Can Goldfish Eat These?

[Osage_Winter]

Are these safe for fancy goldies?

www.arcatapet.com/fullsize/10140.jpg

It says "For All Freshwater Fish" but it seems after I feed them these, they all get...I don't know...kind of weirdly lethargic, like they're trying to figure out how to digest them...

Are these safe for my goldies?

 

[Osage_Winter]

Does anyone know?

 

[adeebm]

I think a goldfish formula would be better than shrimp pellets for them, but It should be fine once in a while. Maybe the high protein content is causing them bloating or constipation? It does that to bettas.

--Adeeb

 

[Osage_Winter]

I think a goldfish formula would be better than shrimp pellets for them, but It should be fine once in a while. Maybe the high protein content is causing them bloating or constipation? It does that to bettas.

--Adeeb

Thank you, Adeeb.

Perhaps the high protein is indeed causing them to "bloat" a bit after eating them; I will maybe cut down on the feeding of these to supplement the flakes...

What about these veggie discs:

Omega Sea: Veggie Rounds

Are these okay for goldies? I just dropped a few of them in the tank and the three of them appear to be having a ball, picking at them and swarming around the gravel to get to them...

 

[adeebm]

I'm sure most foods are fine for them, but IMO goldie flakes or pellets will provide the best balance of nutrition. You could use the others as supplements or for variety. The algae rounds are usually for more herbivorous fish.

I'm not a fish food expert, so someone else should confirm this

--Adeeb

 

[Osage_Winter]

I'm sure most foods are fine for them, but IMO goldie flakes or pellets will provide the best balance of nutrition. You could use the others as supplements or for variety. The algae rounds are usually for more herbivorous fish.

Indeed; but from what I have learned, in their natural habitats, the goldfish are actually omnivores, eating both animal and plant matter...

So, can I get away with dropping the veggie discs in?

As for flakes, that's what I use for primary diet for them; the Aqueon Goldfish Flakes, to be precise. I just wanted to know if it was okay to drop the shrimp pellets in too from time to time as kind of a treat...

I'm not a fish food expert, so someone else should confirm this

--Adeeb

I understand; but you did enter this thread with some good ideas and thoughts. Perhaps we'll get some other opinions on the matter soon which we could all discuss.

 

[ilovemydragongoby]

im not sure about the veggie disks. when i had goldies (which was a few years back) i really only fed them goldie flakes. one of my friends used to put algae discs in (she had a pleco in the tank) and the goldies used to fight the pleco for them

 

[Osage_Winter]

Well, here's an update...

After my three fancytails ate the veggie discs (I put six in the tank), it turned the water horiffically cloudy and murky again.

 

[jsoong]

Although goldfish are omnivorous, fancy goldfish do benefit from a diet that is more into veggies than proteins. Because fancies are selected for their rounded shape, their gut is shortened & very much squashed inside their bodies. They are prone to various gut problems if fed too high a protein load. <Such as those shrimp pellets.>

Generally, I feed my fish sinking pellets with protein content of 35% or so. I give them chopped shrimp as a treat, balanced with fresh veggies. I think fresh whole food is better digested than the processed stuff. Fresh shrimp have more roughage & water content than the shrimp pellets for example. And fresh veggies don't foul the water like the algae discs. <PS - if you use the algae discs, make sure they are eaten within a few minutes .... 6 might just be too much, and all the uneaten bits disintegrate & fouled your water .... I usually leave fresh veggies in my tank for 24 hrs & remove any uneaten bits (uneaten food in a goldies tank is a rarity ) ... never have problems with cloudy tank.>

 

[Osage_Winter]

Thanks J.

Was hoping to hear from our resident fancy goldfish expert.

My water was indeed clouded and murked up by something once the feeding of these pellets was complete; it has been hours now and the water isn't clear.

Do you recommend me continuing to feed them the shrimp pellets, or no? And what do I do at this point about the murky water...will it clear on its own now?

 

[jsoong]

You can give small amount of the shrimp pellets if you like, but only as an occasional treat. You might have to soak it in tank water to soften before feeding to help in digestion. I would just stop it altogether if the fish appear to have trouble handling it even in small amounts. Just chop up a salad shrimp or 2 as treats instead.

