Goldfish Care Guide

A healthy goldfish aquarium starts with healthy goldfish. Making sure you buy goldfish without any diseases or physical damage will save you big problems down the line.

Remember also that you need to have an aquarium ready and matured at home before you buy your goldfish. Don’t try and do it all in one day, or the fish will suffer and may well die.

Never buy goldfish from a fairground! These poor creatures will be overly stressed from being cooped up in a small bag all afternoon, and were probably not properly care for beforehand, either. Don’t be tempted to ‘rescue’ them, it only encourages the practice.

Your options when buying goldfish are:

• Specialist aquarium shops
• Pet stores
• Online fish retailers
• A local goldfish breeder

Specialist aquariums shops vary from the brilliant to the dire; if you find a good one you’ll get great advice as well as a wider range of goldfish and aquarium supplies.

Pet shops are similarly hit-and-miss. Also, fish are seldom their priority, so it’s well worth looking for a good aquarium shop when choosing where to buy goldfish.

Local breeders are an excellent sources of healthy, colourful fish. They’re hard to locate if you’re just starting out with goldfish, however.

Should you buy goldfish online? If you’ve no good stores nearby, then the very best Internet retailers are an acceptable option. The decent ones carefully pack and ship their fish by courier, and most offer a ‘live delivery’ guarantee. The downside is you don’t get to see your fish before you buy, and parcels do sometimes get stuck in transit. You’ll also miss out on speedy advice in a crisis.

Tips on where to buy goldfish:

• Look out for healthy, active goldfish. If all the fish are moping around the bottom with their fins clamped to their sides, leave the store.
• If there are several tanks of different types of fancy goldfish, it shows the store probably takes a real interest in these kinds of fish.
• Good aquarium stores will quarantine their goldfish, to prevent diseases getting into their system. Ask about it.
• A local shop is more likely to use the same water you do, so there’s less stress for your goldfish in adapting to your own water at home.
• Don’t be afraid to ask questions. A good store will be as concerned for the well-being of the fish as with making a sale, so they should welcome your interest.
• Any shop that tries to sell you a tank and a goldfish on the same day should be avoided (and hopefully put out of business).
• Cheap fish are never a bargain!

A good aquarium shop is worth its weight in gold(fish). If you find a store selling a wide variety of healthy fish and a nice range of tanks, and staffed by friendly, knowledgeable people who welcome your questions, your search for where to buy goldfish is done.

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