Can all goldfish reach max size?

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karate626

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 30, 2010
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I just realized I accidentally posted this in the media lounge.

"I have a comet goldfish that is around 2 years old. It was in a 15 gallon for 3 months and then was moved to a 29 gallon. It is only 4 maybe 5 inches long. It seems very healthy...it eats a lot, swims a lot but seems to have stopped growing in the past year. I read online that they grow to be 12-14 inches. Is it possible that some comets may not be able to grow that large? This week I moved it to a 220 gallon tank. Will this allow it to grow larger? How long will it take for it to reach maybe 10 inches?"
 
Mine was a feeder for my turtles they bit his tail off and that was it i came home a week later and he was twice the size and changed color i had mine for about 5 years he was prolly 6" at around 2 years he was 14 when he died

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My Dad got a bunch of culls from his friend. He had them in a 29 gallon for a couple of years. I built a pond for them and they never really grew bigger. They did grow from 2" to 6" in the 29 gallon tank. He had 6 of them in there. They even bred in the 29 gallon tank. He was able to raise some of the babies, but they seem to be stuck at 3" They've been in the pond for at least 3 years now. None of them have grown.
 
karate626 said:
I just realized I accidentally posted this in the media lounge.

"I have a comet goldfish that is around 2 years old. It was in a 15 gallon for 3 months and then was moved to a 29 gallon. It is only 4 maybe 5 inches long. It seems very healthy...it eats a lot, swims a lot but seems to have stopped growing in the past year. I read online that they grow to be 12-14 inches. Is it possible that some comets may not be able to grow that large? This week I moved it to a 220 gallon tank. Will this allow it to grow larger? How long will it take for it to reach maybe 10 inches?"
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Not all fish will grow at the same rate. Food and water quality play a factor in this aswell.

Your comets will probably keep growing in the larger tank, providing you feed them good quality food and keep the water clean. I have 2 comets that I'm guessing are about 4 years old. They were 3" when I bought them and now, 2 years later, there pushing 9".

they wont hold still lol
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I think it will grow. It's possible that it might have been stunted a bit, but in a 220 I think it would gain quite a bit of size. I had a comet that was bought as a feeder that survived the 60 second gauntlet in my 220 and is now about 12" long living in a nice backyard pond.
 
Goldfish grow continually until they die. They can definitely get stunted though. Feeding them high quality Gold/koi food and keeping the water clean really helps. High quality goldfish/koi food does not mean too much protein it means lots a veges that are blanched and pellets that are no more then 28% protein. They are great with fruits and different types of sea weed and duck weed should be grown for then in another tank. The good thing about the veges is that they do not add to the bio-load much.If you want them to really grow feed them 2 times daily and do a 80% water change every week. Gold fish also grow best at 70 to 75 degrees F. I have several that are show colors and they are 12' plus the tail in two years! These are amazing fish. They are the only fish proven to have pain nerves which is why they like to put there lips on your fingers and like to be pet.
 
I didn't know that about the pain nerves that is cool mine did always rub against me when moving stuff or doing water changes he would swim threw my hand

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Compensatory growth (CG) studies have been done on a number of species, and found that it can occur prior to sexual maturity in many species, sometimes to the point that the fish will achieve the same growth point as unstunted fish, however, after sexual maturation there seems to be a permanent inability to recover that size potential. In short, there's a small window in which weeks or months of stunting can be corrected, but not years worth.
 
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