Ok... Anyone can take care of a fish, you get them at carnivals and threw them in a bowl as kid ... feed it when you remember and change the water when it looks dirty. HOWEVER we had heard about people who have seen goldfish get scared and die in the centerpieces halfway through because of kids tapping or just too much going on ... so we squashed that idea.
THEN when we decided to use large hurricane vases with floating candles in them, we thought that would be a good place for them, since we'd only need 8 and they're only "really" used for 1/2 hour! We planned for our planner to put them in, take them out, and keep them for the next day until we picked them up from her house.
We are huge animal lovers, and had responsible people lined up to take 1 or 2 after the wedding. We bought special food and stress drops for the water.
What we didn't realize was how much a pain it was going to end up making sure these fantail goldfish were okay ... even the car ride home I about had a heart attack because the bowl was swishing all over .. I kept talking to the fish telling them they're going to be okay .. like they could hear me! I can't imagine how scared they were and this was their 3rd car-ride!
Now, we bought a 5 gallon tank to keep 2 fish in. The water kept getting really dirty quickly so we went to the pet store to ask them if something was wrong. Apparently goldfish "go" a lot more than other fish and therefore require 10gal per fish. Not to mention the numerous trips to the store we've made because we have to make sure the water PH levels, etc need to stay right.
There's a lot more to them than there used to be when we were kids ... just research it. If we had to do it over again we wouldn't use the fish. Mainly because I'm sure we scared these guys horribly, but also because theres a lot of responsibility to them besides just sticking them in a bowl.
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