Fish in Water Troughs??

3Beasties

3Beasties

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I'm having an automatic water trough put in my field soon (something I'm rather excited about after using buckets and a hose for years!!) and was wondering what people think about keeping a couple of goldfish in it?

I'm sure I read on here that people do it as it helps to keep the troughs clean..............
 
We have had goldfish in a couple of our water tanks for about 6 years. They started very small and have grown loads. We never feed them and they do really well even when the tanks are iced up in the winter.
 
I keep fish in our troughs in summer then in winter they get retired to our pond! We're not on mains water though, private borehole supply so our waters on autofill from there. To be honest though i don't see a problem with them going in tap water? Thats what they get in a goldfish bowl!! They do help keep the water clean though and stop algae. :)
 
Ok as a goldfish keeper please tell me this is bit true? how big are the tanks? Surely you need to empty them regulary as they can't be big enough to sustain more than a couple if fish.
 
Ours are about 4ft x 2ft and only have 3 goldfish in it. The other trough is 2ft x 2ft but a lot deeper and we have 2 in that one. Never had any problems and been doing it for the last 3 years!!! They only ever stay one summer there though, once they retire to the pond we get new ones for the next year.
 
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I won some goldfish at 10 years old at our primary school fair... they only died when I was 24!

We never treated the water.. and to be fair, didnt clean them out all that often too!!
 
i hate you all i have just returned to summer fields and now back to bucketing the water up the yard through one field and into the next. she doesnt even appreiciate it, she poo'd in it today so i had to carry extra clean stuff up there.
 
We have six goldfish in the cattle trough, they struggle to keep it algae free, but they do help. Never fed them, water changes as stock drink from it, cattle and horses.
 
It is true that gold fish shouldn't be put straight into chlorinated tap water, but mains water naturally dechlorinates itself after a day or so (not quite sure how long, but its a shortish time) so each time a horse drinks from the trough only a relatively small amount of chlorinated water is added to the trough, the rest of the water is already dechlorinated.

In addition, when water is agitated it will release chlorine to the atmosphere, so taking less time to loose the chlorine.

Well, this is always what I've understood, obviously stand to be corrected if what i learnt at uni has left my frazzled brain! It was a long time ago! :)
 
I have never had goldfish in my water troughs so can't comment on that but I had my little goldfish for 20 years with tap water in the bowl which wasn't treated and my goldfish were healthy for those 20 years so can't be too harmful.
 
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