Feeding Fancy Goldfish

All Gold fish are the same species whether or not they are one of the fancy varieties. And all are omnivores. Which means that they will need to eat both animal and vegetable based food as well as the right amount of vitamins and trace elements if they are to remain healthy.

Modern dried foods contain the entire above but great care should be taken in choosing the food that is used as the main staple part of their diet. This is because their body shape has been altered through selective breeding and the fish have become very prone to having swim bladder problems and poor feeding will make this problem worse.

I have found that sinking pellets cause less of a problem than floating food. Because they are generally very greedy feeders they have a tendency to ‘bolt’ their food and when eating flake food at the surface I have noticed they seem to swallow a lot of air with the food, as a result they have trouble in swimming because they can’t sink properly. One way around this problem is to pre soak the flake for a couple of minutes before feeding the fish, this is worth doing because modern (coldwater) flake food is a balanced diet on its own. It is best to avoid feeding these fish at the surface altogether if possible

In addition to their staple diet some other types of food should be used, Live food such as Daphnia, Blood worms, small earthworms will all be appreciated. Freeze-dried food offers all the benefits of live food but with fewer risks, there is no chance of any disease or parasites being accidentally introduced to the tank, while the nutritional value is unchanged. These foods should be treat in the same way as flake and pre soaked before feeding.

Other food that can and should be offered occasionally are green vegetables that have been sliced and chopped, brown bread crumbs, tinned peas.

The fish when adult should be fed twice daily and all the food should be gone after a couple of minutes, if any is left then cut down on the amount of food offered. Otherwise the water will become polluted and this will enhance the risk of finrot. Goldfish fry should be fed more often at up to four times per day and with food that is higher in protein than that of the adults.

If you go away on holiday the best option is to get a trusted fish keeper friend to come and feed your fish. If this isn’t possible for some reason then it is probably less harmful to leave the fish unfed. Rather than have a non fish keeper come and over feed them (like they always do). No harm will come to healthy well fed adult Goldfish that are left without food for a couple of weeks.

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