Lost a Fantail

[RussellC]

I've posted the story before, but to make it short, like a lot of folks here I started out by making a whole bunch of mistakes due to well-meaning but incorrect advice, winding up with a 50 gallon tank (well, 48, but we all round up, right?) containing a 2+ year old (stunted) common goldfish, a juvenile shubunkin goldfish and two juvenile fantails.

This past weekend one of the fantails died due to unknown causes (water parameters just fine, kept up with my normal gravel vac routine, no signs of stress in any other fish, or even in the one that died the morning before I discovered its demise).

Of course part of me wants to go out and get a new fish!

I'm not, I won't.

Even though the common is stunted and I don't expect it to get to its full size, as the shubunkin grows (it's still quite young and small), it may need re-homed as it is.

It's one of the harder parts of this hobby though, isn't it?

Yes, I can and will resist the temptation to get a new fish, but nobody said it had to be particularly easy, right?

Regards,

Russell

 

[twoodrough]

Sorry about your fantail. It is the hardest part of the hobby when you lose fish and don't know why.

 

[eduguy]

Don't common goldfish grow REALLY big?

 

[RussellC]

Don't common goldfish grow REALLY big?

Yes, they certainly can. The common I have was acquired when my daughter tossed a ping pong ball into a cup at the county fair. If I knew then what I know now I would have chosen a different game for her to play.

That said, the common is over two years old now, and it's my understanding that while goldfish will grow their whole lives, they do most of their growing in the first 2-3 years. Given that the fish in question is only about 3 inches long at this point and most of its rapid growing years are behind it, I expect that its stunting will keep it from ever achieving the size it ordinarily could or would have if I had known more about how to care for the fish and not stunted its growth.

It started to grow again when I moved it to the 48 gallon, but again, given its stunting, I expect the shubunkin will ultimately grow to be larger than the common -- in fact, the shubunkin was perhaps 1/3 the length of the common when I got it and is rapidly catching up.

 

[eduguy]

Commons are better for ponds