As for the clouding, depends on why ... If it is from the food breaking up & clouding the water with small particles, it should be picked up by the filter after a few hours. If it is an algae or bacterial bloom form deteriorated water quality, it will prob need some water changes to correct. <Check the ammonia levels ... sometimes a lot of rotting food can cause an ammonia spike, giving you a bacterial bloom.>

 

[glassbird]

I am wondering if the lethargic behaviour that you are seeing is what I call "chew face" in my fancy goldfish. It happens immediately after I feed them, when each has managed to grab several bites of food. They float around, barely using their fins, and seem to be concentrating on chewing their food. After a minute or two, they go to get another bite (or three) and go back to "chewing". Are you seeing this lethargic behaviour immediately after (during) feeding, or some time later? How long does it last?

(I feed San Fransico Bay Brand Goldfish Diet frozen food, frozen bloodworms, and Hikari Lionhead pellets.)

 

[Osage_Winter]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

The whole situation with my tank is getting out of hand already; yesterday, while attempting a water change to try and get a handle on this cloudy water situation, two situations caused us to nearly give up on this hobby altogether. I burned our carpet with the tank's heater when I removed it, and we cracked the glass top to the tank which sits under the canopy; I'll go into these in a separate, new thread perhaps, but as for the food situation in this thread, I am not feeding my fancies anymore of these pellets or the veggie discs, as the water got HORRENDOUSLY cloudy after doing so, plus I did see the digestion issues as they get a bit lethargic looking after eating them...

However, in response to glass' suggestion that this may in fact be the "swallow face" (or however he monikered it), my three fancies in fact do this, where they'll just kind of wallow towards the surface without using their fins much, like they're contemplating what they just ate...

 

[jsoong]

This is common behavior when you feed dry pellets. The goldfish piggies will want to grab as much food as possible, but the pellets being dry, can't be swallowed immediately. So they sit around mouthing the food until it gets water-logged and soft enough to swallow. It is actually rather funny to watch .... although a real goldfish fancier will think this is unhealthy & feed only fresh food. <There are fans out there with different recipes for their fish, and they actually cook for their fish from scratch!>

 

[jsoong]

PS - a comment on the heater for future reference ...

You should not need to remove the heater when doing pwc's. Just unplug it so it doesn't turn on "dry". (Otherwise the glass will overheat & crack.) If you must remove the heater, make sure it had cooled a bit in the water after unplugging ... that would have prevented the carpet burn and also prolong its life.

 

[Osage_Winter]

This is common behavior when you feed dry pellets. The goldfish piggies will want to grab as much food as possible, but the pellets being dry, can't be swallowed immediately. So they sit around mouthing the food until it gets water-logged and soft enough to swallow. It is actually rather funny to watch .... although a real goldfish fancier will think this is unhealthy & feed only fresh food. <There are fans out there with different recipes for their fish, and they actually cook for their fish from scratch!>

Thanks for putting my mind at ease about this, J.

But they also do this with the flakes sometimes; that is, kind of just wallow there "chewing" with a stunned expression...

 

[Osage_Winter]

PS - a comment on the heater for future reference ...

You should not need to remove the heater when doing pwc's. Just unplug it so it doesn't turn on "dry". (Otherwise the glass will overheat & crack.) If you must remove the heater, make sure it had cooled a bit in the water after unplugging ... that would have prevented the carpet burn and also prolong its life.

Oh, well, see what happened was this: The glass top didn't crack from the heat of the heater; what we did was remove the glass in order to access the surface of the water to do the change, and I placed the glass top wrapped in a towel toward the side of the tank, where my wife accidentially stepped on it when assisting me with doing the water change. The top cracked in half on one side, but it fits on top of the tank okay right now in two pieces together, like a puzzle, until the new top that we ordered yesterday from the store we ordered the tank itself from comes in.

As for the heater, what happened was, I didn't remove it just to do the water change -- I figured that because we're not treating for Ich anymore, I could remove the heater altogether because I decided to leave the tank at room temperature. When I did this, I unplugged the filters and bubble wands and heater, but I placed the heater, like an idiot, directly on the carpeting without taking the plug of the heater out of the extension cord plug it was connected to, and then I plugged everything back in once the water was replaced -- suddenly, smoke started to come out of the heater while it was on the carpet, and it was burning right into the floor -- we have a carpet repair guy coming tomorrow to fix this, but I just can't believe I did this...I should have just left the darn thing in the tank and just unplugged it.

Instead, I took the whole heater out of the tank to store under the tank's stand housing because we're not using it right now, and thus almost caused a fire by placing it on the carpet.