Got to respect them goldfish sometimes...

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Its shameful that mature goldfish are seriously underrated fish in this forum. A tank with big common goldfish is pretty sight. I am growing common goldfish out right now.
 
I read this this morning and then at work heard something interesting on the radio completely pertaining to this thread. They started talking about goldfish that are won in the bags at festival type places and the hosts thought goldfish only lived for about a month. I laughed pretty hard, people called in saying they had 9 year or so goldfish and they could not believe it.
 
Sadly the radio hosts weren't too wrong. The average lifespan of a goldfish or a koi in the USA is about 3 weeks - ask any vendor of these fish. Now an observed average captive lifespan and a reasonably possible natural lifespan are apples and oranges, of course. In Japan, prized koi live up to century and are passed on from generation to generation. I don't think goldfish would be far behind. IIRC, 50 years is mentioned when living in temperate climates.
 
The reason why your average goldfish has extremely short lifespan is because of extremely poor husbandry and no research. Not mentioned that they're only 28 cents. The people that actually cares about these goldfish, their goldfish lifespan will goes up and can live longer. There's a reason why its rare to see a mature goldfish shows their true size.
 
^^^^that is so true

I have been keeping beautiful "feeders" for years and they all lived much longer than 3 weeks and all have grown to decent sizes. I have about 40 in a pond with 4 koi right now and many have great colors and are putting on size each day
 
My family fish pond has had several feeders that we kept for years and that grew into nice big fish as did many of the spawn we kept at the year's end (in Canada had to take the fish inside each year come October).
 
Precisely, fellas. Precisely because of poor husbandry in the first place.
 
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