Gold Fish Bowl

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Because goldfish are just cool like that.

I know it's bad to keep goldfish in a bowl....I never do it. Mine live in a good 29g. I know a friend that has kept quite a few goldfish in a small bowl, and they have lived for many many years. It perplexes me too...
 
The name goes together... Goldfish bowl, usually hear that before fish bowl, so sadly people think they can keep them as such imo, plus thier treated as cheap and disposible, i mean you can win them at a fair...
 
that is a valid point i have wondered about that to
 
iiirc, goldfish get oxygen from the surface of the water when they come up and gasp at the surface(which most idiots interpret as the fish being hungy and feed it more) also cold water holds a lot more oxygen than warmer water. the goldfish bowl is still common because the fish will live for a short time but because the person doesn't care/know any better they think the fish lived for a "long time" and so they pass that myth on to their friends and such or the worst is the people who treat them as disposable decorations because they're goldfish and then because there is a demand for them companies like deathco, wallyworld and petstupid are more than happy to sell them to make a profit. the longest i've heard of a goldfish living in a goldfish bowl was 3yrs, which is really sad considering its a fish should live over 25yrs and get over 12" long.
 
Well Danyal pretty much beat me to the punch on every matter. I will say though that when I was little, one of my friends kept a comet in a bowl for 6 years.

I personally think that if a fish can survive in such substandard conditions, it doesn't mean that it should be kept in such a way. This whole argument extends to bettas (my passion, although not exactly a "monster fish") as well, although that really is an entirely different thread.
 
Goldfish can survive in horrid conditions and ammonia doesn't affect them as much as other fish. The only people that I know of that kept them alive, did 100% water changes weekly or more. Forget the whole nitrogen cycle, it's just about keeping the ammonia to a level that will not kill them in those death traps. Cold water also helps with the oxygen.
 
My little cousin has kept a goldfish in a "kritter cage" for 5 years and he's doing really well. It's weird.
 
my sister had a goldfish she kept in a bowl and it lived for 5 years. none of us knew how either. she would go months without changing the water and it would be covered in algae so much that you couldn't see the fish. (this was way before i ever became interested in fish also). when they would do the water changes it would be with distilled water and now i know that didn't help! and it constantly got overfed and underfed. tough little guy.
 
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