How to Feed Goldfish

Series Summary

People have kept and cared for fish in artificial environments for centuries, from fish bowls to wall-sized fish tanks. Collecting fish tanks with a variety of pet fish is one of the most popular hobbies in the world, and owning an aquarium provides a quiet and relaxing environment for a home. There are a variety of fish tank setups to choose from, including saltwater and freshwater aquariums, and each setup requires special care. In this free video series, learn how to care for pet fish and their tanks with tips from a pet store owner. Learn about feeding goldfish, washing a goldfish bowl, caring for tropical fish and telling if a tropical fish is sick. Find out how to diagnose a fish's illness, check for bacteria, fungus and parasites, buy a fish and breed Betta fish. Finally, get advice on making goldfish live longer, identifying different goldfish types and sexing a goldfish.

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Chris from Aquatic Central here in San Francisco and on the web at aquatic-central.com. And I'd like to tell you how to feed a goldfish. Ideally as with all fish you will feed approximately once daily. Anything you feed should be gone within approximately 30 seconds otherwise it would be considered excess and will lead to fouling of the water. The key to feeding is balancing and coordinating with your water change. So you can feed more frequently providing that you do more frequent water changes and you keep your water clean. By clean we mean the amount of nitrates present in the water column. So anything under 20 parts per million will be excellent. Now goldfish generally tend to eat flakes or commercially packaged pellets however they will also graze on live plants. And will not do so well with meteor foods as they have slower metabolisms. Here we typically feed once a day. I sometimes take one day off a week so that the fish has a chance to process amongst the food and when we feed like I said we like to make sure that everything is eaten up within about a 30 second period. Otherwise we would consider it excess and and a waist. So we're approximately feeding 5 to 10 pellets for these fish given that they're already 5 to 6 inches in size."