My goldfish is a retarded potato

you've had him for a long time, he's your buddy.
i hope everything's alright.

hang in there, fred!

(Fred, by the way, was the dumbest music promo I ever received. It was sent to me by some band that wanted to promote its latest album. Note to musicians: Don't send living creatures to writers. Please.)

(No, the band wasn't Phish.)

Statements like that make baby Jesus cry, you know.

I haven't changed his feeding pattern; if anything, I've been giving him less food. Some random googling suggests he may have some sort of bladder problem. I'll have to chat with the friendly folks at Aquarium World in Chicago and see.

If he floats to the top of the tank you should also assume that he has swim bladder problems which affect his balance. This can be caused by many things such as poor health, but is usually caused by gulping in air when he eats his dried food floating on the water surface. This is distressing for fishy and you could look at changing his food or making sure you feed it to him soaked rather than dry.

Finally he could probably use a pal so think about getting him another fish. But one that you have quarantined and observed for a few days before you put him into the tank. I am glad that you have put him in a tank; bowls are cruel.

Here is a good site for goldfish queries.

http://www.goldfishinfo.com/ailment1.htm

My heart aches when I see the poor little fish!! Some googling suggests that the bowl is way too small, maybe that's the problem, but we're actually just watching them for a friend who went abroad and we can't really afford to buy a big tank for them. I wonder if it'd be best to try and give them to a pet shop, but then again, they're not my fish to give away...

There are quite a few specialist message boards for fish - this one http://www.tropicalfishcentre.co.uk/index.html is useful, though more people are on the tropical boards than the coldwater one.

here's my two issues, broken into several questions:

i've got one goldfish (flojo) in a biorb tank (so it has a filter and loads of water and everything). i've had an algae problem for the last couple months. have read stuff online and done as suggested-- partial water changes up to every other day, and bigger one weekly. but it doesn't go away. i'm wary of using chemicals, but is that the only way to sort it for good? i guess the other option is to get an algae-eating fish, but i've heard they can develop a taste for fish slime and suck a hole in little flo (!)

have also been thinking about getting her a friend. don't have another tank, and know i need to keep a new fish quarantined, could i just be really ghetto about it and keep the new fish in a big bucket for a week or so? or is that terrible?

i'll post pics of her once the tank is all clean.

See how I use the word 'she'?

Like I knew. I miss her still, I was proud of her longevity.

My tank:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v413/chrisnvicky/tank1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v413/chrisnvicky/phantoms2.jpg

However, after a few months of this, one day he just didn't revive. So whether he had some underlying illness all along, or whether he just died of old age (he was over two years, not bad for a little goldfish), who knows?

Neither are retarded potatoes.

http://www.petlibrary.com/goldfish/ich.htm

I can't stop watching mine, they're better than telly.