ummm.

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

Forget patience - they have to live long enough!

I have been thoroughly disillusioned about goldfish.

Re: ummm.

[mpulse.livejournal.com]

I thought that was just conditioned response, and not actual 'memory'

Re: ummm.

[quiva.livejournal.com]

Maybe the feeding is. But one of the Mythbuster guys (Jamie, if I remember correctly) taught them to go through a maze, to get food at the end. It was pretty cool.

[full4zaccordion.livejournal.com]

There's this show..I dunno if they have it in Canada, but down here, it's on the Discovery Channel and it's called "Mythbusters." Basically, these two guys take various urban legends and try to see whether or not they can actually be done. Once, they took on the "Do goldfish only haave a 3-sec. memory?" one. They had three sets of goldfish -- one control group, and the other two they trained in different ways to try to get them to swim through a maze. They proved that godlfish do have longer than a 3-second memory becuase one of the groups of fish were able to remember which holes to swim through.

And also, I used to have oscars named Bob and Alan(the other fish in the tank were named Sean and Darrell). Alan turned out to be a girl, but anyway, Alan and Bob would always swim to the front of the tank whenever I came into the room and they'd wiggle from side to side like puppy dogs. it was so cute! But then Alan got sick and died :( After I took Alan out, Bob kept going to the corner where she last was, and he did that for days. And he never was the same after that. It was so sad :(