Goldfish will eat practically anything, but you will find it convenient to buy a prepared fish food. There are a number of excellent brands with a perfectly balanced content of food, salts, and minerals. Ask your dealer to recommend one.

What you feed goldfish is not nearly so important as how much you feed them. You cannot rear them properly if you feed them when they seem hungry, because they are always hungry, even hungry enough to beg. Indulge them occasionally, if you like, but infrequently and only with tidbits.

Whatever fish food you buy will have a printed label telling you how much to allow for a certain number of fish of a given size. Follow directions only at the start. Observe the fish as they eat what you throw to them. After a few days of watching, limit them to only as much food as they will consume in five minutes. Remove the surplus, for it becomes waterlogged, decomposes, fouls the water, and kills some of your fish.

Feed goldfish lightly and only once a day. If they become torpid and slow moving, try feeding them every other day, or every third day, and see if they don't become livelier. If they do, hold them to the lighter diet. I know fanciers who feed their fish only every fifth or sixth day, and theirs are among the finest I have seen. This is not unkind. By keeping fish hungry you keep them lively and comfortable, and prolong their lifespan by several years.

It is far worse to overfeed than to underfeed, and the worst thing you can possibly do is to load up your aquarium or pool with extra food when you go away for a weekend. It is better to let the goldfish miss a few meals. Do not feed them any heavier than usual when you return and resume the feeding schedule.

Goldfish thrive on variety in their diet from time to time. Feed them scraped or finely chopped oyster, clam, or shrimp-preferably raw-or earthworms, if you want to go to the trouble of digging and chopping them. Fish will nibble at cooked spinach, and it is good for them. And they like salad as well as you do, for they will pick frequently at the greenery growing around them. The larger fish-3 to 4 inches or longer -seem to consider freshly swatted flies a delicacy. Any of these things, however, are to be given instead of the regular food, not in addition to it.