Goldfish crisis - help needed urgently!

[Carriel]

We have had our two goldfish, my dd's first ever pets, since Saturday and tonight we go in to feed them and they look remarkably dead to me - both of them...Needless to say dd is inconsolable - asking God to send them back, begging them not to leave her (she's 4). I tried so hard - went to a proper fish shop, bought expensive tank, with filter pump, weed, diver, gravel, prepared the water for 5 days - you name it. Fed them sparingly morning and eve (husband thinks they might've starved, but I don't think so) and they reward me by being stationary, though surprisingly not floating belly up as my dead goldfish as a child always did. Anyway two questions really; anyone have any goldfish keeping tips that the shop forgot to tell me? ( the water seemed quiet warm to me, would this kill them?)second is a scruple. To calm dd down have just told her that there is a chance they're sleeping (after all we'd been saying how they never seemed to sleep, so they must be exhausted)and we should maybe leave them like that till she gets back from school tomorrow. Then I was going to take them to the shop and try and match them with new ones and replace them, which is of course lying and only delaying the inevitable which is they too will die and if our track record is anything to go by it'll be sooner rather than later.
advice welcome!

Get her more and if she notices anything say that they woke up refreshed and better looking. They were probably poorly to start with, esp if they died so soon. Good luck next time. Make sure to talk to the guys about what goes well with what and how many you need. Our tiger barbs ate on each other for a while until we got enough. (Not nearly so quickly, though.)

I too would get new fish and pretend that the original ones woke up! Can't offer any tips tho as haven't had goldfish for years. My dad killed one of mine by putting it in the bath while he cleaned the tank. Unfortunately, he filled the bath using the hot tap ...

lots of fish seem like a good idea ( what are the little tiny ones called?) then wont notice when dead

Oh poor dd! Well for a start I would complain to the shop you bought them from, they should still be alive and kicking 3 days after you bought them and you shouldn't have to pay for new fish after just a couple of days. Secondly, I'm surprised you needed all that equipment for a couple of goldfish, I thought they could live quite happily in a bowl filled with just cold water, but I could be wrong - we have tropical fish so have filter/heater/light, etc, I thought goldfish were supposed to be low maintenance.

As far as scruples are concerned I have tried both. I was baby sitting 100 3 day old geese and when we went to check on them one was dead. I put him in a bag and lobbed him into a skip, not the best idea but hadn't thought of consequenses ref 2.5 yr old dd. She suddenly got very upset and so I told her I was putting goose in skip so that it's mummy could find it and make it better. The next day when we went to check on them I said "Oh look there he is!" I mean they all lokoed the same(!) For ages I had questions, "how did mummy goose know where to find the baby? How did baby goose get out of bag? And for weeks, lots of sighs and "Poor little baby goose"

Anyway a few weeks ago our rabbit died when dd was at school / nursery. She is now just 3. I explained to her that daddy had gone to check on Iris and she was asleep and daddy couldn't wake her up and so she was dead - like Mufasa in the lion king. She went to check with dh and then I asked if she wanted to say goodbye so we went and looked at her, dh had put her in a nice box(!) We then told her that when she was asleep Iris would go away in the sky - (like Mufasa!) Then we burried her when she was asleep.
She has been absolutely fine.

So I abdicate the truth. Children don't really understand death the way we do.
(Of course I didn't tell her the whole truth that dh was looking after the rabbit in the garden and she accidentally hung herself!!!) Truth is relative after all

I asked her just before she went to sleep if she thought the goldfish were dead - she said she thought one was, she was hoping the other was just asleep...I aked if she'd like more goldfish, she said she wanted some fish that lived a bit longer. So am thinking of returning fish to shop (to check if they look diseased) and asking advice. Husband thinks I'll have to clean out water before I can put in new fish in case it's something in the water that killed them. In which case pretending they're the same resurrected fish won't wor cos you allegedly have to prepare the water...wish I'd got her a horse now like she wanted

that was a joke by the way, don't think horses and Hackney would mix

Thanks for all the advice too. I like the Mufasa idea as we're big into the Lion King. Was also thinking if advice from shop is not to replace fish straight away of telling her fish ahd gone to heaven when she was at school. She's big into heaven too, especially as Grandma Sheila (my mum) is there - as is the dog next door...

