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Although traditionally thought of as cold water fish, goldfish can actually live quite happily in warm water
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In fact, for many of the fanciest drains, like these fantails, they do far better living in warmer water than they do in cold water
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So let me tell you why. Hello friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Richard and I'm the owner of the fishkeepinganswers.com website
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A place where enthusiasts like you and I can geek out about goldfish and guppies, pufferfish and oscars
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If it lives in fresh water, the chances are we've got good information about it
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So goldfish have been kept and bred for hundreds of years and they've been kept as pets in our homes for decades
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And over the years, the myth has developed that goldfish are cold water fish
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And whilst that is true of the common goldfish, which would typically quite happily live outside in ponds
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fancy strains like these fantails actually do better in warm water than they do in cold water
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Water temperature actually has a direct impact on the fish's metabolism, on how quickly they digest their food
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The warmer the water typically the quicker they metabolise the quicker they digest the food we feed them So when we keep our goldfish in warmer water they can digest their food quicker and turn it into body mass into muscle and skin and scales quicker than they can
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when they're kept in cold water. So what is the ideal temperature to keep our fancy goldfish at
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About 70 to 76 Fahrenheit or 21 to 24 and a half Celsius is about the ideal temperature
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whereas for your common goldfish somewhere between 66 and 70 is probably the ideal temperature
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so I heat my whole room but I tend to keep these guides at somewhere between the 74 and the 76
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Fahrenheit in my experience that's that's the optimum temperature that's where they do best
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do proceed with caution however is if they get too warm they can start to show signs of illness
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especially stress ick and and such likes you certainly wouldn't want to start keeping your
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fancy goldfish up in the 80s their metabolism would be racing and they would quickly become
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stressed and show signs of stress and illness. On the rare occasion here in the UK we have a heat
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wave I tend to take the lids off of my goldfish aquariums and direct a fan across the top As the cool air blows across evaporative cooling helps lower the temperature just by a couple of degrees Stop them getting too warm So you might find yourself wondering is it bad for the goldfish to keep them at cooler temperatures
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And whilst it's not necessarily bad, it's not great for their digestive system
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If you were keeping these guys down in the 60s, you may find some of the food starts to rot in their stomach rather than digest
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shortening their lives and leading to internal complications. Certainly here in the UK
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we couldn't hope to keep these guys outside all year round in the winter they simply wouldn't
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survive the temperatures here drop far too low so another question I'm frequently asked that relates
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to fancy goldfish and water temperatures is can you keep them with tropical fish and you can
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depending on the fish I mean they do well with some of the fish that live at the cooler end like
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white clouds like platys and mollies I kept mine in the past with guppies there are many fish that
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would do well with the fancy goldfish, provided they're not too nippy. I wouldn't keep tiger barbs in here, for instance. I wouldn't keep them with oscars or African cichlids. Fancy goldfish
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are gentle souls, and if we're going to keep them with tropical fish, we need to keep them with calm
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tropical fish that aren going to nip at their fins We also need to keep them with fish that won fit in their mouth because believe me anything small enough to go in their mouth will end up there at some point Now do bear in mind the majority of this information relates to fancy strains of
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goldfish which are typically slow swimmers they tend to bumble around the tank. It doesn't
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necessarily apply to common goldfish who typically are very large and are very fast swimmers. Common
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goldfish would quickly eat guppies, white clouds, anything they could catch. There is no doubt you
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would not want to keep common goldfish with tropical fish. So as I say the advantages of
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keeping your fancy goldfish in warmer water is they're generally healthier, the metabolism works
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better and they typically grow and remain healthy when the water is warmer. Keep them too hot or too
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cold and the Lofton develop ick which shows itself as small white spots all over the fish
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And if you need to know more about Ick on your goldfish, check out this video here
