Want a Goldfish?

I urge you to reconsider.

We won a goldfish at our local fair. We didn’t mean to win one. We just wanted a game that Lou could do. So we paid our $2, got 7 balls, and Lou decided she didn’t want to throw them. So I asked if I could throw them for her, and she said yes. So I brainlessly tossed them onto the table o’ bowls. Toss, toss, toss… As I was throwing them a little boy next to me yelled “You made it!” and another man said I made it too. I hadn’t noticed, but I guess one of the balls bounced in. Pete, who was watching 10 or so feet away saw me getting a fish bag and said laughing “You weren’t supposed to actually win!”

So we walked home, smiling and chatting about how we need to get a bowl and some fish food on our way home. We had no idea.

That’s “Dorothy.” Turns out gold fish are kinda messy fish. The lady at the pet store called them “disgusting.” I thought that was a bit harsh, but one day after we had her in the bowl we noticed the water was totally murky. We looked online.

It turns out goldfish produce a crazy amount of waste. They are hardy fish, so they can survive a dirty tank fine, but their eyes and gills will burn constantly if it’s not a big enough tank. The rule of thumb with most fish is 1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water. With goldfish it’s 1 fish per 10 gallons of water.

So we called Aunt Betsy. This is Aunt Betsy’s tank:

One of her four tanks. She recommended we get a bigger tank and do guppies instead of a goldfish. So we called the little tropical store near us and they said they would take Dorothy and put it in their goldfish tank.

So we got us a 20 gallon tank:

Then Betsy went shopping and got us everything else.

That’s not even half of the gear. Turns out fish are the cheap part of a tank.

So we then learned we have to do this thing called “Cycling the tank” which is about the best intro to chemistry I can think of. If anyone has teens that need a chemistry lesson, this is a great way to do it. Anyways, cycling takes about 4-6 weeks. That’s 4-6 weeks of waiting! We put Dorothy in to get the chemistry started. After a couple days we brought her to the local fish store because she was swimming in a pool of ammonia. Then we waited for healthy bacteria from the air to turn the ammonia to into nitrites and then we were supposed to wait for more bacteria to turn the nitrites into nitrates.

We couldn’t wait.

We got a few fish.

So this is our tank now. It’s not done cycling yet, and our plants are dying and one guppy died, but I think it was on its way out when we got it since the male guppy was ignoring her from the start…

I think we are in the clear now, our chemicals are on their way to being healthy and the fish store thinks it’s fine to have some fish in there while it finishes cycling.

So if you do get a goldfish, get 10 gallons per fish. If you get a fish tank, be patient and wait for the tank to cycle. And if you go saltwater like Aunt Betsy, good luck.

Here are more of her tanks:

Hardcore.

Edit update! Some of our new fishes: