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 fiesh. 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 Cyprinidae,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 

 a long 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- 



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