Flushed with success: No bog standard Canadian goldfish these Goldfish popped doon Canadian toilets have been found to be not only surviving, but positively thriving in their new underworld, so much so that Alberta's government has launched a campaign to prevent people flushing away their aquarium-dwellers. Some of the blinged up critters have grown to the size of dinner plates, and are …
Dunno about Alberta. There are no goldfish around these parts. The friendly neighbourhood heron takes care of that. It does a regular survey of all garden ponds and water features. Anything up to small koi carps survives for about a week, tops. Usually less. My neighbour tried to have goldfish in his garden feature 3 times and then gave up.
Come on, carp is tasty if you _KNOW_ how to cook it.
Getting carp, tench or juvenile European catfish right so it does not have the foul stench of a London canal is culinary art - on par with Michelin 2 star +
While at it, looking at the way the ducklings have steadily decreased on the London waterways I am pretty sure that there is catfish in the canals now. Probably time to set out the rat trap to get some bait for fishing it the Eastern European way (steel rope, tripple (no way out) hook and a rat for bait).
Alberta has more waterfoul than just about any place on earth. That's why it's scary these things are being found in the wild. The rate at which they are breeding must be pretty exceptional, since carp are favoured delicacies for many of the honking winged atrocities that darken our skies.
It's also not just Alberta. There's a lot of lakes on the island that have this problem too, including the one I eventually want to retire to. :(
Whatever happened to lakes full of perch and walleye? Ah, for the halcyon days of yore...
Good question. Used to be I could pull walleye out of almost any lake in Alberta that was legal limit in size with about 1/2 hr, a fishing rod and a canoe. Now they're almost impossible to find, and when they are found they're far under limit. But damn, they were good eating.
"It does a regular survey of all garden ponds and water features."
Probably because the installers put in too-shallow pools (this was a slow-news-day report some time ago here, the expert opinions were that the pool designers weren't doing their job correctly).
I would imagine Alberta's stormwater ponds are a bit deeper than that, making them safer for goldfish.
You should be aware of the life cycle of goldfish. When confined to a circumscribed living space, one fish grows to a large "King" size, and all the rest are kept small by predation by the king. I've directly observed this in a small spring pool in Arizona where some rancher dumped a pail of goldfish into it. I guess they did it to prevent mosquitoes.
...people see the gold fish floating on it's side and motionless and presume it's dead.
9/10 times they have a swim bladder issue and can be "resurrected" by simply cleaning the tank out for a change and treating it.
And how many people realise goldfish can easily live to 20+ years if looked after?
"9/10 times they have a swim bladder issue and can be "resurrected" by simply cleaning the tank out for a change and treating it."
Actually, swim bladder issues can creep up in perfectly clean tanks. Goldfish are just inbred mutants that fall over at the slightest provocation. Also: they have a tendency towards constipation that can cause the same issues. 95% of the time you can solve "floaty goldfiish" by feeding the thing a few shelled, boiled peas.
Only those who realise that a goldfish needs a LOT of space - we have 2 in a 150L tank - filthy buggers - goldfish need water changed more often than most other aquarium dwellers.
And the damn things keep destroying the plants, even if we feed them regularly.
However they do keep the snail population down :D
Goldfish are dead when they are floating upside down at the top of the beer glass.
"Only those who realise that a goldfish needs a LOT of space"
Hence why I don't have goldfish in my tanks. They take up WAY too many fish-inches. For my carp fixation, I keep a red-tailed shark in each tank. Watch that carpmouth go!
A 50gal and a 200gal. They do just fine in both. There's nothing in either tank that really gets the red tail's Irish up. The 50 gal has an angelfish, a bristlenose, a cloud of raspies and a whole mess of cories. The 200 gal has the red tail, a bunch of bristlenose and an unlimited pile of cories. (I like catfish. They're cute.)
The sharks just shark around. For the one in the big tank there's literally nothing that bothers her. Everything's albino except her and a couple of cories she probably never sees. (Though she will chase away anything that tries to park in her jar.)
In the small tank, the shark periodically chases a cory or tries to mess with the pleco, but the pleco is 1.5x her size and the cories are 5x as fast as her. So other than occasionally trolling something she can't bully for more than a few seconds she spends her time shooing cories from her jar and helicoptering upside down being a shark.
Right at the moment, she's busy chasing a massive bronze cory that's about 0.75x her size who has decided to turn around and chase her right back. None of them seem overly stressed by the arrangement.
Now, I have been toying with the idea of putting another jar in the downstairs tank and putting both sharks in one tank for a while. It would take some monitoring. 200 gal might be enough, but they're territorial. If it works, however, then I can get another shark for upstairs. Carpmouth! Nam nam nam nam nam nam nam...
You must have a mellow fish in the 50 gallon. I found them to be a right pain in 3ft odd tanks, just for harrassing the fish. It will be interesting seeing two in a big tank always though about that as well but never had a tank above 100 Gal and nano tanks is they way I am going at the moment, and a small tank for Choclate Gourami, which is no way having a red tail shark in it for obv reasons. :)
What sort of tricks?
Card tricks - playing Go Fish?
High diving tricks - three twists without Pike?
Balancing tricks - plaice spinning?
Or tricks of the mind - look into the eyes not around the eyes, snap fingers and you're a carp ... ?
Half a story again - the reg throws us a bone but whips it away before we get to break our teeth on it.
reducing wrinkles, or leading to exercise-free weight loss and they'll be snarfed up in no time. Even faster if one of the teevee "doctors" endorses broiled goldfish fillets. Might have to create a new name for 'em, though, since eating goldfish will make kids cry and the apparently more appropriate "sewerfish" is not likely to land on any menus any time soon.
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