A couple of my gold fish flipped over recently. I read on the internet that I should reduce or even stop feeding for a few days and green peas would be a remedy. When I feed my fish some chopped up green peas, every fish in the tank was fighting for the peas like crazy. Apparently they like the pea more than the regular pallets. I have a few questions.

1. Is it safe to feed the gold fish green pea instead of pallets over a long period of time?
2. If they like it so much, should I switch them to a green pea only diet?
3. Obviously green pea would not be a balance diet, so what symptoms should I look for before I switch back?
4. How fine should I chop up the pea? Too fine, I worry it just murk up the water. Too big, I worry the chunks would cause indigestion and make the swim bladder problem worse.
5. The peas have a kinda rubbery skin. Should I remove the skin before feeding? I currently remove the skin, but I worry that the rubbery skin is essential to the remedy?

Thanks in advance.

When feeding peas always remove the skin and just chop into little chunks small enough for them to eat. You just want to give them peas maybe a couple times a week as they work like a laxative for the fish. Other times just feed a good quality fish food made for goldfish. Only feed enough that they can eat in just a couple of minutes once a day.

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For my goldies, I only feed them sinking pellets, and vegies. I will do the peas once every other week. Every other friday I fast them, then on saturday morning, I boil the peas, let them cool down in a cup of tank water, peel off the outer shells and cut them into small pieces. They love them, you can also do broccoli. Again, boil it soak it in tank water and using a food clip hang it in the tank. The first time it takes them a while to figure out it's ok but now they go nuts over it.

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I'm with susankat - no skins, stick with a base diet of high quality food. - if you enjoy feeding your fish a supplemental diet of fresh food, there are lots of other options like canned spinach, blanched zucchini and cucumber, cooked carrot, things like that, but you always need to add things like this sparingly and make sure not to leave excess around to rot, and an occasional pea is great as a preventative.

Wow, talking about kicking the pooping machine (goldfish) into overdrive, lol.

Thanks to everyone who answered.

Some answers led to another.

Why should the food be cooked before feeding to the fish?
I understand cooking would soften the food.
However, there is no cooking in the wild.
So I would think it is more natural to feed uncooked food to the fish.
Would it be more nutritious to finely chopped up the food than to cook them?

some things they wouldn't normally eat, like carrotts. In order to wait long enough for the carrotts to rot enough for them to be soft enough for the goldfish to eat, they'd foul the water. Cooking replicates the rotting process without the bacteria. Some things if they ate them hard but small would potentially block them up (like eating gravel) or just go through them unchanged (not much use in feeding carrots if the carrots go through them unchanged). Are they natural foods then? No. If that rules them out for you, that will be fine. These are supplemental foods, not a replacement diet for your good old goldfish pellets.