Carriel, I'd complain to the shop too (if you bought them from a shop, fairground ones often are dodgy I've been told). I bought one once and thought I was doing everything right (even bought a book on how to look after goldfish and this was BEFORE I had a child) and it still died, so maybe it wasn't anything you did? Playgroup did this once with a dead fish too, i.e. replaced it before the children could notice but they didn't get exactly the same sort of fish so a bright boy spotted it and pointed it out to the rest of the group. So you're right to take the dead ones to match. I'd be inclined to lie in your situation too since she is so upset, although I think my ds would probably be OK with the truth and 'we'll get another'. This is based on the fact that he didn't mind the sea monkeys dying (but he's older and they're not real pets) but since your daughter is distraught I'd take the easy option too: lie and replace.

message withdrawn

And you call me sad www?

Carrie I would say honesty is the best policy. That then gives you the chance to get a different type of fish that you can't kill (or as dottyp says, lots of little ones so you don't notice) If you kill more than one lot your dd probably will be very upset.

prufrock, I asked for that one!

We had several goldfish over a period of months which kept dying - bought for dd's birthday - very distressing. Have now had one goldfish for over a year. My tips are:

Make sure your tank is big enough for fish. Goldfish grow very quickly and could outgrow tank.

At first I added all the different chemicals suggested by books/pet shop for cleaning and making tap water goldfish friendly. Now, when changing water, I don't bother, and just use ordinary, unadulterated tap water at room temperature.

Most goldfish die of over-feeding. Our survivor gets fed once a day if its lucky!

I have had gold fish all my life and my current 2 are 6 years old and looking quite huge and scary!

I have never dechlorinated the water (against all advice)... I clean the filter out once a week (mostly) and allow algae to form on the back of the tank and on the stones as the fish eat the algae. The pet shop told me all this stuff about replacing 10% of the water every day and leaving the water for 24 hours before putting the fish in etc etc. I've never done that.

I have noticed though that if I buy fish in pairs then the odds are 1 will die within a fortnight. You can never guarantee the health of the fish unfortunately. One of the most important things in terms of introducing them to the new tank is to aclimatise them to the temperature, chemical composition and oxygen levels. Add a little of the new tank water to the fishes water..... and sit the polythene bag in the new tank for a couple of hours to get the temperature correct before releasing the fish. Sometimes the shock to their system kills them. And I only ever treat the water if there is obvious sign of disease ie. fungal infections (fin rot), white spot parasites.

HTH - these are just thoughts from my own experience of keeping coldwater fish. Good luck with the next lot! Sorry I can't give you any tips on how to deal with your dd dealing with her pets dying.
I can't seem to get these suckers to die!!!

My dd has had fish for pets for 3 years - goldfish never seemed to do well, but fantails did, and they are really pretty, but the best fish we've had are weather loaches - they are fabulous, so entertaining, they literally "perform" for you and have quite definite personalities, my dd loves them to bits - they are 3 and 2 years old and I would not have any other fish now. When her other fish have died, we were honest with her (first one was when she was 4) and we explained about heaven etc, she was upset, but she got over it as soon as we got a new fish - it also meant that when her Grandad died last year (the first human death she had experienced) it really helped her to grasp it and understand, and she was comforted by the fact that he was in heaven with her fish. So I am all for telling the truth.

Thanks again for all advice. By the time she goit up this morning it was obvious even to a child that the fish were no longer with us....She even said, mummy, I really think they're dead...Anyway I told her to say goodbye because they might have gone to heaven when she gets home and took them back to te shop to show him, but the chap just said maybe the water was too warm, or the filter had been clogged up. basically I need to change all the water so I couldn't have replaced the fish anyway. So when she gets back from school we're going to have a little funeral. I'm afraid I've already buried them (they were beginning to decompose and smell) but I'm going to help her make a little cross. And then do all the cleaning and try again next week, with the proviso that if the next lot don't last at least a month, we'll have to think again. Can't believe she talked me into getting them in the first place, feel quite traumatised by it all

I know this is totally irrelevant, but a couple of years ago DH and I were at my parents having dinner, and I was telling DH that I'd had a goldfish as a child that I'd won at the fair, and how it had survived for years. It had turned gold and black, and then back to gold again, had a growth on its head and recovered and various other things. I was saying that I used to wish for it to die so that I didn't have to look after it anymore (as I was about 14 then and into horses!), anyway, my mum started giggling uncontrolably and told me that my fish was actually about 30 fish that kept dieing, she used to phone my dad at work and say 'Bring another fish home at lunch time' while I was at school. I'm really, really not dim, it just never crossed my mind to question the changes in the fish!!

Paula1, that's brilliant! I just love the picture of your dad sneaking home in his lunch break with yet another fish!

And the fact that you never wondered why your fish changed colour whilst you were at school! Superb

I came home from school one day to find my mum had flushed my fish down the toilet .

Paula1, that is funny!

Paula1, LOL