On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 14:47:56 -0700, San Diego Joe
wrote:

==="Janet" wrote:
===
=== Roy goldfish are not koi. Goldfish will pretty much live, if not thrive in
=== what most would classify as sewer water. Koi on the other hand will not.
=== Janet in sunny Niagara Falls
===
===Don't know if I can agree with you on that one Janet. I don't think the
===survival rate of goldfish in sewer water would be any better or worse than
===the Koi.
===
===I think the issue is just a question of what works "in general." Roy is
===right that he can have Koi in a 600 gallon pond. Is it optimal? No. Are the
===fish comfortable? Maybe, depends on filtration, depth and lots of other
===things. Also, what happens if filtration breaks down? This is where I think
===the rule of thumb applies, if there is no outside action, how many Koi can
===you have.
===
===
===San Diego Joe
===4,000 - 5,000 Gallons.
===Goldfish, a RES named Colombo and an Oscar.
===
===
===
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As you stated, water and filtraton are the key issues to keeping
fish. I have read somewhere that a fish produces a stop growth hormone
if it starts to outgrow its suroundings...don't know if its true or
not, but look at a lot of the aquarium fishes. The small red / blue
neon tetra's are listed as reaching maturity in 3 years time will be
12" in length........in its natural habitat, but its rare to see any
no matter holw old they are much over 1 to 1 1/4" in an aquarium no
matter how many fish are in it or how old they are. So the stop
growth hormone may be for real.

Crowding fish is just flirting with danger on the fishes part, but
having a large fish in a small uncrowded home without having to
compete for additonal space from other fish is foolish as well, but
certainly not as bad as too many at one time in a given space. Our
fish and game commision has a display tank they carry around to
schools, fiairs etc with one huge large mouth bass in it, that
barely has enough room to turn around, and can only just float there
in place, but its healthy. Is it happy, probably not.......
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