Would the cat appreciate the lid being left off??? (Goldfish)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Goldfish
Date:	01/04/09 (230 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Dull, a pain cleaning out

Firstly, apologies to any goldfish lovers out there, but I find them the most irritating and pointless pet ever. This is my experience of them.

During the summer last year I took the kids to a local fate, which of course had the obligatory hook-a-duck stand. Both the kids won one of the lesser prizes (surprise, surprise), and both decided they wanted a fish. Now being a useless mother I couldn't bring myself to disappoint them and so home we went with two fish in bags.

After dropping the fish off at home we took a trip to Pets at Home and bought a Spongebob fishtank, complete with filter and decorative bits.

The first couple of days went along swimmingly, the kids were still interested in them, but unfortunately one started swimming lop sided. After asking around a few net friends I discovered this was because we were feeding fish flakes, so ended up having to go out and buy frozen brine shrimp.

But because there were only two fish and the cubes of food were rather large, they ended up being overfed and the tank went all cloudy due to excess waste!

By this time the kids had got bored of watching them swim around and realised they were quite dull because you can't play with them or stroke them, so it was left up to me to clean them out, and it's still a task I hate. When I'm lying on the floor in agony trying to stretch my back out after lifting the tank and the buckets of water, I seriously want to flush them down the toilet.

Of course I never will, I will just continue to hope that they are soon heading for the great goldfish bowl in the sky. Because no one looks at them anymore, they've been consigned to the back room that never gets used, because the filter makes too much noise and I get irritated by the electricity that gets wasted by running the filter 24 hours a day.

Worst of all, I was told that they can live up to 15 years !!

Summary: I know a lot of people like them, but they're not for me.