Are there some schooling fish that could live with BIG goldfish?

[Praetorian27]

My friend has a 55 gallon with two very big goldfish. They are about 10-12" long...and they don't have long flowing tails! They are huge fish! He also has one sucker that is about 8" long. He said he would like to add some schooling fish to offset the few large ones he has. Will they just be eaten by the goldfish? What do you recommend?

 

[khyle]

they will eat any smaller fish that would fit into their mouths. besides, 55g is way too small for 2 gold fish w/ 10-12" long + the 8" long sucker mouth.

 

[skratikans]

are you sure they re not koi?

 

[Praetorian27]

are you sure they re not koi?

They look like regular goldfish...just really big. I don't know a heck of a lot about goldfish and Koi, so they might be...but they don't have any white on them...all orange.

 

[khyle]

koi does have barbels beside their mouth, goldfish doesn't have.

 

[Praetorian27]

What the heck is a barbel?

 

[SAE]

Sort of a whisker. Koi have a down-pointing barbel on either side of their mouths. See here barbel: Information and Much More from Answers.com

I can't think of a good schooling fish that wouldn't become dinner, plus the bioload is probably high already. If your friend can, I would recommend putting more filtration on the tank than one normally would. Goldfish and plecos are piggies and produce a lot of waste.

 

[IDunnoWhy]

Well, as it's already been said, the bioload is probably pretty high already, so adding more would probably be a bad idea.

However, if he were to upgrade the tank size, say to a 90g (125g or larger would be best), he could probably try a school of Giant Danios, they are fast enough to elude "capture" and generally large enough to not be seen as "food" (he'd need to purchase the largest ones he could find), plus they can still tolerate the cooler waters preferred by Goldies.