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

[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?