Tropical Fish Central

I took a few pictures and videos of my pond after returning from lunch today

Here is a picture of my gold and black koi:

Here is a zoomed out shot of the pond fish:

I own a very small and not often visited tropical fish forum.  I thought the name was clever, etc.  At some point, someone posted a question asking if goldfish are edible.  Disturbingly, this have become the #1 reason people come to the site – referred to the site by searching to find out if they can eat their goldfish.  Here is a snapshot of the awstats search keyphrase list:

Again, this isn’t a huge forum, but 4 of the top 7 search terms are about eating pet fish.  Looking at the longer list, there are 7 more phrases about eating goldfish.

Can someone please tell me why do so many people ponder whether it’s OK to eat their goldfish?  This is not a rhetorical question.  I really want to know.

Large goldfish that barely fits into the small bowl

So, can a goldfish survive in a bowl?

The short answer is yes – for a while.   Many people equate the fact that a goldfish can live for some period of time in a bowl with their ability to live in a bowl in general.  The most common “comet” goldfish are generally cheap (under $0.25US) and sold while very small – usually less than 1 inch long and pet stores often have bowls in the vicinity of the gold fish.  All of this makes it reasonable to believe that they can be kept in a bowl.

No, they can’t.

There are two major problems with keeping goldfish in a bowl

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