Help! I've found Nemo!

[cupcakesbakingonanopenfire]

Well, I haven't really. Our cat brought in a large goldfish last night and left it under the kitchen table for us. Put it in a large bowl of water and it came back to life and has been swimming round happily since then. I think it is from our immediate neighbour's pond but typically they are away. Will it be ok till tomorrow without food? Should I chuck it over the fence (the pond is on the other side and I wouldn't really chuck it, just carefully pour...) or would that traumatise it further.

Can you transfer it into a plastic bag and then put the bag in the pond?
The water tempreture will become the same after a couple of hours and then you could let it free.

I can't get over the fence to put it safely into pond (and I'm not even sure if it is their fish). How long do you think it'll be ok in the bowl without food? Do fish have special diets? (ie would the neighbour be annoyed if I gave it the wrong food when it would be ok without any?)
Thanks!

fish are fine without food for a few days - I regularly left my goldfish for 2 or 3 days, IIRC. You could buy some goldfish flakes (usually cost around £1) - all the supermarkets sell them and they're fine for all standard ornamental fish.

are they back tomorrow?
Then it should be ok.

Don't put it back in, if its not theirs you could kill the rest of the fish. Just feed it yourself in the bowl for a while.

Should be fine - they don't eat a lot in Winter anyway (at least not if they're outside!) and you shouldn't over feed goldfish anyway. It will need to be acclimatised like Jaysmummy says as it's warmer inyour house.

Thank you all - I'll just keep it as it is then.
Ta v much.

ok - neighbour is back and he says it's not his. Now have no idea who it could belong to. Should I buy a tank and keep it inside? We have a pond but it has frogs in (and lot of pondweed).

frogs and fish happily share a pond, and some pond weed is important for fish because it makes oxygen. Should be fine.

Thanks.
We have kept the fish. Dh bought a large tank (it is a fairly big fish) and it is happily swimming around as I speak. We have named it Diamond. Reason being our cat is called Ruby and after surviving in her mouth we realised that diamonds are harder than rubies.

maybe it's a koi carp? they're very expensive, might have been a good catch.

at the moment it's floating rather worryingly at the top of the tank with the tip of it's back sticking out of the water - not enough oxygen? Oh, the responsibility. (and I think it's just a bog standard goldfish!)

did you put him in tap water? Tap water needs to be treated really before you can put fish in. You can get the treatment stuff and testing kits in pet shops. Fishy would probably be better of in pond water.

our pond is really grim - covered in pond weed and over grown lillies. The pet shop never said anything about tap water, but they sold us oxygenating tablets. Dh is going to go to the local fish farm this afternoon and see what they say.

Ok this is going to be a long post but bare with me, after leaving school I worked for many years in an aquatic and reptile centre so I know quite a bit about pet fish.

Sounds like it may have a swim bladder problem. It's quite a common problem with fish, is not too serious and very easy to cure. What happens is food clogs up in the stomach and cause a build up of gas so the fish looses equilibrium. It will usually end up floating towards the surface or swiwwing lobsided/upsidedown.

To cure it all you need to do is change the diet, instead of feeding it exclusivly on flaked food try alternating with a pellet type. I'd also reccomend giving it live food like daphne or bloodworm ( aprox 30p a bag ) at least once a week. If your a little squeamish about that you can buy bloodworm, daphne and a variety of other frozen foods ( a pack is around £2-£3). this should cure the swim bladder and prevent the fish getting it again.

If you don't want to try other foods then the alternative is to give it boiled pea's but make sure you remove the skin before feeding it to the fish.

Forgot to mention, any questions you have about your goldfish don't hesitate to ask.

If it is an oxygen problem the fish would be noticibly gasping - mouth movement would be very rapid. It would also tend to swimm with it's mouth just under the surfaface of the water occaisionly diving down to the bottom so it can get enough momentum to just break the surface and take a breath of air.

As for the tap water treatment this is to remove the chlorine. You can actually fo this by leaving a bucket of water to stand over night and the chlorine will evaporate.