# Goldfish food, present and 1800 **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 27, 2020, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650 "2020-04-27T04:56:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/1 "2020-04-27T04:56:43Z")
This evening, **Mrs R** and I watched the first third of the 2008 version of **Sense & Sensibility**. As the Dashwoods are in a coach travelling to Barton Cottage, Margaret is balancing a goldfish bowl on her lap. Which got me thinking. What would you have fed a goldfish in 1800? For that matter, what’s in goldfish food today? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/2 "2020-04-27T05:24:46Z")
According to [this article](https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/06/09/victorian-goldfish-globes-and-goldfish-hawkers/), it was often nothing. > [@](#): > > [Goldfish-hawkers] did not feed them, believing that “animalcules” or “minute insects” in the water would suffice for their sustenance. To this end, the goldfish-hawker changed the water in the globe twice each day, using rain or “Thames water.” > [@](#): > > The Victorian era belief that goldfish did not need to be fed was actually quite common. An article in the 1859 edition of the Wellington Journal addresses this misconception in severe tones, stating: > > “Whenever you meet with folks who keep goldfishes in the old-fashioned glass globes, you will be sure to hear the melancholy complaint that they will die in spite of every care taken to preserve them. The water is changed most regularly, the glass kept beautifully clean, the vessel shaded from the sunshine; yet, alas! alas! death is always busy amongst them. Is it internal disease? Is it external fungi? No; the cause is starvation. Every other pet is expected to eat, but these gold-carp are expected to subsist on—nothing!” But later on, it was realized that they needed to be fed. > [@](#): > > By the late 19th century, books on goldfish were advising that owners feed their pets a diet of dried ant eggs. Fortunately these were available commercially. I recall my father feeding his aquarium fish in the 1950s on [“ant eggs”](http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/wiki/Ant_eggs) (actually ant pupae). Today there is a wide variety of [goldfish food,](https://aquariumadviser.com/best-goldfish-food/) which can contain fish or shrimp meal, dried insects, brine shrimp, spirulina, soybean meal, rice, wheat, corn, etc, etc, etc. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/3 "2020-04-27T18:33:27Z")
I find it amazing that the average person would think that the fish wouldn’t have to be fed. After all - fishing must have been a common pastime, and you use bait to catch them. And, I would think that most children had experienced throwing bread into ponds to attract fish. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/4 "2020-04-27T19:06:27Z")
Well, in a outdoor pond, with plants etc- you probably dont have to feed goldfish. I found a old pond at a abandoned farm that still have goldfish, and very large ones also. Insects, aquatic life, etc. In Disneyland, there is a pond that is a remnant of the old Mine Train ride, and there are large goldfish and turtles in there, and AFAIK, not fed. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/5 "2020-04-27T19:31:03Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > I find it amazing that the average person would think that the fish wouldn’t have to be fed. > After all - fishing must have been a common pastime, and you use bait to catch them. And, I would think that most children had experienced throwing bread into ponds to attract fish. This was 1800, before Pasteur and germ theory, and people still believed in spontaneous generation of life. The idea that goldfish could live off the mysterious microscopic life that existed in water would not seem as outrageous to them as germ theory and evolution eventually would to many. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/6 "2020-04-27T19:49:45Z")
Goldfish are domesticated carp, and omnivores. They can probably find food almost anywhere, except of course in a small glass bowl indoors. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2020, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/7 "2020-04-27T19:50:02Z")
Given a large enough container (say, a rain barrel or horse trough) goldfish survive just fine without feeding; pond scum will suffice. If Margaret hadn’t been changing the water so often, as advised by the goldfish hawkers, a healthy coat of algae inside the bowl could will have sustained her pet for quite some time. On a related note, I just read a comment from a USO volunteer that the GIs given the job of maintaining Saddam’s palaces during the US occupation of Iraq, decided the best fare for the huge koi in the ponds was Cocoa Puffs. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/8 "2020-04-28T16:26:56Z")
Thank you all for your responses. **Colibri** ’s was a bit shocking for me. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/9 "2020-04-28T16:41:06Z")
Victorian-era pet keeping [tended to be odd.](http://mentalfloss.com/article/555451/dubious-victorian-advice-keeping-unusual-pets) _"Like ravens, jackdaws could be taught to do tricks and learn words, but as the reverend points out, this did have its limits: “Jackdaws are very easily tamed, and become very talkative after their fashion. Their vocabulary is, however, limited, and is mostly restricted to the word ‘Jack,’ which is uttered on every imaginable occasion.”_ Badgers were evidently commonplace pets, reared on dog food (I was just re-reading Conan Doyle’s “The Sign of the Four”, and the man who supplied Holmes with Toby the tracking dog kept a badger, which tried to nip Watson - as well as a “slowworm” (legless lizard) which was useful in keeping the beetles down). We inherited a sizable pond with our new home, and it contains numerous overgrown koi and their descendants, who are doing well on a diet of whatever they find in there. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goldfish-food-present-and-1800/852650/10 "2020-04-28T22:51:19Z")
> [@Rocketeer](#): > > Thank you all for your responses. **Colibri** ’s was a bit shocking for me. I surprised me too, actually. I figured they would have fed them on crumpets and treacle. 😃