FOOD AND FEEDING 
highly nutritious food excessively fed, so that the labor of procuring a 
livelihood is reduced to a minimum and by constant gorging the fishes 
become coarse and misshapen. Excess of food also produces disorders of 
the digestive system and the consequent liver affections. | Overfattening 
diets will produce in the goldfish the same results as in other animals and 
an overaccumulation of flesh or fat will invariably be followed by a partial 
or total sterility, just as the removal of the genital organs will produce a 
rapid accumulation of flesh. | Overfeeding is a most serious evil as very 
many of the diseases may be directly or remotely traced to this cause and 
its attendant results. Sufficient food should be given, as much as will be 
at once eaten, and to fully satisfy the hunger, all additional feeding is a 
source of danger to the fishes. 
It was formerly supposed that the carp subsisted on vegetal food only, 
but it is now known that its principal diet consists of snails, crustaceans 
infusoria and other small aquatic fauna, it also deriving albumen and soluble 
hydrates of carbon from the minute aquatic flora and the young shoots and 
roots of plants; and this applies to all the Cyprinidz,including the goldfish. 
In the aquarium, fully developed goldfishes should not be fed oftener 
than once a day in warm weather and on alternate days or intermittently 
when the weather is cold or the temperature of the water low, 
receiving less than one per cent. of their judged average weight of 
nutritious food, regulated that it will be immediately consumed, not 
carried off and later disgourged to contaminate the water. All fishes can live 
along time without food and experience enables the culturist to judge 
from general appearances when they are sufficiently fed. Whenever they 
are crowded in a small space feeding should be done with additional care 
or the equilibrium may be disturbed, even with a very considerable plant 
growth. Inferior, stale or sour food should never be fed, and the feeding 
and care of the fishes should be vested in one reliable person. 
FEEDING THE Fry. The foregoing more particularly applies to grow- 
ing and mature goldfishes; the important considerations of feeding the 
alevin and fry require special mention, as this greatly influences the devel- 
opment of the finely bred forms. When too sparingly fed or at long 
intervals, the exertion of procuring food necessitates an activity detrimen- 
tal to the development of the desired short bodies and large fins, while 
sufficient nutrition tends to slothfulness, an easy existence and the conse- 
quent fuller development of these desired characteristics. A short rotund 
body also requires a shortening and crowding of the alimentary organs 
together with a partial displacement of others; the double tail and long 
fins further hampering the movements of the fish, so that any active strug- 
116 
