Probably one of the most boring and cheap pets you can get but on the plus side if you look after them probably they seem to be imortal especially if you just have the one and put water plants in with the fish.

When I was four years of age I desperately wanted a a pet of any description so that christmas myparents bought me a fish tank with five fish. two where fan tails like the ones in the picture, two were quite ordinary goldfish and one was quite small in comparison.

In the first few weeks the fan tal fish died then about seven years on one of the big fish died then maybe ten years on the other large fish died. However sixteen years on from its purchase the smallish fish is still alive and kicking, it has also developed a big fan tail and inceased in size since it has the entire tank all to itself. We have accidently shocked it with cold water and droppedit when changing water a few times but it still remains happy and oblivious. We feed it a few flakes of standard gold fish food every morning and clean out its water every other months, maybe it likes scummy water and that is why it has lived such a long life.

It has developed fin rot in recent years but all we do is drop some salt in the water everytime it gets this and it is as right as rain in no time at all.
I remember my English Literature teacher also had a goldfish hers lived up to the age of a grand old thirty.

Last week however our fish had an unexpected guest, we had my aunties grandson and herself over for dinner and the wee lad of 3 runs into the dinning room with a little purple sand turtle paper weight bag.

He kept asking "wat tis, wat tis?", I explained thats a turtle it swims in water and motioned a swimming movement with my hand. He ran off again and came in again and we asked were did it go and he showed us... it was at the bottom of the fish tank.

Don't know if that was bad behaviour or a misunderstanding.